We’re only two issues into Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck’s “Koshchei in Hell,” and already it’s shaping up to be one of the best stories to come out of the Hellboy Universe. What a stunning issue! We enjoyed it so much, we wanted to discuss everything without reservation, so you have been warned: major spoilers ahead.
Written by Mike MignolaCover by Ben Stenbeck
Illustrated by Ben Stenbeck
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Clem RobinsAfter reaching the ruins of Pandemonium, Koshchei the Deathless comes face-to-face with someone from Hellboy’s past. Hope grows thin when they reveal their plans for the ruined realm, and Koshchei once again finds himself in the fight of his life or death, as the case may be.
Mignola, Stenbeck, and Stewart bring fans the next incredible chapter in Koshchei’s tale!
Mark Tweedale: Back in my review for “Koshchei in Hell” #1, I talked around spoilers, so there were a lot of things I loved that I didn’t mention and a lot of that was tied up in the final few pages, with Koshchei descending into the ruins of Pandemonium. Ben Stenbeck managed to conjure up feelings I experienced back when I first read “Hellboy: The Third Wish” when he descends into the writhing tentacles of the Bog Roosh’s lair and vents his fury. Here in “Koshchei in Hell,” the descent is dark and ominous, but most important of all, you can viscerally feel the dam about to break on powerful emotions.
Right: “Koshchei in Hell” #1
And that’s where this issue opens. James, you weren’t on the last review, but I’m curious about your thoughts before we dive into this one.
James Dowling:Yeah, that debut unlocked a strange breed of anticipation for me that I haven’t felt for comics in a long while. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything of that quality in the last few years, but nothing that idiosyncratic. We’re once again seeing the puppet shows, the Snake, Dean and Jenks, this whole shorthand of motifs that clicks open this desire to speculate for me.
It was a gorgeous book, top to bottom. I spent the whole twenty-ish pages wanting to be confused because that meant I could just be along for the ride, taking in all these key images. For me it all came to a head, like you mentioned, with the voyage to Pandemonium, as a ballad floats through the captions. It was such a perfect stylistic sequel to “Hellboy in Hell” that I really struggled to remember the six year gap we’ve had, or that the pencils in front of me weren’t even from Mike Mignola. That might be the best praise I can give to these two issues, the comic is uniquely Stenbeck’s, and yet I see that original masterpiece clear as day underneath. Do you think we can gush the same kind of praise for this issue?
Mark: Definitely. And, yeah, it’s truly mind blowing how seamless the transition is from Mignola on art for “Sir Edward Grey: Acheron” to Stenbeck for “Koshchei in Hell.” I see the compatibility most in their approaches to pacing. And that pacing is on display throughout this issue. I mean, this is mostly just a big fight, but I love the way a moment can slow right down, or the way time speeds up, or even when we purposely lose sense of time entirely.
Though I have to say, Stenbeck and Mignola are also very distinct from each other too. And in this issue you can really feel Stenbeck’s influence, especially in his depiction of Hellboy’s sister, Gamori. In several other stories we’ve seen Mignola take a character and transform them as some other influence takes over their body, but it feels so different (in a good way) when Stenbeck does it. And it should feel different too. It makes this encounter with Gamori feel like its own thing, something powerfully memorable. There are panels in here that actually make my skin crawl.
James: I noticed that too, Stenbeck really gives her a great deep-sea design that feels so chilling, like you can imagine the uncanny movements. To me, this issue, and the book as a whole, feel like the point where Stenbeck has best adopted Mignola’s use of simple linework to maximal effect, while letting it complement his own remarkable level of detail. He’s taking block colors, stripping down silhouettes, and using the most immediately comprehensible shapes to portray enormity and gravity in his designs and objects. It gives your eye this procedural guide through a page, but with his own detailing you stick to the page longer, you get to leave behind the conflict to just take in the spectacle.
Continued belowMark: I agree. His ability to get across the scale of Pandemonium when so much of the page is solid black is truly astonishing.
James: Like you mentioned, the symbiosis works because of their timing. I read a lot of Cormac McCarthy, not so much for the books, but for the passages. He’s an author with a grasp on elegant language; when to present a procedure in high fidelity, and when to let a whole conflict go to the imagination. Stenbeck and Mignola manage to present that same elusive perspective in the greater detail of sequential art. It is so hard to get into the heads of Koschchei or Gamori with the scenes we’re provided, but the pair understand how to give us the emotion without the context by zooming out just wide enough.
Mark: It really goes to show how much page layout and panel composition can convey. We get so much just from the way the visuals make us feel in this issue. It’s very theatrical.
Also, I think Mignola is really tapping into a fungus motif for Pluto. We saw it a bit in ‘Acheron,’ where Eligos starts to change, and the horns he has start to twist and change, like Ophiocordyceps growing out of an ant’s head, but here Stenbeck takes it so much further. Like Eligos, it starts with the eyes though. When we see Gamori in “Koshchei in Hell,” she no longer has the orange eyes she used to have. Now they’re taken on the green Dave Stewart always uses for Pluto. Right away we know what power is at work in her.
But then she starts to shift and change, growths spreading all over her body. But the worst of it is her eyes. The fungus-like growths in her eyes are so horrifying to me. My god.
James: Yeah, that was the moment I really felt like I could picture Gamori in motion, and it was not a nice thought, these are obviously horror comics, but that was a nice movement from the gothic existential to the gross-out factor that makes you really stick to the page.
This issue did make me glom onto that dichotomy between the classic horror we see in the old demons and architecture of Pandemonium, and the new (yet impossibly ancient) organic evil we see Pluto trickling out into the world. We saw it most clearly in Gamori’s vision of a new Pandemonium, a castle with the organic geometry we associate with the Ogdru Hem, now drenched in Pluto’s pale green.
Mark: That visual had me wondering what role Pluto played at the beginning, before the Ogdru Jahad was created. Clearly he was a Watcher of some stature among his peers since he ruled over Hell after the First Fall. I wonder he was one of the Watchers that wanted to create the Ogdru Jahad originally, perhaps to serve his own ego. Are the Ogdru Hem fungus-like because of his original influence? This visual may be a hint at Pluto’s past. Or maybe I’m reading into it too much.
James: Yeah, depending how it’s handled it could be a bit corny to have Pluto be the architect of the Ogdru Jahad, making him the puppeteer behind the puppeteer.
Mark: Oh, no, I don’t mean like that. I mean more his own ego poisoned the Watchers’ creation. It’s potentially why they couldn’t get the Ogdru Jahad to live, making it vulnerable to Ereshigal’s influence in the night.
James: Yeah fair, that’s the sort of image I really like. He seems to be a much more embodied and psychologically graspable antagonist. The Ogdru Jahad were dragons, a force of nature, so I would really like to see him as this sort of classical influence that can return from dormancy now that the monsters he helped sculpt are gone. Hell and Pandemonium are rubble, the Ogdru Hem are gone, he’s getting a chance to resculpt the New World, and Koshchei is one of the only beings old enough to see it coming.
Mark: I completely lost my mind when Koshchei used Azzael’s ring against Gamori and then took up his reforged sword. My first Hellboy story was ‘The Chained Coffin,’ which introduced Azzael and that sword, so it’s truly incredible to see them come together and lead to this hugely transformative moment in Hell.
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I mean, holy crap, I was not expecting to see something like this in the second issue of a four-part miniseries. It feels like a final issue moment. It completely throws my sense of where we are in the story and where we go next.
James: Yeah, there’s a really disorienting end to this issue, which I’m totally happy with.
Azzael looms large in this issue and I adored it too. We talked about the progression of imagery between artists in this issue, and I think the idea of legacy comes to the forefront through the plot too, we’re presented with the remains of these three great patriarchs of Hell: Satan’s rubble of Pandemonium, Azzael’s long-dead Order of the Fly, and Pluto’s long-encroaching influence. Gamori is forced to reckon with all three and it’s the failures of these lords of Hell that has subjected her to just total torture.
It’s what makes that moment with the tree from Azzael’s sword so remarkable, just like how Hellboy’s blood grew flowers, the family sword and his sister’s corpse form the basis for a third vision of Pandemonium, a great tree. It’s such a fun image, and I think it’s the closest we get to a mission statement for this series; there’s a huge lineage that Pluto can essentially exploit, which can only be undercut through wiping it off the board and building something more impassive and natural. It has a really beautiful melancholy.
Mark: There’s such optimism in it too. The tree is such a fantastic visual to simply say even Hell can be transformed.
OK, I feel like this has been quite a heavy review so far, so can we take a moment to talk about the humor in it? Like the stuff with the hags on the beach?
James: Oh yeah, that’s the other great example of timing in this book, Mignola and Stenbeck understand slapstick. Giant crabs and flailing puppets are these cornerstone images for the pair, but they can be really funny when you put a sufficiently unimpressed protagonist in front of them. You could easily slot in a “Biff! Bam! Pow!” as Koshchei goes to work on the pair.
Mark: I’m always kind of in awe of Mignola’s ability to pivot into humor without batting an eyelid. I mean, considering the scene that preceded this beach sequence, it should almost break the spell we’re under. But it doesn’t. And it also shows how Stenbeck knows how to control tone in his violence. Compare the Gamori fight to this one on the beach and they feel so incredibly different.
And then there’s the whole final sequence with the mysterious demon in a bottle and the puppet show. Honestly, those last two pages really spun me around. But I loved it.
Plus it’s just great to see the puppets again. It’s funny how it was something Mignola once felt like audiences wouldn’t approve of when he did 2005’s The Ghoul, but now it’s something he does in major storylines. Each time they show up, I love them more, so I can’t wait to see what he’s doing with them this time. I’m definitely getting “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Beast of Vargu” vibes from this moment.
James: It’s weird to be punching the air in excitement after seeing a little drawing of a puppet show, but here I am, flailing around like a kid who’s seen an ice cream truck. This issue had me absolutely enthralled all throughout, and I don’t think there’s any other direction they could’ve taken that could change that feeling. Their tone, imagery, and pacing is just so strong that it’s impossible to even think about leaving the book early. It’s a 9.5 for me.
Mark: I was going to go with a 9, but a week after reading it, I’m still buzzing with enthusiasm, so it’s definitely earned a 9.5 from me too.
Final Verdict: 9.5 – “Koshchei in Hell” #2 leaves the reader thinking “What the hell?” in the best possible way. It is a fantastically disorienting ending, and there’s clearly so much more to come.
