We’ve reviewed Volume 1 of A Plague of Frogs previously here at Sleeping Hedgehog. Volume 2 of the compilation has now crossed my desk, and it’s just as much fun (? well, yes, actually) as the first collection.
It’s a continuation, and like all good ones it takes the opportunity to build some depth into the characters and complexity into the situation. The frogs are establishing colonies faster than the agents at B.P.R.D. (the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, just to refresh your memory) can keep up. Most of the activity seems to be taking place in the Midwest, and moving westward, while B.P.R.D. is headquartered in Connecticut. The powers that be come up with an answer: the Bureau will relocated to an abandoned military research facility in the Rocky Mountains, and they’ve been given a new commander, Capt. Benjamin Daimio, who was actually killed during a frog attack — sort of. At present, however, he is very much alive.
There is also a villain, aside from the frogs and whatever higher power they serve — a high-powered executive named Pope, who also happens to be something of a Nazi freak, and whose R&D people are doing research on — you guessed it — the frogs. Styling himself the “Black Flame,” he attempts to take control of the frogs to bring about a fundamental change in the world.
And then the war starts in earnest.
There’s a fair amount of knotty interpersonal politics involved in this series. Liz Sherman, whose specialty is pyrokinetics, doesn’t take very well to Capt. Daimio, in part at least because of her very protective attitude toward the homunculus Roger, who, now that Hellboy has left the organization, is all too prone to follow a charismatic authority figure blindly. (Roger’s not too long on independent judgment.) Abe Sapien, the de-facto leader of the group until Daimio’s appearance, is pretty much out of the picture, first on detached duty with Dr. Kate Corrigan to investigate weird happenings in Rhode Island, where he gets sucked into a psychic time-warp in a haunted mansion, and then holing himself up in the office as a co-ordinator. And Johann Krauss, the disembodied medium who lives in a containment suit, has his own problems — did I mention the mad scientist, ex-Nazi division, who tries to take over Johann’s spirit?
Come to think of it, it’s rather odd how many clichés inhabit this series, and how easily Mignola and the writers make it all work. So far, we’ve had mad scientists, a left-over Nazi or two, a dark and vengeful elder god, a haunted house, and probably one or two I’ve forgotten at this point, and I didn’t really care: they all work within the confines of the story, and that’s what matters, after all. (It’s also interesting to note how Nazis have become a staple of horror fiction — and this is, indeed, horror.)
Given the number of artists who contributed to this series, I’m rather pleasantly surprised at the stylistic consistency, not so much in the details of the drawing, but in the feel of the thing: while there are variations in style that are readily apparent if you’re paying attention, I think what happens here is that the story itself is engrossing enough that you don’t pay attention to those details. Whatever the causes, it works.
And maybe that’s the best summation of the volume as a whole: it works, and works very well.
(Bark Horse, 2011) This volume collects B.P.R.D.: The Dead, B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame, and B.P.R.D.: War on Frogs.
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