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In May, Dark Horse Comics will release Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea, a new series set in the world of Hellboy. The series comes from the creative team of writer Mike Mignola, artist Jesse Lonergan, and letterer Clem Robins. Today, while the first issue of the series is still up for preorder, The Beat is thrilled to offer an exclusive look at Jesse Lonergan’s sketchbook for the book, in which he adapted a sequence from a previous Mignola Hellboy book.
Here’s how Dark Horse describes Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea:
One of the last followers of a failing Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, the unassuming Miss Truesdale, finds herself on the receiving end of Brotherhood leader Tefnut Trionus’s final vision. Connecting her life in Victorian London to a young gladiator’s in ancient Hyperborea, Truesdale discovers she now has the chance to change the future by altering the bygone past.
The new series is the first collaboration between Mignola and Lonergan, the creator of comics including Hedra, Planet Paradise, and Ghosts of Science Past (with writer Joseph Sieracki). The eight-page sketchbook featured here was adapted by Lonergan from The Wolves of Saint August, and the artist explained to The Beat what went into drawing the pages:
I drew these pages as a warmup for working on Miss Truesdale. Partially it was to get comfortable drawing the characters, which I can only do by drawing in comic form as opposed to character sketches. I also wanted to study how Mignola broke down fight sequences because I knew I’d be drawing quite a few: gladiators in an arena, the undead, and a giant reptile monster. This sequence is a compositional copy of the big fight sequence from The Wolves of Saint August (collected in Hellboy Volume 3: The Chained Coffin and Others), with Hellboy switched out for Anum Yassa and a lizard man (who isn’t in Miss Truesdale at all) replacing the wolf. This was really just meant to be seen by anyone else. It was just a way to get ready to draw some comics that would fit into the Hellboy Universe.
Check out the exclusive look at the eight-page sketchbook below. Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperborea #1 (of 4) is due out in stores and digitally on Wednesday, May 17th. And if you’re looking for more Mignola in your life, the Kickstarter for Beehive Books’s Pinocchio: The Illuminated Edition is running now through April 20th.
