The Darkness From Warsaw is Groovy! |

The Darkness From Warsaw OGN
written by Bram Meehan
illustrated by Jamie Chase
letters & designs by Monica Meehan
published by Panel Press
reviewed by Richard Caldwell

The cool pulp mystery presented within The Darkness From Warsaw is an absolute breath of fresh air! This is an outstanding work of ingenuity, class and vision. I wholly mean that.
A second adventure from the creative team responsible for Death, Cold As Steel, the story opens with a visit from a Federal Agent to the aged Estelle White-Norris, a retired agent herself of the same Special Qualities Research Laboratory. As her own tale unfolds, we are taken back to the post WWII era, when the S.Q.R.L. was in full swing investigating and researching assorted strangeness from around the world. Imagine a more realistic and mature X-files/B.P.R.D. and you’re halfway there. Estelle’s old friend and co-worker Wilson Petrie was increasingly being haunted by nightmares, blackouts and missing time. The past was calling to him, and simply put- he is scared. To find resolution, they must travel behind enemy lines, to the history-laden Warsaw.
Meehan is well versed in the lore of both history and mythology, that much is gloriously evident, as we are shown a world where sorcerers secretly consult with the Federal Government and where the paranormal runs rampant in the lives of all those able to survive the blood of their own technological abominations.
The art from Chase is grayscale realism, washing the delicate linework of his figures into a place of immediate nostalgia. Really beautiful, graceful stuff. And all his settings look better than period photography, like themselves ghostly images of cobblestone alleyways and eerie laboratories and the like of half-remembered old films from times past. This Europe is hauntingly noir, a visual poem, full of voice all the same. While the scenes are presented in a smoky black and white, the influences, subject matter, and moods are as wide-ranging as a fleet of brave soldiers kinetically dodging for cover amidst a Cthonic hellstorm of Nazi bombast.
The Darkness From Warsaw is very much an adult story, with that certain manner of harrowing implications that only decades-old secrets tend to drown in. This work is smart, it is horrific, it is stylish, and it is one of a kind. If Polanski’s The Ninth Gate had involved a bit of Reed Richards meta-science, some Nazi ugliness and a wistful Vera Lynn soundtrack, it would still not be as smooth a package as this.
LOUD applause from this reviewer to the entire creative force behind The Darkness From Warsaw. My highest possible endorsement.
Find your own soon to be well-read copy at the Panel Press homepage, or through those digital shopkeepers at LiterateMachine.

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