Mignola Launches Epic New Horror Series in ‘Baltimore: The Plague Ships’ Vol. 1 [Preview]

On sale now is Baltimore: The Plague Ships, the first volume of a new graphic novel series by Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, one of the greatest comic book fantasy/adventure heros ever. Co-written with novelist Christopher Golden (Bloodstained Oz) and illustrated by Ben Stenbeck, Baltimore chronicles the dark travels of Lord Henry Baltimore, a soldier of World War I whose obsessive mission is to wipe out the monster whose plague has transformed much of Europe's population into horrible vampires.

While Baltimore was already serialized in monthly issues throughout 2010, the release of a new Mike Mignola hardcover with "volume 1" on the spine is an auspicious occasion for readers of the graphic novel format, so Dark Horse Comics has provided ComicsAlliance with an extended ten-page preview of Baltimore: The Plague Ships that you can check out below.While obviously the kind of historically-based, mythic adventure that has engrossed Mignola's Hellboy and B.P.R.D. readers for many years, Baltimore depicts its hero's far more personal story. An officer in the Great War, Lord Baltimore awoke on the battlefield to find his leg obliterated and his men being feasted upon by a terrible winged beast. A clash between Baltimore and the monster resulted in a plague so terrible that it ends the war and infects countless men and women with vampirism, including Baltimore's own family. Consequently, Lord Baltimore dedicates his life to hunting down the beast who wrecked the world. The quest takes Baltimore and his companions on journeys upon "plague ships," boats filled with victims of the vampire curse, to decayed islands of the damned where the cast encounters all sorts of grim and ghoulish things for Baltimore to beat the hell up in the best Mignola tradition.

A must-have for fans of Hellboy, historical war dramas and creepy horror stories, Baltimore: The Plague Ships volume 1 is on sale now in finer comics shops and bookstores as well as online at Things From Another World.