Hellboy: Darkness Calls by Roq

Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Duncan Fegredo
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Length: 6 issue limited

Mignola digs deep into Russian folklore to give us Darkness Calls, a bold step away from Hellboy's (relatively) safe days as the big gun in the B.P.R.D.'s arsenal of paranormal investigators. After leaving the Bureau and spending time in Africa (The 'Makoma' story arc), Hellboy finds himself in jolly old England visiting a friend of his late father, Trevor Bruttenholm. After going for a walk all HELL breaks loose around him, as is often the case. Encountering the Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless and Vasilisa the Brave, HB must maneuver his way back home while still alive. No easy feat with hordes of skeleton warriors on your trail.

Duncan Fegredo is the only other artist, beside Richard Corben, that Mignola trusts with his baby. The trust is rewarded. Fegredo's art has grown in leaps and bounds since his days penciling "The Enigma" for DC Vertigo. His Hellboy is not so much a copy of Mignola's but a bit of an extension. Familiar to fans but very much his own. His work in Darkness Calls leaps leaps off the page and I can see why Mignola chose him to take over artistic duties on this pivotal series. He doesn't disappoint.

Darkness Calls is the start of the story arcs in which Hellboy must make some serious decisions with serious, world altering consequences. He's no longer just going to Egypt to shut down a mummy or to Gary, Indiana to quell a pack of werewolves. No, now his fate, which up to this point he has refused to embrace, is calling for him. So as he jaunts around England with covens of witches and then to the Thrice Nine Kingdoms of the Baba Yaga's domain, Hellboy begins to see that though he may refuse the fate that his birth has thrust upon him, he can never lead a normal life. He'll either be the savior of the world or it's destroyer. That kind of conflict makes for great reading. So pick up Darkness Calls and spend some time in Mother Russia with Red. It'll be a blast.

5 out of 5!