Thomas E. Sniegoski - Lobster Johnson: The Satan Factory

[andydecker]

Thomas E. Sniegoski - Lobster Johnson: The Satan Factory (Dark Horse Books, 2009, 203 pages)

Lobster Johnson is a character from the Hellboy Universe. His first appearance is in a short-story The Killer in my Skull, written by Mike Mignola and drawn by Mike Smith in 1999. Here The Lobster is established as a masked vigilante crime-fighter like The Shadow or The Black Bat in the later 1930s in New York. Fighting gangsters and Nazis with the help of his assistants, his sign is the branding of the lobster claw on the forehead of his shot enemies.

His debut in the Hellboy series in 2001 was basically as a ghost. In the 4 part The Conquerer Worm, written and drawn by Mike Mignola, the Lobster is killed in the prologue when storming Hunte Castle in 1939 where the Nazis are launching a rocket. When the capsule returns to earth 39 years later, Hellboy investigates. One of the twists is that Hellboy grew up with the pulp magazine and comic version of The Lobster, whose real existence is controversial.

The character was successful enough to create a couple of mini-series, all of them period pieces in the vein of The Shadow or Doc Savage. To date enough material to fill two omnibus volumes. Also the character appeared in a short scene in the 2019 Hellboy movie. The Lobster can be some retro-fun, it mostly depends on the artwork. But he works best as a ghost.

The only Lobster novel was written by Thomas E. Sniegoski. The writer has done a lot of novelizations for franchises like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, not to mention comics like Marvel's Punisher or Shi, often in collaboration with Christopher Golden. He also did YA and some supernatural adult series in the Urban Fantasy vein.

His work is not for me, for my taste it is rather derivative and shallow, but I can see his appeal for non-genre readers. Like many of those retro-pulp attempts the Lobster novel is at best mediocre. Also many comic book characters don't work well in prose. Even in the comics the Lobster is more a symbol of the pulp-times than a well-rounded character; his origin is – wisely – never explained.

Sniegoski didn't rock the boat, so his hero remains a cipher. Most of the story is told by one of his agents. For me the worst sin is that it also doesn't really try to capture the time it is supposed to portrait. Also the novel was meant for all ages, so it is very tame.