Hellboy: Darkness Calls #3

Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Mike Mignola

Artist: Duncan Fegredo

Colors: Dave Stewart

Letters: Clem Robbins

Senator Barbara Mikulski watches Hellboy fight.

Medieval zombie warriors, witches, demons, giant wolves, house spirits, thunder gods, and a lobster-red devil with a rock for a right hand.

If the above doesn’t make you salivate, I can’t help you. If it does—welcome, brother. You’ve come home.

Hellboy: Darkness Calls continues to accelerate. Issue #3 is a gothic tableaux of the highest order. Each page is invigorating, and in artist Duncan Fegredo’s hands, thirty-foot tall wolves are as appealing as 11^th century Russian armor. Fegredo’s pencils reveal new possibilities for Mignola’s characteristic layouts while maintaining their distinct rhythm.

In Darkness Calls #3, Hellboy is transported to a mythical part of Russia. Demon wolves rescue him from a group of undead soldiers loyal to the Baba Yaga. A thwarted Baba Yaga enlists the help of Koshchei, another deathless warrior, to track down Hellboy. That pig-demon Gruagach is back, too…

I don’t have complaints, per se. I have a concern. In three issues, Mignola has reintroduced characters from four or five distinct Hellboy stories. He’s also introduced several new elements, like the witches of England. Will he be able to incorporate them into a seamless, logical story by the end of issue #6?

It could go either way. Mignola is a brilliant but frustrating writer, a creative dynamo who often forgets to mention key details. He can condense a universe into thirty-two pages (as in The Island, #2), but he can also spin a five-issue story that leaves numerous threads hanging (Wake the Devil).  

Worth the money? Yes, for eye candy reasons, and because Darkness Calls throttles ahead at jet speed. Few things will give you more pure, adrenal fun for three dollars.