Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah

Finally collected in one volume for the first time! From the mind of Mike Mignola, creator of HELLBOY, comes this Lovecraftian tale of a mysterious girl who arrives in Victorian England with carnage in her wake. Is she evil incarnate or a misled child? Just in time for HELLBOY 2!

From Publishers Weekly

This spooky Victorian thriller by the creator of Hellboy isn't particularly complex, but has a winsomeness that carries the story. Clients of prostitutes are turning up with gruesome lesions from which emerge tentacles, barnacles and fins. The victims are tended by Jenny Finn, a gentle-but-dour character resembling Emily Dickinson who may be a whore herself. Suddenly, a woman is found dead, and the seaside town turns out to find the murderer. Enter Joseph, besotted with Jenny, who promptly sets the mob on the wrong man. Meanwhile, the prime minister, an odd fellow who wears a diving suit helmet on land, is looking for Jenny; she may be the cause of the lesions plague, or else a strange, oceanic messiah. The black and white art is a mix of baroque and gritty; even oozing sores are drawn with a certain flourish. Oddly, the story ends up being a take on the notion that a pure heart can save the day, except that the pure heart belongs to a man, not a woman. (Jenny, a mystically vengeful rape victim, is far from innocent.) Mignola's fantasy should appeal to lovers of Victoriana, especially nautical-minded goths and steampunks. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Years before Mignola’s most famous creation, Hellboy, made the leap from comic to screen, the writer/artist perfected his signature brand of Lovecraftian horror in various titles and miniseries. One such series was Jenny Finn, collected here nearly 10 years after its first appearance. The relatively simple story of nice-but-tough Joe, who tries to protect the mysterious little girl Jenny from her hideous destiny in a nameless Victorian-era English port city, is filled with its creator’s trademark spirit mediums, ghastly tentacles, and general all-around weirdness. Mignola provided the writing and covers for the titles in the original series, but Nixey and Dalrymple provide a suitably ominous tone here, which is certainly suggestive of Mignola’s sinister atmospherics. Although the choice of format is not ideal—the glossy pages make the presentation overly bright and the print is on the uncomfortably small side—the story is good, creepy stuff. Note that there’s some fairly overt sexuality at the beginning. Grades 10-12. --Jesse Karp

From the Publisher

"Fun, fun, fun. The art of "Jenny" is really first class..." - Variety "... high-spirited Lovercraftian steampunk shenanigans." - Comic Book Galaxy "... an eerie tale of horror and shame... a must for lovers of the strange and macabre." - Paperback Reader

About the Author

MIKE MIGNOLA, the Eisner and Harvey-award winning creator of Hellboy, has worked in comics for fourteen years. He¿s done illustration work for books and magazines, and design work for television and film, including Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.

Reviews

News