Review by Karl Verhoven
In Hellboy continuity the Crimson Lotus is Yumiko Daimio, grandmother to later B.P.R.D. commander Ben Daimio, and 1930s villain with supernatural talents who’s plagued pulp hero Lobster Johnson. John Arcudi and Mindy Lee begin her solo outing by heading back beyond Lobster’s crimefighting days to show her as a child witnessing Rasputin commit murder. It appears unconnected with the bulk of the story, which takes place in the 1930s, but offers an indication as to Yumiko’s stone cold character.
For a fair while after the prologue it seems as if John Arcudi’s going to be content to provide a standard spy thriller in an exotic location, as the action concentrates on three Chinese freedom fighters during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1932. However, the introduction of the Lotus’ trademark small monkeys in masks is a creepy touch, and the supernatural intrusions increase from there.
Lee takes a different approach to the art from most who work on series associated with Hellboy. They keep their supernatural threats in the shadows, revealing them only slightly most of the time, but Lee’s pages positively burst with large versions of grim creatures seen in full, and her highlight is a golden dragon escaping into the night. Her people are easily distinguished one from the other, an assortment of body types mixing in the panels, and they’re sketchily drawn with oversized eyes, but in the context of Lee’s art they’re fine. Keeping people moving is a speciality, a necessity as almost everything is action based.
“It is a piece of Hell itself on Earth”, is what the story is ultimately about, an object cleverly reintroduced, but it’s not really enough to raise this above a competent chase story, a homage to old style action movies. The highpoint is a weird Russian character dealing with the threat, and it’s the climax before the anticlimax. The Chinese cast prompt events rather than the Crimson Lotus. In fact, reading this without background knowledge, it might at first be assumed Shengli is Crimson Lotus. We barely learn more about Yumiko, and none of this seems greatly necessary.
