In Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Ghost Ships of Labrador #1 from Dark Horse Comics, co-writer Rob Williams and artist Laurence Campbell (alongside Mike Mignola) send Hellboy and Abe Sapien on a spooky adventure. After new B.P.R.D. agent Agatha Blunt goes missing, it’s up to them to navigate the twists and turns of a bunch of ghastly whalers who come ashore on a small island. But the real thrill for Williams? Finally getting to write Hellboy and Abe, two iconic heroes.
“It’s an exciting moment for me to write them for the first time, so I wanted to build up to that same feeling for the readers,” Williams told Comic Book Club over email.
To find out more about the issue — and beware spoilers — read on.
Comic Book Club: Hellboy has been so defined by Mike Mignola’s style… Obviously he’s a creative partner on this, but what’s it like leaning into Laurence Campbell’s style?
Rob Williams: Well Laurence and I have worked together a bunch over the years. And we collaborated with Mike on THE SWORD OF HYPERBOREA in the Hellboy universe a few years ago. I have a pretty good idea of Laurence’s strengths, which are mood and tone and spookiness – and that suits a ghostly Hellboy tale perfectly. But ultimately Laurence is an excellent storyteller. It’s a real delight to work with him on a Hellboy story.
There’s a pretty unique idea of ghosts here… What was it like playing with this different take on ghastly pirate specters?
They’re not pirates! They’re ancient whalers. Somewhere I stumbled across the story of people seeing ghost ships off the coast of Labrador in Newfoundland and that struck me as a perfect setting for a Hellboy story. Basque whaling ships would sail across the Atlantic for the whale bounty found off those shores. So; a lot of blood in the seas, a lot of killing for profit.
We meet Agatha Blunt at the beginning, who is a ton of fun. Why was she the right fit for this story?
Agatha’s a brand new character. I needed a BPRD agent for the story to team up with Hellboy and Abe and thought about using an existing character from the comics but Agatha stumbled into being when I was coming up with the story. She’s a wheelchair user, an exorcist, she’s whipsmart, and she has a pet dog called Elba. You’ve got to be pretty brave to walk into a haunted town alone. Agatha being disabled makes doing that even braver. She’s great. One of those characters who immediately feels like she could feature in more stories.
Getting into spoilers, I love the pacing of the reveal of Agatha’s disappearance… Talk to me about writing those pages?
A great mist covers the seaside town and ghosts have scared the villagers out of their houses. Agatha (and Elba) are called in by the BPRD. The local sheriff – who has never experienced anything supernatural – watches as Agatha and Elba go into the mist. And then there’s silence, and then we hear the ‘squeak, squeak, squeak’ noise of Agatha’s wheelchair as it rolls towards him out of the mist. But there’s no Agatha or Elba.
Spooky. And it’s at that point Hellboy and Abe Sapien are called in.
Similarly, we get a great page flip reveal for Hellboy and Abe Sapien; what was important about nailing that moment?
It’s an exciting moment for me to write them for the first time, so I wanted to build up to that same feeling for the readers. So we get two big close-ups. One on the eye of Abe, one on the chin of Hellboy. So the readers are thinking ‘yay! Here they come!” And then we get the page turn and the splash page…
I’ve read and loved Hellboy and BPRD stories for years, so I think that’s a sequence where you can feel the writer being excited as much as people reading the issue.
This is the first of a two-part story, how does that impact the structure, as usually you think three acts, or five?
I usually work on a four act structure, which includes a midpoint. So, we had 40 pages of interiors, that means Issue One is Acts One & Two, and Issue Two is acts three and four. The midpoint is the big end of issue cliffhanger, and we have a Final Act twist at around the midpoint of Issue Two, that’s VERY visually spectacular, I promise. Laurence and our colourist Lee Loughridge have done an amazing job throughout.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Ghost Ships of Labrador #1 is in stores now from Dark Horse Comics.
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