The House of Lost Horizons #4

The House of Lost Horizons #4

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Chris Roberson

Illustrated by Leila Del Duca

Coloured by Michelle Madsen

Lettered by Clem Robins

Sarah Jewell catches one murder suspect red-handed in a bid to steal an occult artifact, while Marie Therese continues to pursue her own suspicions. But the culprit they finally discover is the one person neither one of them suspected! Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson return to the world of Hellboy, accompanied by artist Leila del Duca and colorist Michelle Madsen for this thrilling installment of the new Mignolaverse mystery.

There’s still one more issue to go and the main question we keep asking ourselves is who is killing the others off? The more of this small crowd that the girls speak to the fewer viable options so “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Of course the girls are getting frustrated with their lack of progress, that is until there seems to be a great breakthrough in the case, or is there? I’ll leave that up to you to decide and if you aren’t reading this then you’re doing yourself a disservice because it’s really just that good.

I am very much enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. These of course continue to flesh the characters out extremely well. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re left a tad perplexed and wanting to see so much more.

I like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. Within these layers we see the bulk of the characterisation as well as different avenues that may or may not work with the main arc. What they all do is add this depth, dimension and complexity to the story. Peripherally I think maybe things add up but I’m not entirely convinced. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceptionally well.

The interiors here are delightful. The linework we see is really nice and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create the detail work we see throughout the book is really rather nicely rendered. I do wish we’d see more backgrounds, this is a huge mansion and the potential is literally untapped. How we see the composition within the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is equally as delightful. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is very nicely rendered.

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There is a lot going on here and those that are left alive don’t really seem all that concerned with anything but finding the occult items that are supposed to be for sale. Everyone seems to have a reason to want them but is this enough reason to murder the other bidders? Hell if each person just bought that one item that meant something to them and them alone I wonder if anyone would’ve had to have died at all? With some solid writing and interesting characterisation alongside these delightful interiors make a solid case for why these ladies need to have many more adventures to come.