Friday, July 30, 2010

The Hellboy Project: Hellboy: The Storm #1

Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegredo

And with this issue, my Hellboy Project comes to a close.  Since April, I've read at the pace of one or two issues a day, every issue of Hellboy, BPRD, Abe Sapien, and Witchfinder, with the exception of one of the Free Comic Book Day issues, and a couple of back-up stories that haven't been collected in a trade yet.  I'll probably put together some kind of posting to discuss my thoughts on the work as a whole sometime soon.

For now, I'd like to talk about this comic.  It feels like much of the story that Mignola started many years ago is coming to a point of resolution, as Hellboy recaps his adventures of the last few years, as he prepares for a major confrontation with his enemies.  Hellboy is not the same character he's been throughout the life of this series.  He has received some news about his parentage and ancestry that has changed everything for him, and now the noble dead are rising out of their graves across England to follow him into battle with  the forces of darkness.  As usual, he's reluctant to to deal with this stuff, but has no choice.

This comic is beautifully drawn by Fegredo, who has quickly become my favourite artist on Hellboy, perhaps even more so than Mignola himself.  It's a hard place to jump into this story, but at the same time, the recapping Hellboy engages in makes the story new-reader friendly.

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