Stenbeck Delivers Limitless Imagination Opportunities — Reviewing ‘Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man’ #2

Welcome to the table,

I’ve really enjoyed the Tales from Lands Unknown offerings so far. Bowling with Corpses provided a tone-setting collection of strange stories that anchored readers’ expectations into the curious landscape Mike Mignola has been creating outside of the well-storied landscapes he has forged in other intellectual properties.

Uri Tupka and the Gods dazzled with artistic allegory. It provided insight into the gods both near and far, misremembered and unforgotten. It felt as if we were learning pathways to pantheons that had been unshelved for one reason or another but have always been sitting in the corner of the cultural consciousness waiting to be discovered by dedicated readers.

The Skinless Man has been the first offering from the Lands Unknown that does not have Mignola at the helm. Rather, it’s the talented Ben Stenbeck crafting both the visuals and the narrative alongside colorist Dave Stewart and the omnipresent Clem Robins providing letters. In its second and seemingly final issue, it delivers on more occult oddity and strange storytelling in a what I would consider a meaningful way.

Let’s get into it.

Picking up from the pages of Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man #1, the ancient and giant golden-eyed hermit continues to relay the story of the titular Skinless Man to the wanderer and his animal companions who have found refuge in her hut during a harsh winter storm.

The first issue did a brilliant job of setting a narrative anchor, giving readers insight into Lands Unknown and the motivations of the Skinless Man and the cabal of warlocks he would run up against in his quest to possess the golden-eyed child. This issue feels more dreamlike and floats from set piece to set piece in a less structured way that reminds me of the early works of Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft.

Even in the dreamlike-uncoupling from what could be seen as a regular flow of time, the story is nothing but enjoyable. The visuals tell so many tales, at times in a single panel, sometimes in a handful scattered across the page. Each turn produces more and more worldbuilding in a landscape where we have been learning the rules of reality as we go.

Stenbeck delivers strange cultures and creatures alongside odd foes and fiends. Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man is a brilliant example of horror-themed sword & sorcery storytelling set in a landscape where imagination is the only limit and ideas live and die not by the sword, but by the storytellers who live long enough to tell the tales when no one else is alive to remember them.

The story jumps through a few of the Skinless Man’s encounters with other warlocks as he hunts for the golden-eyed child across Lands Unknown, bringing us to an unreliable but entertaining end to the tale.

There is a warlock who is comfortable in the company of death, whose story really speaks to me and helps to illustrate what Stenbeck, Mignola, and to a greater extent, the Lands Unknown stories, do profoundly well. Every moment feels like worldbuilding. Nothing is wasted, nothing is discarded. Every strange card nailed to the railing on a massive creatures mobile platform. Every odd etching in a city of spirits, every glowing magical symbol over the head of a seemingly mundane yet already terrifying jungle creature feels like it could spawn ten more stories in the Lands Unknown.

The horror flavors that Stenbeck paints the page with in the Skinless Man story really illustrate that so much can be done in these stories, provided the drawn and written lines are entrusted to those who can be fearless in their imaginative endeavors.

I would revel in the opportunity to even tackle four pages of writing in the Lands Unknown, and could commit many issues to tell stories in a space where the limits are your ability to conjure strange and wonderful sites, both beautiful and terrible to behold.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to read any of these stories from Dark Horse comics, I would encourage you to do so.

Until next time, this is my 1,000th article written for Comicon.com. My love for the B.P.R.D., Hellboy, the works of Mignola, and his assorted creative endeavors is a large part of what keeps me active in the journalist space.

The PR teams over at Dark Horse and Superfan Promotions are some of my favorite people in the world to work with. Their support and kindness over the years have kept me going in some really chaotic times. They are my community, and I support them to the best of my abilities because they have always been upstanding, talented, and wildly accommodating when life has hit the skids.

There was a point a few months ago when I was deep in consideration about what I was going to do for this milestone, and it was so overwhelming that it almost paralyzed me with anxiety.

Life has been really rough as of late, and when I came up for air it dawned on me that more important than looking back on past work, or past coverage, the most important thing about what we do is build community, and I would never be able to do that without the talented team here at Comicon.com and the wonderful support we get from the people we work with.

So, to close out this milestone in my life, more than anything, I want to say thank you to Dark Horse and Superfan Promotions. I got back into comics because of the books you champion and love. I find comfort in them. I’m part of a small circle that gets to read them early, to enjoy conversations with their creators, and who gets to see the amazing items and found objects that are pulled from their pages and crafted by the talented folks over at Dark Horse Direct.

To all of you, thank you for making this journey amazing and allowing me to be part of your world.