Descent into Hell

Hellboy: The Fury #2

The war building is not just a matter Hellboy and the Noble Dead of England versus Nimue’s faerie army — this is the first act of the Apocalypse itself. The Four Horsemen are riding, two-thirds of the people on Earth are going to die, and it’s looking less and less likely that anyone is going to survive all this. Alice wants to see what’s happening and witnesses the last witches drowning themselves in remorse over helping to cause this. The Wild Hunt rides, lightning storms destroy humanity’s cities, and Arthur and his knights are destroyed. And Hellboy is battling a mighty dragon — no, wait, make that the Dragon. And Hellboy isn’t doing so great.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s apocalyptic, it’s grim, it’s terrifying — and it’s still intensely exciting and fun. The art is beautiful, the writing is beautiful, and you should be reading this.

The Unwritten #27

Tom Taylor’s investigations into his father’s journals have turned up something new — a comic book starring a superhero called the Tinker who pre-dates Superman by two years — and who almost no one has ever heard of before. Tom and Lizzie are able to magically eavesdrop on a conversation from the ’30s between Tom’s father, Wilson Taylor, and Pullman, the ruthless assassin who now runs the Cabal, in which they discuss whether the Cabal needs to be concerned about the development of the comic book medium. Later, Tom, Lizzie, and Savoy read Wilson’s journal as he recounts going in search of the comic’s creator.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I was a bit surprised that this series was going to go meta and focus on comics so soon — I was expecting some more romps through classic literature, maybe something in “Frankenstein” or non-Western lit — but it’s a pretty happy surprise. The Tinker looks like an interesting character, and it’ll be nice to learn more about what Tom’s father used to do when he worked for the Cabal.