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Joe Golem

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola

Known mostly for his comic book appearances, “occult detective” JOE GOLEM actually made his debut in Joe Golem and the Drowning City (2012), an illustrated prose novel by co-created by comics scribe Mike Mignola and novelist Christopher Golden and was only later transposed to the comics in the 2015 miniseries, Joe Golem: The Drowning City, but for those of you looking for a character-driven P.I. tale that relies more on storytelling, character and atmosphere than big bang woo-woo pyrotechnics, you’ve got to check this series out.

Joe’s not just your normal occult P.I.; a mere mortal constantly bumping into things that go bump in the night — he does a little bumping himself. And he doesn’t even know it!

You see, once upon a time, in in 15th century Eastern Europe, Joe was a Golem, an animated anthropomorphic being magically created entirely from clay or mud, brought to life for the sole purpose of hunting and destroying witches. But he was brought back to life in 1955 as a human being, with confusing memories of his original life, except for an occasional disturbing nightmare or two. In fact, his entire past is a little hazy.

Now he’s a private investigator who walks the beat in the Drowning City, a post-apocalyptic, mid-20th century Manhattan literally drowned by cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunamis; a half-submerged wreck of a city populated by “scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance.”

Although he does seem to occasionally freelance, Joe seems to work almost exclusively for the enigmatic Simon Church, “maybe the most famous private eye who ever lived,” according to Joe) who’s also, apparently, an ageless mystic who has kept himself alive with some steampunk technology and a liberal dose of magic and sorcery, something Joe is blithely unaware of. Joe lives with Simon, who’s a combination of caretaker, landlord, doctor and father figure. But Simon has secrets of his own (he may be dying, despite his best efforts), and plans that may not be in Joe’s best interests.

There’s a mournful, elegiac, almost noirish tone to these tales, perfectly matched by the evocative artwork, that humanizes the proceedings, with the adventures of Joe tapping into many of the same themes as (but not the world of) Mignola’s other, more famous paranormal sleuth, Hellboy.

UNDER OATH

    

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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
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