Review by Frank Plowright
New readers don’t start here.
There are B.P.R.D. volumes you can pick up to read a superior standalone supernatural story, and in the past Mike Mignola has broken down his bigger arcs into episodes that can be read and understood without reference to other material. Messiah, however, begins B.P.R.D.’s endgame, and that’s a continued escalating fifteen chapter conclusion. There’s an assumption that everyone starting The Devil You Know has been around for a while, and what for regular readers is a thrilling opening chapter catching up with myriad characters, some not seen for a while, will transmit to new readers as unintelligible.
B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth ended with a pause. At great personal cost a monster of almost unimaginable proportions was killed, and when it died many other threats became dormant. The pause has permitted a regrouping for the devastated B.P.R.D., now headquartered in a flying carrier imaginatively designed by Laurence Campbell. The series has now moved beyond supernatural, to full horror.
Mignola’s previous writing partner John Arcudi has left and Scott Allie is the new collaborator, but the results aren’t as satisfactory because Allie’s dialogue so often consists of brief oblique statements. They can be clever, but it’s at the cost of clarity, and even those who’ve followed the series may have trouble picking the meaning from them. Adding to this confusion is Abe Sabien recovering consciousness and needing to be brought up to speed in a hurry, although a nice touch is his knowing information lost to other agents. Another is that with Kate gone there’s no unity among the B.P.R.D. agents other than their lack of respect for Devon as the current leader. With so many of the big players absent, Mignola and Allie go the extra mile to feature a broad cast known to readers, and the full complement of agents are covered, although many are only seen briefly.
Laurence Campbell’s art is strong on design and mood, largely achieved via significant areas of black ink, but also provided with masterfully subtle highlights by colourist Dave Stewart. Messiah plays to Campbell’s strengths by not requiring a great deal of action beyond Howards being seen doing what Howards does, so there are plenty of magnificent vistas with dead monsters in the background given a hellish red glow.
There’s no great hurry to define who exactly the Messiah of the title might be. Several candidates are mentioned, some of them even seen, but prophecies and messages all mention a young girl. Varvara is given the highest profile, a demon occupying the body of a young girl who’s been on Earth for two hundred years and a recurring occasional presence in B.P.R.D. She’s certainly taking her opportunity, gathering an army around her as she marches on Manhattan, and she’s also one of only a few with a foot in another world, aware there’s currently a vacancy for a ruler in Hell.
Messiah concludes with a massive surprise due to some cleverly dropped misdirection and it completely reconfigures expectations for what’s to come in Pandemonium in what might otherwise be considered a slow outing with little resolution. All three parts of this conclusion are combined as B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know.
