Mike Mignola’s Witchfinder will return in November with a new miniseries by Mignola, Chris Roberson, Christopher Mitten and Michelle Madsen.
Witchfinder: Reign of Darkness pits its hero, Sir Edward Grey, against Jack the Ripper in a story that longtime Witchfinder readers know has been brewing for a while.
“It’s been long-established that Sir Edward Grey was involved in some capacity in the investigation into the Ripper killings in 1888, and that shortly afterward he left government service for good,” said Roberson. “But we’ve never known just what Sir Edward discovered during his investigation, or who was behind the Ripper murders in the world of Hellboy, or what happened that caused the royal Witchfinder to having a falling-out with Queen Victoria…until now, at least. In the pages of Witchfinder: Reign of Darkness, we’ll be exploring all of those questions, and more, as Sir Edward’s investigation into a string of grisly murders leads him in directions he couldn’t have guessed, encountering new enemies and new allies along the way.”
Here’s the description of the series: In Witchfinder: Reign of Darkness, Sir Edward Grey is the only one who thinks Jack the Ripper’s murders have an occult purpose. When Scotland Yard turns its back on him, Grey finds an ally in American occult adventurer Sara Jewell. But the forces aligned against their investigation are more powerful than either one of them imagines.
Witchfinder has had five previous volumes, with Mignola involved as a writer or co-writer for most of them. Roberson joined in starting with the fourth volume. This is the first volume drawn by Mitten, who has worked on other Mignolaverse titles like Rasputin and B.P.R.D., in addition to books like Wasteland and The Umbral.
“It’s not hard to have a blast illustrating a Witchfinder story for the first time, particularly since in this story Sir Edward is dealing with the notorious Ripper murders and resulting fallout,” said Mitten. “It’s an interesting time to be wandering around inside this world, playing with the styles and the architecture, the mood of time and place as seen through the Mignolaverse lens. We revisit some wonderful set pieces from Victorian London, while finding a few new ones. The terrific characters are just the icing on the cake.”
The first issue of the five-issue miniseries arrives Nov. 27.