Thursday, June 21, 2012


Dark Horse dropped a nuclear bomb of awesome on my pull list this week, with new issues of BPRD The Devil's Engine, Alabaster Wolves, the fantastic finale of Ragemoor, and another wonderful issue of the greatest anthology book currently in print, Dark Horse Presents. One final Dark Horse book I found to be particularly fresh though, the new Baltimore series begins with Dr. Leskovar's Remedy.

During WWI, Lord Henry Baltimore leads an unsuccessful night attack in Europe which ends up leaving his men dead, and Baltimore himself wounded and unconscious. He awakens to discover vampires feeding on what's left of him, and horribly scars one of them with his bayonett, taking the creature's eye. Turns out the vampire he stabbed was a particularly powerful one named Haigus who brings down a plague of Vampirism over Europe, which eventually takes Lord Baltimore's family. The attack also left Baltimore with only one leg, as he lost the one that Haigus had been feeding on to gangrene. Replaced with a wooden prosthetic, Lord Baltimore searches all over Europe for a cure to the plague, and his revenge against Haigus. This particular issue is the first of a new mini-series, which will only be two issues. In it, Baltimore crash lands a plane near a small fishing village, where a mad scientist, Dr. Leskovar, is using the inhabitants as test subjects in his own attempts to cure the plague, and save the life of his son.



Baltimore is a book in the Hellboy family, and as such is co-plotted by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. That alone guarantees quality. His fellow co-plotter should also not be a stranger to any fans of Mike's big red ape. Ben Stenbeck returns on art, and just as with the other Baltimore stories, this one is equally good looking. I wasn't familiar with his art before Baltimore, but seriously, you should've seen the convent of Vampire nuns in "The Curse Bells". Absolutely fantastic stuff.

Of course I got some non-Dark Horse stuff too, but nothing spectacularly note-worthy that I haven't talked about before on Fresh Ink. The Walking Dead, Venom, Wolverine, Daredevil, Batman Beyond Unlimited, and Nightwing all continue to be good reads, and Avengers vs X-Men continues to waste both my precious time, and even more precious money.

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