Mister Higgins Comes Home
by Mike Mignola
& Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Dark Horse Comics, 2017
49 Pages
Young Adult (14 and up)
Mignola’s tribute to Hammer Films’ horror comedies The Fearless Vampire Killers and Captain Kronos, is fantastically written, in the exact same vein of humor as those movies, living up to my best expectations of a Mike Mignola story despite its short length. I do wish they had chosen a different artist. The graphics make the vampire story feel like a Sunday funnies cartoon strip, detracting from the overall delivery of what could have been a Christmas Eve ghost story favorite. I understand that Mignola can’t do art for all Dark Horse’s supernatural romps, but the style they chose just didn’t work for me.
Professor Johannes Meinhardt of Ingolstadt University, a vampire hunter, arrives to catch his prey… but Count Dragos Golga, “High Priest of Evil,” preemptively strikes by inviting Meinhardt and his assistant into his lair for a grand Walpurgis Night celebration. They bring along a man whose story they heard in an asylum for the mad, one Mr. Higgins.
After a failed ceremony to re-dedicate themselves to the Devil, Higgins’ gorgeous undead wife is shot by Meinhardt’s silver bullet, and dies. But the black goat from The Witch shows up to whisper sweet nothings in Higgins’ ear. Turns out it wasn’t just his wife who was “turned” by the vampires. There is a big, bloody climax… and sadly, Mr. Higgins is left exactly where he started.
I don’t know if I’d run out and buy this one in hardcover, (as there are certainly many of Mignola’s works which I would,) but this is definitely a lot of fun!