REVIEW: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D - The Seven Wives Club
Hellboy and the BPRD - The Seven Wives Club is out November 11, 2020.
By Zack Quaintance — Hellboy is in a bit of an odd spot right now. The overall narrative that has largely pushed the character and its world forward basically since its inception has gotten a pretty definitive ending, leaving new Hellboy books to fill in holes in the past. This is being done by a few miniseries, but when it comes to the big red guy himself, it’s almost exclusively being done these days by prestige one-shots. And that’s what we get with this week’s Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club.
This book is a reunion between creators Mike Mignola and Adam Hughes (long-time franchise letterer Clem Robins providing cohesion with the rest of the Mignolaverse). Mignola and Hughes are the team from the 2017 Eisner Award-winning prestige one-shot story, Hellboy: Krampusnacht (available via comiXology Unlimited). That book was a real treat, a winter/holiday season-themed eerie story that plays to the same strengths all the best Hellboy stories do: mythology, a poignant twist, and juxtaposing the fantastical with Hellboy’s no-nonsense reactions. It was also all rendered with Hughes’ fantastic linework, which gives any comic a striking and timeless aesthetic.
This new book looks just as good (if not better) in terms of line art, and the story here once again plays to all those same strengths. Getting back to my point from the start, this is a tale necessarily set in the past, set in the early ‘90s during the height of Hellboy’s bruising, ghost/monster-busting days before the events that sparked a slow-burning apocolypse (and a losing war for the B.P.R.D. began). This is, essentially, meat-and-potatoes Hellboy as far as the concept goes.
But that’s not a criticism, not when the story is as thoughtful and well-executed as this one is. I recently read the entire Hellboy narrative, every last issue. Doing that is an incredible experience, and one I highly recommend, but if there is something that feels left untouched, it’s nuanced stories within Hellboy’s past, independent of any of the major threads of the bigger modern day cataclysm. These stories have been doled out in the past somewhat sparingly, providing quick glimpses of what Hellboy’s day-to-day was like for the many decades he was an active agent preceding all the craziness.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club easily ranks among the best all-time Hellboy contained ghost/monster-hunting stories. Key to this is the setup of the creepy abaondoned medical facility setting with the creepy murders…and we get this hook quickly, at the bottom of the first page, with mythos that’s so interesting it avoids feeling like any kind of info dump: “…Walter Wakeman — lived here back in the ‘20s. Had seven wives or girlfriends or whatever in different parts of town, and for some insane reason decided to get them together one night in his house. He locked them in a room, set the place on fire and hanged himself laughing.”
That spirals into a couple exploring the legend with a gruesome result…and we’re off!
Hell of a setup. The other storytelling choice that makes Seven Wives Club work well is the pairing of Hellboy with rarely seen B.P.R.D. field agent, Pauline Raskin (field agent since 1987). The more subdued characters Hellboy gets paired with have often crucial to these sorts of one-offs, and Pauline Raskin is a strong one, a good human compliment to Hellboy. Within the context of their investigation we get weird mother-son stuff (a great horror tradition), some gruesome reveals with the cartooning, and some even more gruesome flashbacks that give us the surprise and misdirection of a good ghost story.
This is a comic that reminded me of all the reasons I love Hellboy: the depth of the ideas, the attention to details, the stunning art, the clever-yet-self-aware writing. It’s all in this one-shot, which left me hoping Mignola and Hughes reunite at least once more to complete a stellar trilogy of tales.
Overall: Another great contained Hellboy one-shot story that plays into the franchise’s strengths — deep mythos, great artwork, and fun juxtapositions of gruff Hellboy with bonkers ghost/monsters action. 9.0/10
REVIEW: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. - The Seven Wives Club
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Adam Hughes
Letterer: Clem Robins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Mignola! Hughes! The team behind the Eisner Award–winning one-shot Hellboy: Krampusnacht spins a new ghostly yarn! Hellboy comes to the aid of a young girl whose ghost hunt goes wrong, and a visit to an abandoned medical school reveals sinister layers to a grisly, long-ago murder. Stolen cadavers, vengeful spirits, and more abound in this one-shot. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola reunites with fan-favorite artist Adam Hughes for a spirit-fueled scream fest sure to excite old and new fans alike!
Release Date: November 11, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. - The Seven Wives Club
Check out our Hellboy Universe Full Reading Order!
Check out more great comic book reviews!
Read more great comic book reviews!
Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.
