He's Got a Cabinet Full of Spirits

Right, he's not a thief. He just hunts treasures. Which he then steals. Totally different.

So I did end up finding a copy of the first volume of Five Ghosts a few months back. Contrary to what the solicitation led me to believe, the treasure hunter up there doesn't access the abilities of particular authors, but of their characters. Which makes more sense, certainly.

The gist of the story is that Fabian convinced his sister to try and use a "dreamstone" to make their imaginations of being fabulously wealthy come true. Instead, he wound up with pieces of the stone embedded in his body, and her soul was ripped from her body and pulled into another realm. Fabian's trying to find some clue that will help him bring her back. But his powers are going kind of wonky (because having a solidified piece of the Dreaming Realm in your body is unhealthy) and there are other forces with similar powers moving against him.

It's very much in the pulp hero (or anti-hero) vein, starting with being set in the 1930s. You got biplanes, airships, Shangri-La, Nazis, hidden African tribes that worship gigantic spiders, swordfights, pretty much the whole magilla. I assume the leggy dames who are nuthin' but trouble show up in subsequent volumes.

Mooneyham's art reminds me a bit of when Bill Sienkiewicz was inking over Sal Buscema on Spectacular Spider-Man. It has that solid, squared-jawed hero look, but the shadows are a bit thicker and heavier than Buscema's normally were. Especially in the scenes when Fabian is losing control, or the vampire takes hold and he becomes more monstrous. Most of the page layouts are straightforward, but there are times when the images and caption boxes wander across the pages. Usually when the Dreaming Realm is involved. It makes sense, but it's not always the easiest thing to follow.

Lauren Affe and S.M. Vidaurri tend to give scenes a specific hue that colors everything, like the blue in the first image, and then play off that for contrast when it comes to Fabian using the abilities of one of the ghosts, or some particular bit of violence. The colors usually aren't bright, more soft and muted, but it seems to work. Fabian's quest isn't a happy one, so bright, cheery colors wouldn't fit, but this is still supposed to be an adventure, so it's not a dark slog, either.