Comic Review: Lady Mechanika: The Monster of the Ministry of Hell #3

Image Comics

Story and Art: Joe Benitez

Writing Assists: M.M. Chen

Colors: Beth Sotelo

Letters: Michael Heisler

The third installment of The Monster of the Ministry of Hell opens with a seemingly innocuous page at the circus. However, the page demonstrates everything brilliant about Lady Mechanika. The layout is ingenious in its simplicity: four tall panels. That’s it. But they are sized and positioned just so, with the center panel functioning as a solid backdrop for a group shot that spills beyond the borders to dominate the page. So many characters, so many verbal exchanges and quick, emotive shots. Yet still compact, concise, and highly readable.

The first page provides more than Benitez’s signature layouts. As the children debate how frightened (or not) they were by the Freaks and Oddities of the World exhibit, Benitez injects both humor and pathos into a narrative that could have otherwise been flooded by cynical horror.

Before jumping back to the past, and the main story, Lady Mechanika and her companions come upon a couple of brutes harassing a pig man, one of the titular freaks and oddities. Mechanika tries to resolve the situation on her terms, but quickly finds herself in an unfamiliar position: confused.

This instance of doubt is somewhat of a theme in this issue, as well as the arc in general. We’ve never seen Mechanika so vulnerable, for better or worse. True, a closing sequence shows Mechanika’s traumatic silence broken only by guttural cries of terror. But there’s also an image of Mechanika, in a cold attic, finding a bulky sweater which she happily pulls overhead with a self-satisfied smile. It’s arguably the cutest image in a series that features a walking, talking teddy bear in a top-hat.

Sticking to themes of vulnerability, we see a group of patients present Lady Mechanika with a pair of elegant gloves. They find Mechanika’s arms to be beautiful, but know they make her uncomfortable and shy, so offer the gloves as a gift. It’s an unexpected example of empathy in a setting otherwise bereft of anything resembling humanity.

That said, multiple characters meet bloodcurdling ends in this arc’s penultimate issue, and we leave Lady Mechanika in perhaps the most vulnerable place possible. While it’s truly been a pleasure meeting a young, almost unrecognizable Mechanika, here’s hoping the monsters in the Ministry of Hell soon become acquainted with the Mechanika reader know and love. The one who kicks evil ass.