Abe Sapien, the Drowning by Mignola and Jason Shawn Alexandre

The Drowning is the first solo adventure of Abe Sapien. In fact is HIS first solo adventure. He is asked to find a dagger that the late Edward Grey used in the 19th century to fight against evil. He was a mystic and an special agent of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

With this mission to be accomplished, an inexpert Abe Sapien travels to France, to the quasi-Lovecraftian Saint-Sebastien island, at the beginning of the 1980s. This paradise island is a death trap to the entire community and to the group of B.P.R.D. agents that works side by side with Abe.

Then the series turns into a dark adventure where Abe Sapien must survive to prove himself worthy of being a B.P.R.D. agent. To me, the most important novelty in this series is the Vrooman’ Monks. They are ghost that works for this immortal, this Vrooman that need the life energy of the human beings to survive. It is a vampire of souls. And the monks are so carefully crafted by Mignola and Jason Shawn Alexander that they must be rescued to create a new adventure with them. They are so bad and so mean, and in fact so cool that they deserve that.

The art in this series is great. To tell you the truth, after taking a look, I search in the cover the name of Jae Lee, but no. It was this Jason Shawn Alexander and I must say that now I am a great fan of his work. So tasty and all in inks, no pencil. Such an amazing achievement. And of course, Mignola’s writing are as interesting as always.

Perhaps the story of the first adventure of Abe Sapien does not add anything basic to the Hellboy corpus, but I love this character and this story was really satisfactory.