HELLBOY THE FURY #1 (OF 3)

Review by: TheNextChampion

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Avg Rating: 4.6
 
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Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Duncan Fegredo
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Cover: Mike Mignola

Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99

Well this wasn’t expected. I mean I have been down on this entire ‘epic’ story for Hellboy since The Wild Hunt started. Maybe it was because the pacing was way too damn slow or the unnecessary long break in mini’s have waned my interest almost down to zero. I mean I have been saying this for months that the one-shots for Hellboy have been 100% better then this story. So why, of all times now, did I make this first issue of ‘The Fury’ my pick of the week?

Immediately I have to thank the recap pages for this being a soild read. I think that I was having a massively hard time trying to figure out what was going on before. But Mignola was able to recap everything to make it easy to understand (and also add a joke or two in to make it not boring). With this issue itself, I don’t know why but everything clicked. Hellboy is going full assault on Nimue, Alice suddenly gets involved with a MAJOR historical figure, and we also get the start of a huge war possibly going down. Mignola is able to pace this stuff quite well and it makes me question why he couldn’t do this in the previous minis. But the fighting is fun and the historical bits are always interesting written by Mignola.

What has been a constant with these mini’s is the amazing work by Duncan Fegredo. Every page is filled with just gorgeous scenery and breathtaking detail. The page where Hellboy is on the spiral steps is gorgeous being filled with bodies and you can see the small cracks on the bricks of the walls. There’s also great lighting effects especially with some of them bleeding into other panels. But the best moment in this whole book is the flashback sequence.  I would kill to see Fegredo do a WWI book, or just any war book really. But it’s the coloring that shines with Dave Stewart using a lighter color palette once it starts and it actually gets darker as the flashback gets closer to the present. This type of palette is also shown once a character comes back to glory and also revives the solider standing outside the bar. If you want any comic book to show just how important a colorist is, this issue shows it beautifully.

It has been a long and bumpy ride, but it finally feels like there is going to be a big payoff to this story. I haven’t enjoyed the majority of this ride, but with this issue everything just clicked. Mignola made this a fun action packed issue but also weaving in a great mix of history and mythology towards the end of the issue. Then you have Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart giving us some of their best work period with this issue. For once I can now say that I am excited for the continuing adventures of Hellboy instead of his random one’s.

Story: 5 - Excellent
Art: 5 - Excellent

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