‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ – Mike Mignola, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell

I saw this not so long ago, on sale (four pounds) in the British Heart Foundation shop, and thought to myself, ‘you can’t go too far wrong for four quid, especially when you’ve just been paid and you’ve definitely got four quid spare.’ And that was that settled. ‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ came home with me but it took me a little while longer to finally get round to reading it.

‘Mr Higgins Comes Home’ is a very slender graphic novel, there are no page numbers but you can tell just by looking at it; that and the fact that it all it took was a bus ride to the pharmacy, and back, to finish it off. There’s still stuff to be said about it though and we are here, so… Lets do that, shall we…?

Preparations begin at Castle Golga for the annual festival of the undead, as a pair of fearless vampire killers question a man hidden away in a monastery on the Baltic Sea. The mysterious Mr. Higgins wants nothing more than to avoid the scene of his wife's death, and the truth about what happened to him in that castle. However, these heroic men sworn to rid the world of the vampire scourge, inspire Higgins to venture out and to end the only suffering he really cares about--his own.

Mignola says, right at the beginning, that ‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ owes everything to old Hammer vampire movies as well as Polanski’s ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’. It’s a safe bet then that how much you get out of ‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ will depend on how many of those movies you’ve already seen. I’ll be honest, I’ve probably seen half a Hammer vampire movie and I’ve never seen ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’ at all. What I’m guessing then is that while I had fun with the story, there is probably a whole load of stuff that I never even noticed. I didn’t feel like I missed anything from the story but I probably did. Maybe ‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ is one for a very particular fan of vampire movies then…?

Having said all of that though, there is still fun to be had with ‘Mr. Higgins’, plenty of it. Some of the homage may have escaped me but Johnson-Cadwell’s artwork, in particular, is really reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and it is fun to watch Mignola play in this lushly drawn setting. This is especially the case as characters are determined not to play by the rules and the story goes off in new and interesting directions. There’s also a wicked streak of humour running through the book as nothing goes right for our heroes until the last person you’d expect sets things straight (I’m not sure why but that’s not really the point). And poor Mr. Higgins… He’s not in control of anything, let alone his own life. There’s an element of real tragedy here but you can’t help but laugh at where he ends up. Well, I laughed ;o)

‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ is a book where a little prior reading/watching will make a big difference to your enjoyment of it. There’s still plenty to engage with, in the meantime, though and it all makes for a quick, enjoyable read.