Rasputin still doesn’t get identified by name—but based on all the expository dialogue, it’s surprising Hellboy couldn’t figure it out. I guess he never took any history classes.

The series winds down with some more big action sequences, one involving Abe and Liz Sherman. Well, not exactly Liz Sherman. Mignola and Byrne had very little use for her (Hellboy talks about her in the narration more than she talks in dialogue). It makes her feel like a fifth wheel, only around because the comic book readers must have a pretty face.

Also interesting is how passive Hellboy and Abe are in the grand conclusion—Hellboy gets a little moment alone with Rasputin with foreshadowing—but the big part is resolved somewhat without them.

Still, it’s decent.

The Monkeyman backup features Adams screwing up tenses in his first person narration. There’s little else to say about it, except weak art.

Adams (sorry, starting with him again, I know) must intentionally draw bad faces. Everything else is so detailed… faces not. So it’s a choice. A bad one, but a choice.

Mignola and Byrne get a lot of content into this issue. I don’t think Rasputin ever even gets named, just his history introduced—the majority of the issue, besides an opening fight scene, is expository dialogue.

The best thing in the issue is a two page scene with Abe seeing these frog monsters take their human mother down into the bog. It’s the only time Byrne and Mignola take the time to do anything neat. The rest of the issue is all necessary just to get the story told.

It’s far beyond the regular supervillain revealing his evil plan scene. Byrne and Mignola turn it into an issue. I kept wondering where the cliffhanger would be.

Questionably—but impressively—dense.

You know, if Adams stuck to the way he draws in medium long shots… he’d make a good comic strip artist. Sorry to talk about the Monkeyman backup, but I thought I should open with a nice comment about Adams. It’s probably never going to happen again.

The Hellboy part of the issue is very strong. There’s the problem with the narration again, like Byrne can’t find a voice for Hellboy—also when they switch over to Abe Sapian’s narration and the narration boxes are the same format.

And there’s some weak art from Mignola, but weak even in the Mignola sense. The issue is very thoughtfully designed, then he abandons it for the last few pages. It forces the comic out on a low note.

Or would, if the plotting weren’t so interesting. It’s a Lovecraft homage and it’s compelling and interesting. Bad ending aside, it’s starting to work.

All right, so Mignola and Byrne conceive Hellboy as sort of a hard boiled detective. Not in the content so much, but in the first person narration Byrne writes for him. It also doesn’t really match the way Hellboy talks in dialogue either.

But the big problem is the way the story’s split. It opens with a mostly text (though illustrated) telling of Hellboy’s origin. Then it switches to a regular narrative (where presumably main characters is instead killed off before he can resonate). The modern day stuff is all action too—except the end reveal—and the issue wouldn’t feel like it had any weight if it weren’t for that prologue.

The art’s okay—the worst thing is Mignola’s Hellboy, who seems inconsistent-.

Inexplicably, there’s a Monkeyman & O’Brien backup. Adams’s art is lame and the writing is awful. It does have a couple King Kong references, but so what.