Chris Roberson

After a mysterious events start occurring in places and vaults holding arcane and technologically advanced artifacts our venerable Witchfinder, sir Edward Grey, is called to investigate. Being in the same timeline/universe as main Hellboy story-line Witchfinder encounters creatures that are just starting to rise their ugly heads at the beginning of the XX century.

Due to this and repeating motif of secret societies and organizations working in shadows this story might seem as a repetition and constant recycling. In my opinion it is not the case, you just need to read stories at the normal pace. Binge reading the entire series will, like it is case with sword-and-sorcery and mystery novels in general when read non-stop without breaks, overwhelm the reader. And that would be a sad state of affairs because there is a lot in these booksto discover and connect the dots.

So read them slowly and with breaks between issues to truly enjoy them.

Art is good, again standard for the publisher. Approach is more comic-y than previous issue. Sir Edward Grey is more like himself (or at least he is same as he was in first issues) - more of a detective that will act and bring weapons and might into play when required. But with all of that he is not that rather dark persona fighting the underworld creatures in volume 4.

All in all recommended to all fans of mystery, horror and Hellboy universe in general.… (more)

This was a very different read. Sir Edward Grey was always shown as a more man of thinking and less of action. That he is ready to move and fight the evil forces, of course, but he was never an action hero. In this story arc he seems .... more angry and willing to spill blood. It could be that I am missing something from before but here Grey seems to be more like Baltimore - highly motivated to go and suppress the night creatures that are starting to terrorize the city of London through any means necessary.

Story itself is very interesting - it is good to see that shadowy societies (and lets not forget that Grey is member of such a troop in direct service of the Queen) do work side by side when they encounter the common enemy. It seems that end of XIX and start of XX century [in Hellboy's universe] were years of great dangers. Although ending is positive it is made obvious how very fragile the established balance is and how easy is to plunge the world into literal hell.

Art as always is great.

Highly recommended to all fans of Hellboy universe and horror stories in general.… (more)

Origin story for the Hellboy's archenemy Rasputin.

Story takes us to the very beginnings when Nazis search for Rasputin finally comes to an end. Rasputin decides to help the Nazis and assist them in the event that will eventually end up with the Hellboy materializing on Earth as harbinger of doom. This is a prequel story that explains how did Nazis obtain the occult knowledge to summon Hellboy and how did Bruttenholm (Hellboy's mentor, teacher and father figure) find himself in all of this mess.

I especially liked the character of Sandhu, British special agent from India who came across a lot of weird and strange things while fighting for the British. But when he sends his reports nobody believes him - be it for his origins or because things he reports are just hardly believable.

Highly recommended to all fans of adventure and of course Hellboy universe.

… (more)