Picking up right after then end of Jenny Finn: Doom, Joe is at work (he’s the “Hammer Man” at the slaughterhouse), still troubled by the events of the previous day.
It’s one CLONK! after another until the next cow in line speaks to him and reveals the plague once again. T
hat’s it. Joe quits on the spot and goes to get a bottle to drown his sorrows while he plots out how he can escape the city. Little Polly Platt comes along and tells him she knows a way he can make some cash, but it turns out she is unknowingly taking him to the real murderer, the slasher who has been killing all the dockside whores. This man, an artist, has been slicing them open, looking for Jenny Finn, who is the Messiah, promised by Oannes. He is about to kill Joe when Jenny herself arrives. Then things get even weirder, as a whole swarm of some kind of Steampunk Stormtroopers come and spirit Jenny away, evoking the Queen and saying “…she is now in the good keeping of the Empire.”
The next chapter of the book wraps up the story. Joe is visited by the ghost of Hornbee, the man he falsely accused and who was subsequently killed by an angry mob. So he takes it upon himself to take care of Jenny once and for all. Armed with Hornbee’s cutlass, he infiltrates the secret society that is keeping her. While the story came together well enough, I really didn’t like the art by Farel Dalrymple, in this chapter. It lacked the heavy shading and dread that was a terrific counterpoint to some of the super intricate monsters and permutations of the plague.
