A review by jexjthomas
B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs 3 by Mike Mignola

5.0

In the aftermath of the events of War on Frogs and The Black Flame, the BPRD team has a little downtime. And while the stories here still offer plenty of action, mystery, and horror (and amazingly horrifying creatures, naturally), these volumes largely work on deepening our understanding of the characters that inhabit this world. It's kind of a risky move, especially considering that a large section of The Universal Machine, the first volume collected in this omnibus, largely consists of characters sitting around a cafeteria table telling their stories. It shouldn't work, but it does. Meanwhile, we're also introduced to the Marquis Adoet de Fabre, a villain so chilling that you wish he'd be around longer. The next story, The Garden of Souls, continues down this same contemplative path, filling in Abe's backstory and deepening the Mignolaverse mythos. There are a lot of really great character moments here as well, and some wonderful action involving steam-powered cyborgs. I don't want to say too much, but it's really quite fun. Finally, Killing Ground ratchets up the action and horror and proves that the creative team behind BPRD has no interest in maintaining the status quo.

Throughout, I was taken with how well Arcudi and Davis make these characters seem real, and a lot of it really is owed to Guy Davis, who is able to bring the characters to life in a way that manner other artists cannot match.