Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah

Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah
Boom Studios
Written by Mike Mignola & Troy Nixey
Art by Troy Nixey & Farel Dalrymple

This one was a bit out there for me. Jenny Finn takes place in a fishing village in what looks like old London. People are turning into half human, half fish. Joe Kettledrum is a country boy who stumbles into a situation were women are being murdered and, for some reason, the upper crust and higher-ups of this village want Jenny. A man is murdered by an angry mob that thinks he’s the killer, but is he? Did I mention that all the fish are saying “doom,” I think I covered the jest if what’s going on in this trade. Don’t worry folks; I kind of had the same reactions.

I’ll say that the art in this had a classic feel to it. It’s done in black and white pencil, giving the story this ominous feel. In this it did help. The paneling was very simple, like the pictures that were drawn were placed on a page and sent out. It was easy to follow the story with the art that was used. The writing was as good as it could be. Each character had the accent that fit them, whether it was a cockney accent of the workers to the proper British accent for the “sophisticated class.” But the story, for me, was hard to understand and follow.

Now, mind you, I’m not into macabre or super-strange stories. This is one of those that I read it and wondered, what is going on with this? At times, I couldn’t follow what they were doing until a few frames or pages in. Because the story was out there, it didn’t help me when they would leave things hanging, not to mention I couldn’t tell if that’s what they wanted to do. The story has merit and I can pull out, for a lack of a better term, good out of the story, but it definitely wasn’t for me. In my humble opinion, if you like steampunk or H.P. Lovecraft, you’ll like it. The rest of us most likely won’t. I give this 2 caps out of 5.