Lobster Johnson: Satan Smells a Rat – Review

By: Mike Mignola & John Arcudi (story), Kevin Nowlan (art)

The Story: Lobster Johnson doesn’t care for the treat part of trick-or-treating.

The Review: Having just done a review of Five Ghosts, it’s kind of interesting to read another comic which channels a similarly pulpy feel—interesting because of how radically different the two issues are.  While Lobster Johnson is clearly an homage to the radio vigilantes of the 1930s, like the Shadow and the Green Hornet, in tone and practice he’s quite unlike them.  You get less of an adventurous feel with Lobster, and a greater fixation on his latest vendetta.

This is in no small part due to the fact that Lobster in some ways really serves more as a cipher than as a character in his own right.  I confess that I haven’t read Hellboy or any of its spin-offs (yet), but in reading these one-shot Lobster specials, I strongly suspect their importance lies outside of the issues themselves.  Not that these one-shots can’t stand on their own, but there is an incompleteness of message here that makes you feel like there should be more to the story than what you end up getting.