Exclusive Dark Horse Preview: Abe Sapien #34 Hints At More Endings in the Hellboy Cosmos

Abe Sapien is one of the few other characters in Mike Mignola’s creepy, gothic fiction to match his big, red demon’s sprawling backstory. Once a mystic scientist named Langdon Caul, now a melancholy merman who may also host a maritime god, Abe’s narrative continually cooks new genre influences into Dark Horse’s formidable horror line. As seen in the B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs, the character revealed a twisted history that lies somewhere between Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the old school body horror of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. Abe once pledged allegiance to a 19th-Century secret society that created hybrid squid-monkeys (that were pretty damn cute!) and transformed him into his amphibious state, but his current series suggests some devastating answers and an apocalyptic finale.

Written by Mike Mignola, Scott Allie and illustrated by Sebastian Fiumara and colored by Dave Stewart, Abe Sapien #34, out this Wednesday, pairs the titular character with Shonchin, a mysterious Shaman with a dark (and we mean really, really dark) tale, as well as an omen of things to come. Though Hellboy may have (kind of) reached his own conclusion under Mignola’s pen, titles like Abe Sapien, B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth and Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1953 continue to show the rich, macabre undertones of the best horror comic cosmos in print. Check out this exclusive preview below.