REVIEW: The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola

The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects

Written by Mike Mignola 

Art by Mike Mignola

Color by Dave Stewart

Letters by Clem Robins and Pat Brosseau



$17.99 / 104 Pages /Color / Hardcover



Dark Horse

"All really intelligent people should be cremated."

"For the sake of national security."

This week, we celebrate 50 years of Mike Mignola here along the mortal coil. Hopefully he won't shuffle off anytime soon. But if and when he does, we'll have to parcel him out to the far corners of the earth, to the winds whistling through Machu Picchu and down to the blackest depths of the Indian Ocean. Because any return trips brought about by necromantic hands could only spell D-O-O-M doom. But for now, we celebrate. 

Cautiously. 

If Hellboy is Mignola's greatest hit, the five short stories collected in The Amazing Screw on Head and Other Curious Objects are perhaps the deep cuts. The B-Sides. "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" to Hellboy's "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", in Monkees parlance. This is a slim little hardcover, but it belongs right there next to those library editions. 

It all started, Mignola says in his notes, as an idea for a toy. A versatile action figure with countless forms given one straightforward premise. A single threaded head–like a light bulb–to be screwed into a series of accessory bodies, each outfitted to suit the requirements of an imaginary mission to the bathtub or sandbox or minivan. But Mignola wasn't a toymaker. So he drew a story solely for himself. Back in 2002 he didn't know if there was any popular interest for a steampunk short about a mechanical government agent serving at the pleasure of Abraham Lincoln in all matters of the occult. Imagine a pitch like that today. It'd go over like a bottle of Robitussin lobbed into a Portland alley. Which is to say, the definition of candy.

I'm not sure how difficult it is to find one of those original single issues, but Screw-On Head has to be one of the most renowned one-shots in comics. It's a one-off. Only one issue exists. But people know that name. It even inspired an animated video. For good reason too. Not just due to the versatility of that toy concept, but on the confluence of weird, out there ideas. This is Mignola having fun, not really caring about the bottom line. Hot air balloons. Apes. Zombies. Vampire brides. Hell dimensions bottled up in root vegetables. 

What I really love about this story is that, currently, it's all that exists of this world. It's special, almost devoid of context. A missing link. So there are no rules or expectations. Everything feels spontaneous and new. Undiscovered. 

But Screw-On Head is only one of these gems plucked from the dark. There's a Jack and the Beanstalk story far more peculiar than anything you ever heard while perched on a knee. It's a sinister little fable peopled with strange characters that might serve as background color in a larger Hellboy story. Then there's the story Mignola wrote based on a story his seven-year-old daughter dreamed up in the car about the friendship of an od magician and a snake. It's a very slight story, almost a koan, but the sentiment behind it, as well as the haunting imagery, make it a kind of treasure. Then there's the story of "The Prisoner of Mars", a victorian gentleman's anecdote of killing his Martian-possessed friend, being hanged for his murder, and then being bottled up in the afterlife as a Martian engineered robot. It's bizarre to the point of silliness, and it's one of my favorite things the guy's ever done. 

If you like ghosts and robots and flying machines and Victorian rooftops and devils and Martians and witches and fairies and fops and zombies and stuffed dogs and sorcerers and prophecies and root vegetables and serpents and arcane languages and executions and rockets and life and death, then this is the cat's pajamas. 

Story: 5  Art: 5  Overall: 5

Grab it on Amazon.