4 out of 5

Whew.  Since I’ve dropped ‘Abe Sapien’ I was a bit worried that maybe the other core HB book was going to start reading poorly as well, but this arc had me on board – great art, a well-told story, and a climactic battle.

Now my grasp of recent Hellboy world events is… a little shaky (and one of the letters in the letter pages suggests I’m not alone in that), but a flashback seems to fill in the gist well enough: two BPRD squads have been sent into NY from opposite ends.  To gather intel?, I guess, which works because the ‘Hell on Earth’ events have prevented any kind of satellite research from working effectively, and there’s the “squads go in and don’t come out” problem that’s left all these massacred regions as black holes in the government’s knowledge base.  Whether or not NY is known to be a hub for activity I don’t recall, but it’s treated as such: when the squads, one led by Johann, the other by Iosif, enter the city, besides the monsters and wreckage, they are greeted by word of ‘The Black Flame’s claim over all.  Further proof of how closely I pay attention is that I didn’t realize this was the baddie from Sledgehammer 44’s second arc.  Whoops.

Despite the information-gathering intentions, both sides end up getting involved more deeply in scuffles than desired, assisted by some local ragtag survivors.  On Iosif’s side, they go after Zinco’s human leaders, and on Johann’s side, the recently re-badassed Liz goes right for Mr. Flame.  Cue a couple issues of impressive scuffle, which shows how to do the forever-escalating destory-everything-in-site thing effectively: by not going widescale.  We pause to hear snippets of Liz’s and Flame’s discussion about, according to Flame, the futility of her actions, but then we maintain the human connection by going back to street level to watch bursts of flame which represent the battle from afar.  This very much helps to keep the scale of the destruction of NY in tact, and solidifies the beasties that roam the streets as actual threats that exist, potentially, down every alleyway, and not just convenient boss fights when someone needs to punch something.  It’s a bit interesting seeing how big and bold Liz has become (a more sneering version of the chuckley into-the-fray mentality HB used to bring to the team), but the best part of these issues was definitely seeing Iosif go all out for the sake of not only his team and, y’know, Earth, but his friend Johann.

James Harren’s art is stunningly detailed and full of motion.  I’m not sure I’d use his art for quieter issues, but his style was perfect for dreaming up new and impressive looking ghoulies to confront our teams, and his energetic linework made the action sequences frenetic but absolutely followable.  However, a big complaint that goes to the whole team throughout these issues – meaning Arcudi, Harren, and colorist Dave Stewart – was not making more of an effort to separate the two teams.  Both had females with similar haircuts on the frontlines, and both had dudes with glass jars for heads.  Yes, you could look at the outfits and pick out some differences, but a bit more distinct character design or the application of some type of color variation when flashing between the groups would’ve gone a long way toward smoothing out the narrative.  Arcudi keeps it separated by page breaks, but there were time where I thought I was reading one time, only to realize it was the other.  Narratively, while the action and story were appropriately spaced out, the dude with the mystic sword (again, a BPRD detail I only slightly understand how it fits into the whole) ended up feeling somewhat wasted since each group already had their relative badass.  Like he only needed to be there because the sword exists, and otherwise someone would call foul if it wasn’t used.

But both of those were relatively minor nits with what was otherwise an incredibly exciting arc.  And even though it mean still adding more stuffings to my comic book boxes, I’m truly glad that the Mignolaverse will still be mostly intact in my collection, ‘Abe’ aside.