Feels like drawing a busted straight, but we'll bluff through this post.

I'm not sure I've ever run into this before: from a dollar bin, I pulled what I thought would be issues #1 through #5 of a mini-series. Instead, I got 6, 12, 8, 19, and 15! (shrugs) And yet, here we are. From 2017, Joe Golem: the Outer Dark #1, written by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, art by Patric Reynolds.

Now, I'm a long-time Mignola collector, but I hadn't read any of this series; because I read the novel and it was too sad! (We mentioned getting the novel, Joe Golem and the Drowning City, about 13 years back!) Joe was a detective, in an alternate universe with a partially flooded New York City; and as the name implies he was a golem, made of clay and brought to life. He might not know all of that for most of the story, though; as this one starts with a flashback to the year 1454, where the golem's creators briefly discuss whether or not they should have created him, before apparently getting got by vampire-like monsters. (The golem had been told it couldn't move without permission, and they didn't have the chance to give it...) In 1967, Joe only remembers that as a nightmare, which neither his girlfriend Lori nor his landlord/mentor Mr. Church have been able to help him with. Church had been a go-to guy for the NYPD for weird cases, but now passed those along to Joe. Lucky him, as the cops come with an odd one: on a water taxi, a German throws a fit, says he hears voices, and kills two people with his bare hands as his eyes turn black, and full of stars? He had been accompanied by two other men, one a former Nazi that was killed in the ensuing shoot-out, the other escaped.

Joe and Detective Weston track down the third man, who with no prompting, tells them where the apparatus would be. They aren't sure what that means, nor what the man means about not wanting to hear the voices, or see the new world: he leaps out the window to his death, but not before mentioning the mysterious "they" knew Joe would come...

Shoot, there were maybe a total of 20 issues of Joe Golem, spread across several mini-series, starting with Joe Golem in 2015. That's the indicia title, but the covers have "The Rat Catcher" 1-3 for the first three, then "The Sunken Dead" 1-2 for issues #4-5. Similarly, the next series was "the Outer Dark" for the first three, then "Flesh and Blood" for the last two. Then the adaptation of the Drowning City, and finally the Conjurors. I just grabbed about a quarter of the whole run, yet still think I might have to get an omnibus to read the rest! I'm digging it so far, although I'm pretty sure there's a tragic turn coming there: not unlike Mignola and Golden's other collaboration, Baltimore, you don't have a lot of hope for a happy ending; and unlike Hellboy they seem to know it.