Abe Sapien #4 – Review

By: Mike Mignola, John Arcudi (Writers), Max Fiumara (Artist), Dave Stewart (Colorist)

The Story: Abe encounters some new people as he informs himself on how the world sees him and what is happening on a global scale.

The Review: Who could have thought, more than a decade ago, that Mike Mignola would be creating a whole universe as a result of the adventure of a single character, Hellboy? With so many potential, the Mignolaverse had been born when Mignola had created the B.P.R.D title spinning off from the adventures of his own creation. Since then, we have seen the development of a fascinating universe that has now a lot of angle covered, with Hellboy showing us the adventures of the beast of apocalypse we grew to love, B.P.R.D demonstrating us how much the world is kind-of screwed right now and Abe Sapien, which focus a lot more on the human elements of the Mignolaverse, an angle that was under-represented before.

I have to say, I rather like this approach to the character of Abe Sapien and to the world in general, which is put much more in focus in this issue than it had been in the first arc. What we get here is a protagonist that is unsure of his role in the world, how he is affected by it and how he did affect it throughout his actions. Showing us a main character full of questions and with a philosophical approach to things does wonder in making us invested, as Abe is much more like us despite what he looks like. How he interacts with others, how he ponders on such heavy subjects as identity and fate is something that is rather fascinating, which gives us a very different type of book in the Mignolaverse.