By Mignola, Fegredo & Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse
ISBN: 9781616552381
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is one of the biggest comic success stories of the past twenty years, spawning numerous successful offshoots and maintaining a consistently high standard of quality throughout with both the writing and the artwork. This is largely down to Mignola remaining close to his creation and attracting the sort of talent that complements the concepts and the character. One of the creators he works closely with is Duncan Fegredo, whose artistic take on Hellboy is possibly the best since Mignola himself. Utilising Mignola’s mastery of shadow to create mood, Fegredo adds in a greater layer of detail and subtlety to make the character, and the stories, his own.
In The Midnight Circus we explore part of Hellboy’s childhood, where he’s been under the protection of Professor Bruttenholm for a few years although within the fenced confines of the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense. Although the staff, by and large, seem to accept his other-worldly appearance, he is still frustrated by being treated as a child in a world of adults, so when the opportunity presents itself he swipes a cigarette and a match and, under the cover of darkness, sneaks beyond the perimeter fence for a cheeky puff. Yet before he even gets a chance to light up he is distracted by the thump of a drum and discovers a grand but dark circus some distance away. It’s at this stage that Fegredo’s art switches styles, and together with David Stewart’s exceptional colouring, creates a completely different, yet magnificent, tone.
The circus is eerie and the performance Hellboy witnesses is one of flame with glimpses of the unsettling. There is clearly more going on here than at first meets the eye, and it just may well be here for Hellboy’s sake alone. When Hellboy is shown the sideshow spectacular he latches on to the Wooden Boy and the story of Pinocchio, only for that story to steadily become his own.
Despite his appearance, Hellboy’s success lies largely in our ability to empathise with him, and that is used to the full here with him as a child, as lost as anyone else would be at that age out of their comfort zone. But it’s Fegredo’s illustration and Stewart’s colour that really nail it, turning a good book into an exceptional one as we get a little more of Hellboy’s back story and another glimpse of his diabolical destiny.
It’s a hardback, so you’ll pay a little more for it, but it’s well worth it. One of comicdom’s gems of the year.
And if you liked that: See if you can get hold of Fegredo’s Enigma
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