Chris Roberson and Paul Grist delve into one of the biggest mysteries of the Hellboy Universe: the aliens from “Seed of Destruction” and “Conqueror Worm.”
Written by Mike Mignola and Chris RobersonCover by Paul Grist
Illustrated by Paul Grist
Colored by Bill Crabtree
Lettered by Clem RobinsIn 1944 Hellboy was conjured in a ceremony meant to give Hitler the ultimate occult weapon. Fortunately, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm was there to witness, and to guide Hellboy to become the greatest paranormal detective in the world. But Bruttenholm wasn’t the only witness to Hellboy’s arrival. A visitor was there, sent to kill the Beast that had been prophesied to kill us all. What the visitor saw, and why he stayed his hand, leads to the most mysterious Hellboy spinoff yet…
I think it’s fair to say that this is a story long-term Hellboy fans have been waiting for for a very long time. The aliens first appeared in “Seed of Destruction” #4 (way back in June, 1994) for a single page.
Readers were left to ponder that page until “Conqueror Worm” #2 (June, 2001) when another alien showed up, and had a chat with Hellboy before he died.
The unnamed alien claimed to have been watching Hellboy since the half-demon’s arrival on Earth on December 23, 1944. And then… nothing (well, aside from a cameo appearance in “Buster Oakley Gets His Wish”).
Here, the curtain is pulled back much, much further. Not only is this a story featuring an alien, this story features an alien as the protagonist. In fact, it’s that very same alien from “Conqueror Worm,” and this miniseries will be covering the fifty-six years that he watched Hellboy. In Chris Roberson’s own words:
… I was excited about the possibility not only of exploring the story of the mysterious alien from Conqueror Worm, but also the opportunity to take a look at periods in Hellboy’s life that we haven’t seen much of before. I knew that Hellboy must have gone through a ‘gawky teenager’ phase at some point, but we’d never seen it on the page, for example. But that kind of thing was just a bonus, since the main focus of our story is the alien himself, and how he was affected by his years living on Earth.
I think this accurately highlights both the charm and the difficulty with this miniseries. The first issue plays like a series of vignettes as the issue covers Hellboy from 1944 and into the 1950s. Some of this stuff we’ve seen before, in previous “Hellboy” or “B.P.R.D.” or “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” stories. Other stuff we haven’t seen before, because it’s the sort of small moment that doesn’t fit in a usual tale (like a young Hellboy learning to ride a bike), or it’s entirely new material with the visiting alien. (I shall henceforth refer to him as the Visitor, to distinguish him from the other aliens.)
The entirely new material is where the series works best, especially when the Visitor is alone, but there’s a lot of distance between the reader and the Visitor. Like he watches Hellboy, so we watch him. We don’t experience the story through him, we merely observe, and because of that the story is a bit cold.
But not completely cold either. The first half is much closer to the Visitor than the second half, and I feel that the former works better than the latter. It puts an emphasis on not just watching, but on the Visitor’s reactions to what he’s seeing. For the most part, framing of the panels retains an observer-observed relationship, which I think makes for a stronger scene. When it breaks away from that relationship, I feel like it weakens the scene. Take the following moment for example:
The first panel establishes a relationship between the observer and the observed. But the fourth panel breaks this relationship. If that panel had been flipped, so that it looked like a close up of the same angle from panel one, it would have retained the Visitor’s point of view. I may seem like a little thing, but I think compositional choices like these further distance the reader from the Visitor. Each observed panel should show us what the Visitor is paying attention to, and each reverse shot on the the Visitor should focus on his reactions. When they do this, the scenes are much stronger, and it invites the reader to get a sense of who the Visitor is as a person.
Continued belowA little further in, there the scene in which the Visitor chooses to stay on Earth (the ‘Core World’). The composition in this sequence is excellent, emphasizing the empty space above and around the Visitor, which adds to his isolation.
Throughout this issue I enjoyed Paul Grist’s artwork―in the entirely new scenes he especially shines―but so much of this story relies on familiarity. The Visitor is essentially walking through previous stories, and I think it’s a huge ask for an artist new to the Hellboy Universe to pull off something like this. The Fiumara twins had to do this sort of thing throughout the “Abe Sapien” ongoing series, but both of them had already done work on Mignola’s books by that point, and there were only a few moments like these over around thirty issues. Whereas here the moments are densely packed, spanning stories handled by various artists. In terms of these visual hook-ups to past stories, this miniseries is a very complex undertaking.
Grist was also working with Bill Crabtree on colors, so again we have an artist that’s entirely new to this world being asked to summon up a familiar moments from the past. In this case, the story makes us directly compare Crabtree’s work with Dave Stewart’s, simply because it’s referencing so many other stories colored by Stewart. This makes moments referenced from other stories feel a little off instead of familiar. Honestly, I can’t think of a more challenging title for a new colorist on this line of books.
That said, certain moments land perfectly. The opening, for example, with the black panel and a voice saying, ‘Look, Roger,’ then going to a panel of lilies, was a really nice touch, using the familiarity with the material to powerful effect. It was such a simple and elegant way to introduce the the story and ease us into the scene.
I’m going to dive into spoilers for a bit.
The biggest difficulty in this issue comes with “The Nature of the Beast” moment, which was originally a short story written and drawn by Mike Mignola with color by Dave Stewart. “The Visitor” and “The Nature of the Beast” crossover in the last few pages of the issue, and unfortunately it seemed a bit mechanical. Part of that I think comes from the point I discussed earlier about the observer-observed relationship―we see Hellboy being followed by the Visitor rather than the Visitor following Hellboy―but also in the way the action does not relate to the Visitor. When the dragon gets unexpectedly stabbed through the head, we don’t see the Visitor’s reaction to it. The story seems more interested in showing a fight we’ve already seen before rather than focusing about what’s new in the scene: the Visitor’s feelings and reactions. Instead we get this in a dialog recap at the end of the scene. This could have been handled visually and the recap could have been much more succinct for greater impact.
This is made all the more striking because here we have a direct reference to Mignola’s original story. It’s impossible not to draw a comparison between the two.
OK, spoilers done.
This was a mixed bag of an issue, with a few very strong moments, and others that were either too distant or mechanical. To a certain extent the story feels a little disjointed as it goes from vignette to vignette, but this is likely the sort of thing that will read better in the trade collection where the overall shape of the story will be clearer. As a single issue, it feels split into two distinctly different parts, with the second half being a little shapeless.
The new material is the best part of the issue, both in terms of story and art, and I’m hoping future issues will explore more of this and not lean so hard on existing material. I know with a story like this the heavy referencing is unavoidable to an extent since there are certain key moments this story must address, but I’m hoping these can be integrated more smoothly going forward. At the moment, the transition between new material and past references feels a little rough.
Final verdict: 7. While I enjoyed the first half of the issue, the second left me cold.
