Hellboy in Hell #6

By Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart

This Victorian-esque Hell couldn’t be more Mike Mignola, and after months of waiting it’s damn good to have Hellboy in Hell back. Regardless of how long it takes in between issues, Hellboy in Hell continues to be more than worth the wait. It’s Mike Mignola, with long-time Mignolaverse contributor and master colorist Dave Stewart, and when you see a cover with these two legendary creators on it it’s pretty much guaranteed it’s going to be something special. And, as you might have already guessed, The Death Card is certainly special. (Pst. Don’t forget to check out our preview of this issue!)

Anybody whose read previous Hellboy issues, or anything that Mignola has done previous, should immediately know, upon completion of this issue, that Hellboy in Hell is a project for and by Mike Mignola. Look at this issue, just as an example: Victorian age guys, Skeleton guys, Demons and at least one bigger monster, Hellboy getting is butt kicked, more or less, snakes, foreshadowing the future while also pulling stuff from the past. All check. It’s all just so Mike Mignola and if you’re a fan of his work this is like a “best of” issue.

This is the kind of stuff that Mignola has said in interviews, countless times, that he’s wanted to do and that he’s been looking forward to doing now that he’s killed off Hellboy. With this issue, we get a bit more information on Hell itself, like the general idea of Hell and what surrounds Pandemonium—it’s almost like at the center of a circle is the city, followed by layer after layer of rivers, seas, lakes of fire, forests, mounts etc. You might liken Hell to that of an onion. Not the “it’ll make you cry” part, the layers the different topography that surround the core. It’s an interesting mental image and hopefully our dapper Victorian gentlemen will eventually be able to map it all out and, hopefully, Dark Horse prints a huge poster of it (hint, hint).

Anyway… the thought of onion Hell is interesting so we’ve gone a bit off track here. Okay, so aside from cool information about Hell itself, both Mignola and Stewart put on a show in the visual department. Dave Stewart is not called the Master of Color for nothing and everything he does in this issue—and, really everything he does—is just so effortlessly and flawlessly done that sometimes one can only wonder if Dave is some sort of magical being, or maybe a robot. We may never know… Point being this comic is beautiful and it can’t be stressed enough how lucky we, as comic readers and fans, are that Mignola has come back to the series he started. It’s an absolute treat every single issue and it, really, doesn’t matter how long we have to wait in between releases because it’s more than worth it. Not to mention an absolute STEAL at $2.99. This is truly something that every comic fan needs to be reading because it’s just far an above pretty much everything else that’s released. No offense to them but, c’mon. This is Hellboy we’re talking about.