Hellboy (Vol. 12): The Storm and The Fury by Mike Mignola (writer) and Duncan Fegredo (artist)
The Storm and The Fury takes up where The Wild Hunt (Vol. 9) left off. Hellboy: Volumes 10 and 11 are collections of short stories, so they do not advance the primary plot of Hellboy, which is what we get here. Hellboy is still in England, and knights are rising from their graves as foretold. The signs are dire, and Hellboy is on the case even though he left the B.P.R.D. On the other hand, as we found out in The Wild Hunt, Hellboy is the anticipated king of Britain, so the knights might be gathering together as an army that he is supposed to lead against the Queen of Blood.
This volume begins with Hellboy and Alice talking about what Hellboy’s been up to over the past few years, and this device allows Mignola to remind of us of the main threads of the plot up until this point. At the start of this volume, Hellboy is on course to run into a major battle with the Queen of Blood, who is already making moves against him. In fact, we don’t get too far into the volume before one of the Queen’s minions tries to kill Hellboy. The stakes are high since the Queen plans to wipe the Earth of all humankind.
Hellboy is still undecided about using Excalibur, King Arthur’s sword, and he is tempted by another to turn away from the knights of England who are rising from their graves and instead turn to the other army he can lead, the one made up of demons from Hell, his father’s army. While Hellboy is trying to decide what to do, the Queen of Blood — the ultimate Queen of War — gets some surprising news that allows Mignola to connect the events of this book with the larger Hellboy mythos that includes powerful, dark forces just beyond our world waiting to get in and destroy everything. It is the time of Ragnarok.
The rest of the story is a grand one, and this volume is the close of the main Hellboy series. The next book to read is Hellboy in Hell, which picks up where The Storm and The Fury leaves off. The reader has great expectations for this final book in the main series, and I feel as if this volume meets those expectations. I believe this is a solid five-star ending.
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