Mike Mignola seems to be settling into his “Lands Unknown” for an extended stay; that’s a good thing for those of us who enjoyed the light touch and quirky bits of folklore – not to mention the pure joy of storytelling evident throughout – that he brought to the first “Lands Unknown” book,
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In possibly even-better news for long-term Mignola fans, he’s also shifted to a longer narrative, with a main character who he says will return in at least one more book. This isn’t like Hellboy; the world is not constructed around a single character that we’ll follow for a decade. But we might get more than the quick views of semi-archetypes that we got in Bowling.
is the second “Lands Unknown” book, a standalone graphic novel set in that world. The background is one part Europe in the Dark Ages and several parts vaguely Europeanesque fantasy-novel-land, of the style stretching back to Bob Howard. We get bits of maps in this book, with clusters of small countries with evocative titles and a “Northern Empire” lurking on the edge of that map, plus the usual dangerous wildlife (in one scene a forest giant fights a river dragon) and humans (pirates, caught between those aforementioned monsters). Mignola throws out minor details of the world, which could be hooks for further stories or just local color, as his hero navigates through it.
Uri Tupka is a scholar in late middle age, who has spent his life studying the gods of this world. Along with a few colleagues, he sent a letter condemning the emperor for some kind of statue, for which he was declared a heretic – his colleagues were seized and killed immediately. But Tupka had a prophetic dream, which told him to run – and so he did.
He travels south, as a pilgrim, after a fateful encounter with a local hermit. He is actually on a pilgrimage, honestly – to find out what happened to the gods, who were part of normal life in the deep past but are distant and unseen now. He has various other adventures, including frightening episodes with a devil-figure and various naked flying witch-women. I won’t give more detail than that: this is an episodic, picaresque book – and a fairly short one – so the episodes are best read for themselves.
But he does make it to an ancient city, with a famous temple to the gods. (This world has lots and lots of gods, by the way: Mignola names a handful of them but says there are vastly more, seeding the ground for as many more stories as he wants to tell.) And then he goes on from there to an even more remote and strange place, where he does learn where the gods are now and what they are doing.
Again, I don’t want to give away the whole thing, but this is a Manichean world, as fantasy worlds usually are. There is an Adversary, opposed to humanity and life and light and happiness, with as much or more power as the forces of light. And Tupka now has a new focus for his studies: that adversary and its minions. That will come in the second book about Tupka, which Mignola promises at the end here.
Mignola’s art is strong and inspired in Uri Tupka, with writing quirky and specific – this new world has clearly inspired him, and he’s pouring out its details in stories that play well to his strengths. I hope he keeps up this pace – a new “Lands Unknown” book a year for a while would be a nice thing.
