Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus

Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus is about a crimefighter and his little dog - kind of, if we took the little dog and turned it into the so-called Iron Prometheus, aka a guy in a really big, iron suit somewhat resembling the original Iron Man costume. In a way, the title isn't really a title, but merely who the book is about - Lobster Johnson, and The Iron Prometheus, equally. Essentially, we have two stories going on throughout the mini, one for each character. They start together, oh yes, but deviate.

It's a wonderfully-written and -fun first solo for a character first introduced and featured in a single story, and later meeting his fate within Hellboy: Conqueror Worm. The Lobster is right up there with old school noirish superheroes (and, c'mon, he is so the Mignola-verse version of a 1930s Batman, an original Batman, complete with pistol and detective-work, a Lobstercave and a helper who looks like a butler, and even using fear and a form of superstition as a weapon, sorta-kinda - this relation almost sullies Lobster Johnson as unoriginal, and that's not intended, because what's going on here with this character is so much more) - and the writing is right there with the pulps. I could see Robert E. Howard, let's say, writing a Lobster Johnson story, or at least the Conan equivalent or Solomon Kane equivalent of this one. And this isn't bad. Mignola isn't going for some prestigious writing award here, or trying to produce some orgasmic level of American literature. He is homaging the past, much as Hellboy always has. He is telling an action-adventure story meant to thrill, and he delivers.

In fact, I'd call Lobster Johnson a gold mine of a character. He's fun to read, and I'm sure he's fun to write. How can anyone hate a vigilante who shoots gangsters and Nazi agents and then burns a lobster's claw into their faces/foreheads to leave his mark? - And even if we know his fate and where his end is, it doesn't make the road there any less exciting. I hope to see more Lobster Johnson solo minis in the future.

The art is beautiful and what you'd expect from a Hellboy story, right in line with other Hellboy work. It's instantly readable. Panel breakdowns show an obvious and intelligent understanding of the way the medium works.

Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus is definitely worth reading on the graphic novel's merits alone - BUT, also because we get to see Mignola adding another chapter to his creation, and a non-Hellboy chapter at that. Brubaker can leave his mark on Captain America, Bendis can leave his mark on the Avengers, Carey or Whedon can leave their mark on X-Men, Morrison on Batman, but those marks can become forgetful and, even if not, are ultimately at the mercy of whoever comes next. They are, after all, only the latest playmates in someone else's sandbox. But this is Mignola's sandbox and, much like Simon Furman on IDW's Transformers license, he's free to create and build as much as he wants without necessarily having to worry about or ever face someone coming along and ruining with shitty plots or characterization what he's done.

And that, to use a phrase, is worth its weight in gold (or, at the very least, the weight of this graphic novel opened in your hands).

Have you read it? If not, read it.