Drew Rausch

The Dark Goodbye is an American manga-ish book from Tokyopop, 1 from 2007 and 2 from 2008. I say manga-ish because although the size, price ($9.99 for 192 pages) and page count are typical, the book reads front to back, left to right, unlike the Japanese convention for manga. Also the art is not classic manga.

The author is Frank Marraffino with art by Drew Rausch; I don't know much about either one. Unfortunately after two books, Tokyopop pulled the plug and also still holds the rights, so show more the creators can't even take their creation elsewhere.

These are clearly Cthulhu mythos manga, in ways both large and small. As is typical for manga, there is a lot of not so subtle humor, but there is also considerable horror. Max "Mutt Mason is a gumshoe who lives in a bottle. His secretary is Melissa Katonic (Miss Katonic - get it?). In the city of Gatemouth (get it?) Exham is the big company. The kids read a comic book, Necronomoman. Gill (get it?) tends bar at the Great Old Pub. You get the idea. Mutt is hired by the lovely femme fatale Livinia (get it?) Tillinghast to find her missing twin sister, last seen by the homeopath, Dr. Akeley. What follows is a sequence where Mutt gets in deeper and deeper over his head, as the body count mounts alarmingly. My view was the book was a riff on themes lifted from the Dunwich Horror.

The Dark Goodbye is a welcome addition to Cthulhu mythos manga, still not a common species in the US. The story was entertaining and the art was enjoyable, with pretty good mythos beasties. It does not displace Arkham Woods as my favorite but is clearly better than Taimashin #1. show less

There are not many Cthulhu mythos manga. I thought Arkham Woods by Christopher Rowley was the first, but The Dark Goodbye may predate it. Taimashin #1 has acupuncturists fighting Wilbur Whateley's twin in a book woeful except for the art. No Man's Land #1 and 2 by Jason DeAngelis finds a gunslinger fighting demons released by abuse of the Necronomicon. Apart from this device, No Man's Land is much less Cthulhu mythos than The Dark Goodbye.

After the ichor settles from the first book, we come show more to volume 2 of The Dark Goodbye, where Mutt is even further down the drain in the town of Gatemouth. Ephraim Wheatley (get it?) needs help as something is going wrong on his farm. The lovely femme fatale Sylvia Sliverstab needs to investigate her business partner. Professor Jefferson Pennruddock, an astronomer, has discovered some disturbing things about recent meteor showers, Pluto and the nature of dark matter. Which one will Mutt help first? Will it all tie together? In this book, imagery from The Colour Out of Space is mixed with a different take on the Fungi from Yuggoth (turns out they really are fungi...).

The artistic team hits its stride even better in volume 2. I enjoyed the art and the humor, and was willing to make allowances for the thread thin nature of the story. It is a comic after all. My main regret is there seems to be no hope for a third book for a very long time, maybe ever. Too bad, as there are plenty of tantalizing hints of what was to come. At least Mr. Rausch seems likely to continue with Lovecraftian themes. show less