2 out of 5

Well, it’s happened.  I’ve taken ‘Abe’ off of my pull list, which is generally the first step before I stop buying the issues.  I just can’t do it anymore.  I can’t take these pointless arcs that feel slapped together in service of some lumbering narrative that I don’t care about.  I haven’t enjoyed one ‘Abe’ arc in the ongoing yet, just tolerated it in hopes that it’s going somewhere.  And don’t give me this Mignola crap on the cover anymore, either.  I’m not buying it.  The lack of pacing and weak characterization must be Allie, unless the years of writing Hellboy and its peripheral series serve as no indication of Mike’s classier, cheekier style.  I’ll buy that Mignola is acting as architect, trying to guide these stories, but the way Allie talks about it in the letter pages (another detail that’s been giving me an overall dislike for the current “core” Hellboy titles), he views the book as his, so I will too.

‘To the Last Man’ is yet another version of Abe wandering into a small town (Payson, Arizona), discovering more evidence of Hell on Earth (horses overtaken by plaguey eggs), half-bonding with / half-pushing away the locals, having some type of “revealing” conversation that opens us up piecemeal to some of Abe’s relevant thoughts or memories, then Abe helping to absolve the locale of plagueness before wandering off into the sunset.  Allie seemingly wants to make this an ‘on the road’ type ramblin’ tale, which is, admittedly, an interesting avenue to take for a horror book, but his grasp of character is too weak and his dialogue too shallow to pull it off.  For this particular arc, I’m willing to swing some of the blame toward artist Max Fiumara – while his covers have been stunning and establishing shots are often perfectly grotesque, he doesn’t seem to be the best match for the kind of stuttering sequencing to which he’s being applied.  I flash back to ‘Four Eyes’ (I think that was this Fiumara brother) and how Joe Kelly’s pacing seemed to work with the artist’s sensibilities, on grand and small scales.  But Abe’s stories are just text slapped on the page, somewhat rapid fire (against the ‘quiet’ nature of its protagonist), occasionally pausing for what’s assumed to be an interesting picture.  This leads to several moments where we’re supposed to feel action or movement all of a sudden and it never fails to feel off, almost always amusingly overdone (Abe does a lot of running with crazy blur lines in these issues).  True, Allie’s panel directions could be really strict, but some responsibility must still come down to the artist to interpret that appropriately, or at least try and tie some sequences together with imagery, since the jarring transitions seem to make sense in Scott’s head but lack such sense for a reader.

Anyhow, as is usual for Abe so far, none of what happens feels like it matters, to the extent that I’m not even clear if the arc ended except that it’s 3 of 3.  There’s a second storyline with a magician and a soldier that’s been kicking around for a few issues, and the few pages that’s allotted are written with the same problems.  Obviously I’m not even invested enough to know names.

‘Last Man’ has some good concepts and visual ideas, but the writing isn’t servicing either one of them.  The few blissful moments where Allie isn’t jumping from scene to scene within a page (the first issue from the arc is actually a bit more paced and a fair setup for some zombie antics) or suddenly remembering to stuff in clues for the next arc show the promise of the kooky horror travelogue the ongoing could be, but it doesn’t appear that my patience with the series is going to be rewarded with any kind of payoff anytime soon.