REVIEW: The Undertaker Vol. 2
The Undertaker Volume 2: The Ogre of Camp Sutter & Shadow of Hippocrates
By Xavier Dorison and Ralph Meyer
112 pages/Abrams ComicArts/$25.99 (hc)
After the success of translating the European adventures of the Undertaker last year, Abrams has released a second volume, with two more scheduled for 2027 that should complete the saga.
This is a gritty, bloody examination of the Western frontier in the years after the Civil War, as people reckon with their past actions and their consequences. Here, Jonas Crow continues to work his way around the land, an itinerant undertaker for hire, accompanied by his pet vulture, along with Rose and Lin, two women he aided in the previous book.
The army hunts them for Crow’s actions, so they hurry along until they stop to work and earn much-needed money. There, a one-armed veteran warns Crow that war surgeon Dr. Jeronimus Quint (the Ogre) is still alive. That changes everything as Crow needs to hunt down Quint and kill him. The remainder of the graphic novel is the cat-and-mouse game.
It’s more than that since the “Ogre of Camp Sutter” is wily and charming, healing the ill but also using patients to experiment with limb transplantation, something that was not realized until the 20th century. He offers healing through his ministrations and a unique elixir with addictive qualities.
When Rose is captured, he shatters her forearm so badly that she would lose it without the elixir and his care, making her an unwitting partner and pawn. Crow is as desperate to kill the Ogre as he is to rescue his companion.
Along the way, Chinese-born Lin is trying to earn the money to return home but acts as the story’s conscience, challenging Crow’s attitudes and comparing his trail of bodies compared with Quint saving nine out of ten people, so who is the bigger monster?
Quint is charming but morally compromised and, as with so many antagonists in fiction, far too precise in his damage and elusive when he clearly could have been shot dead several times earlier in the story. The doctor seems to understand anatomy to an uncanny degree, injuring people just so despite the haste of the action. He’s also far too keen in some of his deductive reasoning, a saddlebag Sherlock. Still, he’s a fine foe for Crow to wrestle with his demons.
And don’t forget, the Army is still after Crow.
The art by Meyer, with color by him and Caroline Delabie, is sumptuous and brings the Old West to vivid life. He is effective in both the cramped spaces of farmhouses and the wide vistas of the land.
When the dust settles, the status quo is reset, and I, for one, look forward to what comes next.
