Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire

Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire
Illustrated novel cover
Date	August 28, 2007
Publisher	Bantam Spectra
Creative team
Writers	Mike Mignola Christopher Golden
Artists	Mike Mignola Christopher Golden
Original publication
Language	English
ISBN

Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire is a 2007 illustrated novel created by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden.

Each chapter begins with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." In the original book, years were stylized as "19__". When the series was expanded in comic form, the dates were specified.

November, 1914

Captain Henry Baltimore leads a night attack across the No Man's Land of a battlefield in the Ardennes Forest. His entire battalion is killed by Hessian fire. Baltimore's leg is wounded, and he is left for dead. He awakes some hours later to see giant bat-like creatures feeding on his dead men. When one attempts to feed on him, he slashes at it with his bayonet, slicing its face. The giant creature in return wounds Baltimore, infesting his leg with unnatural gangrene. Baltimore is saved when the bat-like creatures flee the light of dawn.

November 30, 1919

Captain Demetrius Aischros travels to a London pub, The Ugly Muse, to meet Lord Baltimore. Instead he finds Thomas Childress Jr. and Dr. Lemuel Rose. These men are also waiting for Baltimore. While they wait, Dr. Rose decides to tell the others how he met Baltimore.

1914

Dr. Rose was a surgeon in the Great War, and one of his patients was Lord Baltimore. He amputated Baltimore's leg following the failed mission in the Ardennes.

While recovering in Hospital, Baltimore was visited by a man with a deep scar on his face and missing his right eye. Baltimore instinctively knew this man was the same creature he'd wounded in battle. (In the novel the vampire is never named, but in the comics he is known as Haigus.) Haigus informs Baltimore that when he cut his face, he stirred up the vampires and declared a war between them and humanity.

In the morning, Baltimore noticed wounded soldiers with grey skin and dead eyes, the first to be infected by a plague from the Vampires.

1919 — The Ugly Muse

Dr. Rose's companions ask the doctor why he believed Lord Baltimore. Dr. Rose recounts an encounter he had in the Fall of 1914 with a shapeshifting bear. The event changed the way he saw the world, and so he believed Baltimore.

Captain Aischros then recounts his own encounters with Lord Baltimore.

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