3 out of 5

Pick one, Robinson!!

While this double-crossover definitely offers a lot of potential, instead of a full-on mash-up of pulpy heroes arted in Mignola’s delightfully shadowed style, it becomes limited by treated it as one issue of Bats and HB, and one issue of Starman and HB. Some magic Nazis who’ve kidnapped papa Starman whilst he lectures in Gotham ties it all together, with Robinson smartly sidestepping any roundabout justifications for bringing the Mignolaverse to DC, and instead just treating the B.P.R.D. as pre-existing in the world. So Hellboy arrives in Bats’ town to deal with what would be his ‘normal’ type of baddie, but requests Batman as a guide. Initially reluctant, Bats buys into Hellboy’s explaining that he’ll be handy for dealing with the magic stuff, though this is somewhat amusingly lampshaded later when HB admits he didn’t help all that much. The dynamic is handled pretty well – Bats is obviously the straight man, but Robinson writes him with a pleasingly terse, but friendly, personality, and Mignola gets to draw two iconic characters punching people. But when we’re gearing up for the second stage of this battle – Nazis invoking Lovecraft tentacles from beyond – Batman says ‘so long’ and Starman Jr. joins the fray. As this iteration of Starman was Robinson’s creation, he gets a little punchy with the writing and sorta flips the roles – HB as the straightman, Starman as the jokester – but not fully, so each character is spouting one-liners and there’s not really a clear personality emerging from either one. Starman himself feels incidental to the whole thing, and the Lovecraft aspect to the story feels jammed in just for Mignola’s benefit; perhaps if we’d gotten two issues with all three characters (or only two of them), or separate one-shots, these elements could’ve seemed more ingrained, but as-is, it comes across as a half-baked, if generally enjoyable, crossover.