Mignola and Golden's 'Joe Golem' Is Coming To Comics

Maybe I've just been playing too much Dungeons & Dragons lately, but when I first saw the phrase "Joe Golem," I assumed that it was some kind of construct made by a wizard out of coffee or tiny specialized military action figures, suitable for a party of four 6th-level characters. As it turns out, it's something even more appealing: An illustrated novel from Christopher Golden and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, set in a world full of monsters where a good chunk of Manhattan sank into the sea in 1925, giving rise to a "Drowning City" full of waterlogged skyscrapers and unknown horrors.

Now, Mignola and Golden are bringing their pulpy, monstrous detective story to comics. Dark Horse announced this week that Mignola and Golden will be cowriting Joe Golem: Occult Detective, a five-issue miniseries with art and color by Patric Reynolds and Dave Stewart, set in the mid-'60s, ten years before the events of the novel.

According to Dark Horse's official press release, the series will be an original adventure for Joe and his partner, Simon Church:

Like their collaboration on the Baltimore graphic novels, the events of Joe Golem take place outside of the “Mignolaverse”, the strange, shared universe inhabited by Hellboy, BPRD, Abe Sapien, and Frankenstein Underground. The horror of Joe Golem is distinctly urban; the series offers a haunting dystopian mid-twentieth century New York.
"Joe Golem is full of pulpy goodness, weird alternate history, monsters, and magic and it's full of insanity you're not going to find anywhere else." said Golden. “We're telling the story of Joe Golem: Occult Detective, solving mysteries in the flooded streets of mid-20th century lower Manhattan with the ancient Simon Church, who's keeping himself alive with magic and machinery at the same time he's keeping Joe in the dark about his own origins. We want to immerse you in Joe's world, what life is like in the Drowning City, and with issue one, we dive right in."

Mignola and Golden have been frequent collaborators for years, going all the way back to Golden's work on Hellboy novels. The team has most recently been responsible for Dark Horse's Baltimore: The Cult of the Red King and Frankenstein Underground.

Joe Golem: Occult Detective #1 is set for release in November.