While other books may shy away, BPRD is entirely comfortable with challenging its readers. Writers Mignola and Arcudi waste no time in any more set up than is needed and this issue opens with the lead characters in the middle of the fray. The story rockets through the action scenes and finishes off the villain only to go back and explain what we just saw. During my first read through, I was sure that they weren’t going to explain the opening of the story and that I would never fully understand what had happened in that scene.
When the explanation came, I was reminded of an important aspect of this book–this art team effectively knows how to creep a reader out. Before the issue started, I had a pretty good idea where they were going with the resolution of this monster story, but I never expected them to give a full medical history of the woman who eventually bore a monster baby. The idea of a monster baby sounds ridiculous, but showing the progression of the pregnancy in utero gave the idea a disturbing realism.
The art of Guy Davis is another one of the challenging factors of BPRD. While the art seems loose and even messy at times, each panel is packed with information. Davis combines fluid motion with a surprising amount of detail to fully reveal the horrible nature of the monsters of this story arch. Davis’ art mostly produces a love-it or hate-it kind of reaction and I think I like it more often than not. Every issue has at least a few moments artistically that blow me away.
BPRD consistently maintains a very high quality level title and I’m always interested to see what they’re doing. This was an average issue, but an average issue of BPRD is always good comics as far as I’m concerned.