3 out of 5

Another couple issues ‘on the road’ with Abe as we get more and more of an understanding of what he’s after.  The ongoing AS series, thus far, hasn’t really done much for me, starting with a nice mysterious tone but wiping it out with some soapy dramatics that were pushed to the foreground while Abe remained the silent observer.  These two issues more successfully tie the characters into which Abe stumbles – including a Mexican girl, seeking her shaman-esque father who may or may not be a shapeshifter – into Abe’s still unclarified quest.  Mignola and Allie finally decide to let the shoe drop, with Abe realizing he doesn’t want to rejoin the B.P.R.D., establishing ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ as an appropriate title – a turning point for fish man.  Issue 6’s art is solely handled by Sebastián Fiumara (not ignoring the reliable Dave Stewart on colors), with his brother Max stepping in on book 6 to clean up Seba’s heavy inks.  The Fiumara’s have been a wonderful addition to the Hellboy world, as they’re one of the few working on the books who’ve maintained their own particular styles, not yet fully absorbed into the house Mignola look.  The other Fiumara work I’ve seen has had a very embellished nature to it, but Seba smartly chose to keep his humans very human here, so that Abe’s wonderfully odd distortions feel that much more monstrous.  And issue 6, with its half-splash-page shots of various Mexican legends, are stunning and well developed around patterned motifs so that they don’t feel just slapped into the book.

Unfortunately, storywise, things start out well with our focus on this girl and these tales, and I could’ve easily sunk into five issues of wandering the desert in search of her father while pausing to review folklore.  Alas, the new HB world seems to demand action, so the last few pages (of issue 6) suddenly stutter step around other characters in other locations to set up a monster battle in issue 7, which suffers from poor pacing (day and night happening panel to panel) and questionable inclusion of other characters… like sometimes we’re just tossing people into the mix because they’ve been in the book before and isn’t that cool.  The issue looks fantastic (the battle is pretty badass) and Abe’s B.P.R.D. ruminations are therein and are handled well, just overall this mini arc feels a bit cluttered and confused.  In that sense it’s better that it’s two issues, as you can move past the flaws pretty quickly.