I confess that while long being a Hellboy fan, I sort of lost interest in the series with its innumerable spinoffs sometime in the 2010s. Since then, I haven't been paying a lot of attention, so if I saw Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown when it came out, I mischaracterized it as yet another of those Hellboy things and didn't pay much attention.
Well, as I recently found out, I was wrong. Bowling with Corpses is, in fact, the start of a whole new shared universe: the Lands Unknown. So, far Mignola has been primary creator on two of graphic novels: the aforementioned title and Uri Tupka and the Gods with a sequel to that one, Uri Tupka and the Devils coming in November. Ben Stenbeck has contributed the two-issue series, Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man. I've read all of these available now, but I'm going to focus the rest of my discussion here on Mignola's two graphic novels, as they are the most unified in scope and tone (though that's no slight on The Skinless Man).
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| Found this on Reddit where someone had put the locations mentioned on the map |
The Lands Unknown is a fantasy world with a feel in some respects similar to Dunsany's imagined East or Lovecraft's Dreamlands, but less Orientalist and more Middle and Eastern Europe and West Asian than those. It's a polytheistic world where the gods have (perhaps) left, but the Devil is still around. The stories are inspired by folktales and legends from a number of lands. In the anthology, Bowling with Corpses, one of the tales seems pretty clearly derived from a tale in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This serves to enhance the folkloric effect that Mignola and crew seem to be going for.
Uri Tupka and the Gods is about a theologian, branded a heretic, who sets out to find the gods. Along the way, he encounters strange and deadly things, including the interference of the Devil. The best I can describe it in high concept is sort of Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath meets Viy.
I liked both of these quite a bit. It's good to see Mignola back doing art again. I'm looking forward to next installment of Uri Tupka's travels.
