With the end in sight, “Hellboy in Hell” #9 sets the stage for the series’ big finale.
Hellboy faces demons furious about the fall of Hell and his role in it, and another family member makes an appearance.
* First part in the two-issue conclusion to Hellboy in Hell!
It’s a dark time in Hell, if you can imagine such a thing. Not only has Pandemonium been destroyed, but nearly all of the royalty in the realm have been laid to waste. It seems that Hellboy’s return has sparked something of a populist uprising, with the underclass revolting against their masters. It’s all very French Revolution, with the beheadings and piles of regal corpses and all that.
Before we dive into the exposition of the issue, I want to linger on what Mignola and Stewart have done here. I’ve been impressed with the art in this series from the start, and I think I’d rank this as one of the best looking issues so far. Mignola strikes an interesting balance with his cartooning here, treating the elements in each panel almost as if they were set pieces. As an artist, Mignola relies a lot on suggestion and shorthand, using as few lines as possible to convey information. Shapes become symbols and, whether consciously or not, readers fill in the gaps and missing pieces in their minds. An oblong shape is Hellboy in the distance, or thoughtfully placed semi-circles become pebbles on a road. A lot of the time these marks and shapes rely on other nearby marks to gain their meaning. Take the sequence below, for example.
In the second panel we see a muzzle flash, which indicates that Hellboy has just fired his pistol. But if you were to isolate the shape we recognize as the flash, it’d lose its meaning. It’s only a symbol because of its proximity to another symbol. Alone, it could maybe be a flower, or a star, or whatever other thing your brain tries to categorize the otherwise nondescript shape as.
Let’s circle back to the whole set piece thing I mentioned earlier. This whole issue has a very theatrical feel to it, and I think it comes from the way Mignola arranges what is in his panels. He has a tendency towards creating a big object, a set piece if you will, and anchors his characters to it. Then, like on a stage, everything else is flat, dark and empty space, directing your eye towards the action with motion and lighting. When a new character is introduced to a scene, they’ll enter from off stage or, as is often the case, are revealed with a spotlight.
Take the issue’s big fight scene for instance. Other than the four figures and the tree, there is nothing else going on in these panels. It’s all acting, lighting and a big prop to establish setting. Then, when a fifth character enters the scene, it’s almost as if she’s revealed with a spotlight, anchored to the stage with a second set piece. All of this results in a sequence that feels incredibly dramatic. It’s masterful storytelling.
So enough acting like I know anything about the theater, LET’S GET TO SOME SPOILERS. Scroll on down to the score to avoid ’em!
Word on the street is that Beezelbub may be the last royal in all of Hell, and he’s locked himself in his own tower to try and play it safe. This’d probably mean very little to our titular protagonist, if it weren’t for the fact that some ruffians want to kill him as an offering to the last vestige of old power. This is where the afore mentioned battle takes place.
This issue feels very much like a penultimate chapter. The exposition was plentiful, as were the callbacks, running through the first two movements of the issue. Then, with all the back story out of the way, we see the entrance of a real blast from the past: Hellboy’s ex-wife. Well, a blast from the past for Hellboy more than us, we just read about it a couple of years back. Anyway, back in ’56, Hellboy went on a bit of a tear through Mexico. Lots of drinks were had, and one morning he woke up married to a monster. And I don’t mean in the tired, “take my wife, please” sort of way. She was a literal monster, and Hellboy dealt with the problem in the only way he knew.
Continued belowAs tends to be the way of the world, death was not the end of her story. After the whole marital fall-out, Hell was probably the only real destination for her. What I thought was interesting here was that, even after all the ugliness, she still kept tabs on her old flame. And when he made his own way into Hell, she was there to guide him, whether he knew it or not. It was her who gave him the confidence to cut Satan’s throat, and will be the one to push him towards what he must do next.
Through her conversation with Hellboy, her form shifts. The longer they talk, and the darker the conversation gets, the more monstrous her body becomes. By the end of the issue, she’s morphed from a woman in Victorian garb into a horned, feline-shaped creature with bat wings. The way the shift is handled is very sly, happening so subtly that much of the change may even happen without notice. By the time she’s gotten to talking about what Hellboy was born for, her transformation into a monster is complete. Almost as if she had to become something horrific in order to show him the truth of it all.
So what is it? What was Hellboy born for, if not to lead an army? My guess is that poor Beezelbub isn’t going to stay safe in his castle for very long…
Final Verdict: 9.0 – There were points in this issue where I could hardly stand the tension. The art reinforces the narrative beautifully, creating a dramatic reading experience that could only be crafted by a true master.
