Falconspeare
(Adventures of Professor J.T. Meinhardt and His Assistant, Mr. Knox #3)
by Mike Mignola & Warwick Johnson-Caldwell
Dark Horse Comics, 2021
56 pages
Young Adult
If you are looking for a Victorian dark occult fantasy fix, here it is! The series is written by Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, illustrated by Johnson-Cadwell. I’ve got to say Caldwell’s raw artistic style is not quite up to Mignola’s signature look, but the gothic supernatural ambience of the Meinhardt & Knox stories are fully suited for the Mignolaverse.
James Falconspeare, Monster Hunter, has disappeared. His university has had no word from him. When his friends, the team of Meinhardt, Knox, and Van Sloan, receives a mysterious correspondence with the initials ‘BK’ in Falconspeare’s handwriting, they are off to track him down. He was last seen heading off to the port of Betivuka, perhaps going after a predator called “The Biter.”
When they locate their friend, he recounts his tale of hunting a local Baron who seems to be a vampire, (some serious Captain Kronos vibes here,) but The Baron Fontin turns out to be a very special sort of monster that Falconspeare cannot hope to defeat.
Falconspeare tries a unique tactic to destroy this foe, but ultimately requires the assistance of his friends. A simple story, well delivered, with an ample helping of blood.
Falconspeare is the third in the Mignola/Cadwell collaboration, (with Mr. Higgins Comes Home and Our Encounters with Evil.) A good story, if quite short, but the narrative has nothing to really set it apart from the usual vampiric fare. What makes these stories good are the small touches of intrigue. A scratched message on the table in fear of someone secretly listening, a sword-wielding Bavarian housekeeper, a nosferatu blown up by a flare. Even the fact that not a single character from the monster hunting team is ever named other than James Falconspeare.
Having read Anne Rice way back when The Vampire Lestat was first released, I was sick of vampires long before the popularity of zombies even got started. But Mignola with his Baltimore series and Hellboy gothics has always kept it fresh, and this short is no exception.
