Leroy Douresseaux on HELLBOY: THE FURY #2

HELLBOY: THE FURY #2 (OF 3)
DARK HORSE COMICS

STORY: Mike Mignola
ART: Duncan Fegredo
COLORS: Dave Stewart
LETTERS: Clem Robins
COVER: Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart
32pp, Color, $2.99

I have not read Hellboy since Hellboy: Conqueror Worm (2001). I loved Hellboy and still do, but I just seemed to drift away from finding and buying Hellboy comics.

If I understand correctly, the new three-issue Hellboy miniseries, Hellboy: The Fury, is the conclusion the union of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and artist Duncan Fegredo. Apparently, The Fury brings an end to the story arc that began in Hellboy: Darkness Calls (2008) and continued in The Wild Hunt (2008-2009) and The Storm (2010).

In Hellboy: The Fury, Hellboy leads the undead army of England against the Queen of Blood, Nimue (also Queen of Witches), and her army of the damned. Hellboy: The Fury #2 opens with Alice Monaghan in England. She witness a raging battle between the forces of good and evil, as the battlefield fills with dead monsters and knights. Meanwhile, Hellboy has a battle royale with the Queen of Blood’s champion.

The moody, imaginative storytelling that comes most to mind when I think of Hellboy is absent from Hellboy: The Fury. Mignola’s mind has conjured a story full of gigantic, kinetic action sequences that are right out of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.

Comics tell their stories in words, pictures, and graphics, and artist Duncan Fegredo unleashes and transforms Mignola’s arcane, eccentric storytelling with both vigor and imagination. From the first panel to the next and the next after that, Fegredo portrays Armageddon and monster throw downs with surprising beauty and inventive design. Fegredo has riffed on Mignola’s style since he has taken the Hellboy creator’s place in drawing Hellboy to life, which makes sense. Still, Fegredo is true Hellboy, while managing to be true to himself by producing both beauty and good storytelling. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have the masterful coloring of Dave Stewart.

Anyway, I’m trying to catch up on Hellboy because I’ve missed a lot, but that isn’t stopping me from loving The Fury.

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