This week brings the launch of a new Hellboy title, which is a momentous occasion for discerning comic fans. The Mignolaverse (meaning the land of Hellboy and BPRD and their various sister titles) is one of unparalleled quality and remarkable consistency, and it has been for years. This series, titled Hellboy: The Storm, finds Hellboy and a confederate sorting out the mess from his most recent mini. A lot of potential rests on this title, but does it follow through?
Find out after the jump.
Hellboy: The Storm #1
Written by: Mike Mignola
Illustrated by: Duncan Fegredo
The new Hellboy series titled The Storm acts as the immediate follow up to 2009’s 8 issue mini The Wild Hunt, which was a series that found Hellboy gaining a companion, his enemies consolidating, and his rise as the rightful King of Britain.
Wait…what?
Yeah, that’s right. The man who is Anung Un Rama, the demon whose destiny was to essentially slay the Earth, continued his path of the righteous (inspired by his love of pancakes and cats, amongst other things) and became the King of Britain thanks to his ability to pull the Sword (Excalibur) from the Stone.
Hellboy and his compatriot Alice make their way to visit his old friend Reverend Bill in England. It seems they were there to talk to him about something specific, but given his current precarious situation with the infestation of a poltergeist of some sort. This leads the deadly duo out of the safety Bill provided and into the highly suspect surrounding area. In standard Mignola fashion, this issue of Hellboy is dripping with foreboding and dread, with the ongoing story being blended with intermittent creepy one-off panels that alternately confuse and intrigue.
For every person who wants to see Hellboy take the throne, I’d wager that there are a few thousand that do not. One of the more monstrous and challenging of those appears towards the end of the issue, challenging both Hellboy and his lady with his fists, his deep disbelief in Hellboy’s potential, and the knowledge that certain Hellboy associates aren’t in the same state he left them in.
The issue is well crafted, but I have to say, it’s a fairly hard read. Even for a Hellboy fan like myself, I find the story to be presented in such a way that makes the narrative creak forward instead of progressing smoothly. I find that Mignola works best when he has a writer that works with him to smooth some of his edges (like Joshua Dysart or John Arcudi on the BPRD books), and this issue makes those problems very evident. From an idea generation standpoint, Mignola the writer is an utter genius. From a narrative standpoint, he’s solid with intermittent errant efforts — this feels like one of those to me.
Duncan Fegredo does what he always does — provides beautiful, kinetic imagery that tells the story remarkably well. Out of all of the artists that work on the Hellboy books, perhaps none of them provide a more accurate Mignola impression than Fegredo. Yet, it provides a lot of unique characteristics that escalate it to its own plane and identity. There are some images that are just gorgeous, like the first two panels of page four. The simplicity of the images themselves add a lot of power to them, allowing the stark backgrounds and the figures to blend into something truly dynamic. It isn’t the type of panel you’d see from a lot of artists, as they are clearly very thoughtful, time spanning shots that convey a lot more than just what you see.
This issue, for me, didn’t match up well with the perpetually stellar The Wild Hunt, nor the recent one-shot Hellboy in Mexico. Often Mignola’s work reads better as a collected whole, so it is very easy to accept this as a not completed project and not a finalized whole. However, I have to review this as one piece of a (hopefully) very delicious pie, so that means…
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Browse
