The Amazing Screw-On Head & Other Curious Objects s/c back

'"It's as you always say, sir - all really intelligent people should be cremated --"
"For the sake of national security!"'

Fifty pages of all-new Mike Mignola accompany this bonkers gem of tongue-in-cheek absurdity which strode straight in to become my favourite Mignola work to date. Reading like an accelerated LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, it's a Victorian gothic science-fantasy action-adventure comedy in which President Lincoln calls on the eponymous hero to gird a spare set of loins and save the day from the potentially disastrous excavations of the lunatic Emperor Zombie. Searching in Egypt for the Bangang Agro-Eash, the left eye of Nog - a melon-sized jewel worshipped by the wizards of Mu - emperor Zombie instead unearths a mouldy old turnip. With a small, parallel universe inside.

Very, very funny, with all the shadowy tombs you've come to expect from the crypt-licious Mike Mignola.

My favourite of the new short stories - which may even rival the above - is The Prisoner Of Mars wherein a quartet of distinguished gentlemen puff on cigars in a dark corner of a pub and exchange accounts of their derring-do. Indeed it is remarkable that Doctor Snap is alive and well, having recently been tried and executed for the murder of his friend Professor Cyclops at his home in Blackmoor after being called there after a meteor shower. Technically he was guilty, medically he was dead, but his spirit made it to Mars where it's confined to a robot body shaped like a frying pan and meets his old mate in the form a translucent jellyfish:


"Tell me, Snap, how is it that you're here?"
"When I finally did make it to Blackmoor and found you spouting that Martian gibberish -- Well, I got pretty excited about it and I'm afraid I cut your head off."
"No harm, really, as I was no longer using it, but I guess they hanged you for it."
"They did me like a pirate."
"I'm sorry about that."

Also includes The Magician And The Snake from by Katie Mignola (aged 7), a reworking of Abu Gung And The Beanstalk, story notes and sketches.