I added this title to my queue on a recommendation from Harry Knowles' "DVD Picks and Peeks" column on Ain't It Cool News.
It's a 20 minute-long animated TV pilot created by Mike Mignola, the guy who came up with the Hellboy comics. It features the same wacky history-meets-the-occult mashups of Hellboy, introducing the characters of Screw-On Head, secret agent in service of Abraham Lincoln, his love interest Patience the Vampire, his manservant Mr. Groin, (get it, Head, Groin?), and their nemesis Mr. Zombie.
Voiced respectively by Paul Giamatti, Molly Shannon, Patton Oswalt and David Hyde Pierce, the characters are as wack-a-doodle as their names sound. The writing is clever and light. And the artwork, settings and bizarro world spyware are all really creative.
The pilot introduces a dozen characters, all of whom you want to know more about, but don't hold your breath. Mignola explains in the making-of featurette that he came up with the screw-on head idea as a lark to sell toys, and by the time he finished the pilot he'd told most of the jokes as well as he figured he could and had kind of gotten the whole thing out of his system. Too bad. 4 stars.
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