#omnibuses

"Oh, damn!" said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. "Hi, driver!"

The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 'bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.

"I've left the catalogue behind," said Lord Peter deprecatingly, "uncommonly careless of me. D'you mind puttin' back to where we came from?"

"To the Savile Club, sir?"

"No–110 Piccadilly–just beyond–thank you."

"Thought you was in a hurry," said the man, overcome with a sense of injury.

"I'm afraid it's an awkward place to turn in," said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.

--Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? (1923), Chapter 1.

Two items of interest from "General Information":

"Note.–It is not possible to insert in this Guide all short workings of routes which traffic requirements necessitate. The omnibuses when working on these short routes, bear the same number as the main route upon which they work with the addition of a letter."

"Country services shown in red."

Images: Cover and details from "Map of the General Omnibus routes. No. 4, 1928" issued by London General Omnibus Co., Ltd.

Cover

Full map front

City Scene with Omnibuses   -    George Copeland Ault ,1910.

American, 1891-1948

Dark Horse is releasing a series of brand new omnibuses collecting all of the comics ahead of the new Hellboy movie.

“I’m very excited to finally have all the Hellboy stories collected in chronological order,” said Mignola. “And I’m especially excited to have the three Duncan Fegredo books—all the stuff with Alice and the Queen of Blood—together in one collection for the first time.”

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 1: Seed of Destruction

Available in comic stores on May 23rd and in bookstores on June 5, 2018.

The story jumps from Hellboy's mysterious World War II origin to his 1994 confrontation with the man who summoned him to earth, and the earliest signs of the plague of frogs. Avoiding his supposed fate as the herald of the end of the world, Hellboy continues with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, fighting alongside Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and drafting Roger Homunculus into his own ill-fated service with the B.P.R.D. This 368-page volume covers Hellboy’s adventures from 1994 to 1997, reprinting Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil, and “Wolves of St August,” “The Chained Coffin,” and “Almost Colossus,” from The Chained Coffin and The Right Hand of Doom.

Dark Horse is releasing a series of brand new omnibuses collecting all of the comics ahead of the new Hellboy movie.

Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Vol. 1

Available Summer 2018.

The ultimate introduction to this supernatural hero features 16 standalone stories with Mignola’s greatest collaborators—stories that can be read in any order.

In 1994, Mike Mignola released the first Hellboy series, Seed of Destruction, as Hellboy faced his supposed destiny as Beast of the Apocalypse. Before that, he’d spent fifty years fighting monsters as a somewhat carefree member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. The Complete Short Stories Volumes 1 & 2 present those early adventures. “The Crooked Man” and “Double Feature of Evil," both of which earned Mignola and his legendary collaborator Richard Corben Eisner Awards, are collected with the complete “Hellboy in Mexico" saga, featuring collaborations with Corben, Mick McMahon, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon, as well as one of Mignola’s early masterpiece, “The Corpse.” This 368-page volume covers Hellboy’s adventures from 1947 to 1961, reprinting stories from The Chained Coffin, The Right Hand of Doom, The Bride of Hell, The Crooked Man, The Troll Witch, and Hellboy's childhood adventure, The Midnight Circus, drawn by Duncan Fegredo.

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 2: Strange Places

Available Summer 2018.

Hellboy loses faith in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense when they strap a bomb to one of his fellow not-quite-human agents. He gets answers about his destiny, like it or not, in over 300 pages of comics mostly drawn by Mignola, featuring award-winning guests Gary Gianni and Richard Corben. This 416-page volume covers Hellboy’s adventures from 1998 to 2005, reprinting Conqueror Worm, Strange Places, Into the Silent Sea, and “The Right Hand of Doom," “Box Full of Evil,” and “Being Human” from The Right Hand of Doom and B.P.R.D. Being Human.

Dark Horse is releasing a series of brand new omnibuses collecting all of the comics ahead of the new Hellboy movie.

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 3: The Wild Hunt

Available Fall 2018.

The basis for the upcoming Hellboy feature film! Terrible powers determined to kill Hellboy force him strike a deal with the Russian witch, the Baba Yaga, and to confront the truth about his destiny. The human race hangs in the balance, as well as King Arthur's sword Excalibur, in a story that wipes England off the map and sets in motion the end of the world … Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo's complete trilogy is collected for the first time in this 512-page volume, reprinting Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm and the Fury, and the short story "The Mole."

Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Vol. 2

Available Fall 2018.

Featuring “The Hydra and the Lion,” “The Troll Witch,” “The Baba Yaga,” “The Sleeping and the Dead,” “Heads,” “Goodbye Mister Tod,” “The Vârcolac,” “The Vampire of Prague,” “The Bride of Hell,” “The Whittier Legacy,” “Buster Oakley Gets His Wish,” “They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships,” “A Christmas Underground”, “Dr. Carp’s Experiment,” “The Ghoul,” “In the Chapel of Moloch,” and “Makoma.”

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 4: Hellboy in Hell

Available Winter 2019

Featuring “Hellboy in Hell” 1-10, “The Exorcist of Vorsk,” and “The Magician and the Snake.”