scanned cover to Sir Edward Grey Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels #1
There’s no shortage of reasons to like Witchfinder. It’s written by Mike Mignola, it loosely ties in to the Hellboy/BPRD mythos, it has an edgy steampunk look to it, and it features unsettling Lovecraftian plots with a heavy gothic ambience (and by that, I mean 19th century gothicism like what you find in Poe, not The Cure). Upon re-reading this issue, I decided the best thing about it was Dave Stewart’s colors.
In the introduction to the graphic novel The Goon: Rough Stuff, Eric Powell says that Dave Stewart is the best colorist in the business, and this is hardly an exaggeration. Dave Stewart has more or less defined the look of supernatural/horror books, colloborating with both Powell and Mignola on several projects. With Hellboy, he creates a stark atmosphere, heavily relying on motifs involving red, black and dark shades of blue. With this issue of Witchfinder, he utilizes a monochromatic approach, investing the pages with layers of grayness, perfectly complimenting the late Victorian setting.
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