As much as I love Hellboy, I gotta admit the first issue of ‘The Storm’ still bugs me. Mignola wasted a lot of time recapping and with only two more issues to go I felt like deja vu from the last mini. Opening this issue I pray that we get some type of advancement in the story. Or at least something to really make this issue stand out. Thankfully I got a little bit of both here.

Okay so maybe the story is moving at a snails pace, but at least we got a good amount of information on the Blood Queen. It was nice to figure out extactly what is up with her and how it all nicely ties into the Pig demon we’ve been following for awhile. The story with Hellboy himself is where I still have a bit of problems with. Sure there was a good fight in this, but we still know very little on what exactly Hellboy needs to be doing. Mignola handles this by giving us a very warmhearted look at his childhood. So while the issue didn’t deliver much with story progression; it had enough action and a great flashback to keep it interesting.

There’s not much else you can say about Duncan Fegredo and Guy Davis’s work on this series. Ever since Fegredo came onto the series it has had gorgeous issue after another. Also a great use of reds and oranges as always when it comes to Mr. Davis. I should give a shout out to the letterer in this, as Clem Robins does a fantastic job with some of the narration and dialogue boxes in this.

While I think this is a fun issue, I still wish Mignola could somehow fix the pacing in his stories. We only have one issue to go before we have to wait a full year for the next mini and it feels like we’ve gone nowhere fast. Fegredo and Davis work on this title is keeping this book a sight to behold. I just hope we get some type of story advancement for the final issue next month.