Abe Sapien: The Drowning by Mike Mignola and Jason Shawn Alexander

Abe Sapien had been Hellboy's companion and assistant for a long time. And now, in the B.P.R.D., he's nominally in charge now that Benjamin Daimio is dead and Roger is destroyed. But what was Abe's first solo mission? We have never seen that, until now.

Hellboy has left the B.P.R.D. on a leave of absence to travel with Anastasia Bransfield and the B.P.R.D. decided to send Abe to Saint-Sébastien off the coast of France to find and retrieve a Lipu Dagger- a dagger made for killing demons, made of Bronze arms from a Tibetan Goddess statue whicn came to life and told a monk to make them. One went down with the wreck of a ship on which was riding a Dutch Warlock named Epke Voortman. Voortman was destroyed by Occult Detective Edward Gray, along with the ship he was on, and it went down off the coast of France.

Now, the secret of the Lipu Dagger's existence has come to life, and the B.P.R.D. thinks it may be useful in the future, so they send Abe to retrieve it from the wreck of the ship beneath the sea, along with several agents, one of whom is a former Navy Seal.

But unbeknownst to Abe and the agents, Voortman had been possessed by a warlock from Hyperborea, who traded bodies when the one he was in died. The Lipu Dagger trapped his soul in the body of Voortman, and he has remained there for over 100 years, growing ever angrier and more mad. Now, with the help of six floating spirits, and the souls of everyone who ever died on Saint-Sébastien, a forner slave colony and plague site, they will free him to take his vengeance on the entire world by killing every human on it.

With all the other agents sent with him dead, can Abe ally with the ghost of a former priestess to bring down the Hyperborian Ceddu-Barra, and prevent him from escaping the island? Or will Abe; all alone on a case for the first time, fail? The fate of the world rests on Abe's fragile shoulders, and visions of his friends and fellow agents taunt him for his failures. But can he fight against the six spirits, or will his soul follow those of his fellow agents into death?

We have never seen Abe Sapien so unsure as he is in this book. Abe, unlike Hellboy, has a whole lot of Book Learning on his side, but book learning, while good in some contexts, still doesn't always lead to you knowing all the answers. And Abe must learn that failures carry a much bigger price to your soul when you are the one in charge.

Of course, Abe does survive, but he only survives and defeats the monster by allying himself with the Witch-Priestess who was the last living human on the island, and her son, who is killed by the six spirits trying to bring back Voortman/Ceddu-Barra. At the end, we still aren't sure if the Lipu dagger was recovered, as it isn't really made clear. But Abe's learning from the experience and his pensive look when he is told that the agents he went to the island with couldn't be revived speaks volumes. (Well, I thought he looked pensive... it can be hard to tell with Abe's features.)

Hellboy does make something of an appearance here, but really only in Abe's visions, and we're unsure if it is Abe's fear and inexperience speaking or an illusion designed to make him give up by the six spirits or Voortman/Ceddu-Barra. It's not exactly a Hellboy Story or even a B.P.R.D. story, having the feel of neither. It is indeed an Abe Sapien story, but I wonder how well a comic built solely around Abe as a main character will do, and how long it might last. It's definitely different, and might not be to everyone's taste.