Joe Golem Occult Detective vol 3: The Drowning City

Oh yes, it's finally here, the comic adaptation of one of my favourite novels of the last few years! Aaaaaand ....they only adapted the first half of the story.

God. I don't know why I'm still being taken in by anything with Mignola's name on the cover. I mean really?

     So apparently the novel Joe Golem and the Drowning City is being adapted in two parts, part one named Joe Golem Occult Detective the Drowning City 1-5 only adapts the book's first half, while the other part Joe Golem Occult Detective The Conjurors 1-5 will adapt the rest of the novel, possibly going a bit further into uncharted territory. The Conjurors is actually already out, the story over and done with, except it's not out yet in trade or hardback, which means I would have to track down either e-book versions or individual comics, which is not something I do.
And how long do I still have to wait to have the full thing on my shelf?

5 months. *sighs deeply*.

     Ah well, it's not as if I had a bad time so far, and to be fair, in the long run, having the story spread out over two volumes instead of one, gives it way more time to breathe, allowing them to linger on the crucial or emotional moments, and letting them spend time on the original story's tone rather than just getting it over with to explore the uncharted Joe Golem stuff.

     I was struck that they were already doing a very good job of this as the Drowning City 5 came to its end, when the action started to slow down and the writers let the realization slowly filter in, that this was it, that here it would end, that somehow our heroes had failed, and to the beat of repeating narration, the art slowly ramped its way up to revelation. It reminded me of the brilliant ending to Baltimore: The Infernal Train where the narration almost became a mantra, accompanying some truly awesome over-the-top art: a foreign language, incomprehensible, repeated over and over, as blood splashed the page and limbs flew, and then at the end, the final page and the final revelation revealed together with the English translation.

     Even though they'd done it better in Baltimore (mostly because of the amount of gore and blood, and the gothic trappings) I could really very much appreciate it here.

     Peter Bergting's art is a good fit for Joe Golem, treading the line between realistic and cartoony in a way that I didn't like in Baltimore, but here feels just right, adding a sense of nastiness to the supernatural horror, making the danger real and somehow jagged.

I'm still not too fond of some of his stylistic choices, but you can't deny that the man is a dab hand at faces at this point.

So, even though I was disappointed that the story was incomplete, the future will eventually see that remedied, and hopefully The Conjurors will close out the novel adaptation in a fitting manner.

If you're interested, maybe hold off until you can buy both volumes at once, or dig into volumes 1 and 2 which are also pretty good. Or failing that, Baltimore volumes 1-5, which are also set in the same universe as Joe Golem, are always a good thing to pick up, even if the series goes to hell after that. The whole priest storyline alone is worth picking these up. A masterclass in gothic horror comics and a pretty much traditional read for the Halloween month at this point.