Hellboy visits the baby that he saved years ago from being switched with a changeling. She's matured into an enchanting Irishwoman, and the sparks between the two fly off naturally paced dialogue. Mignola measures every word spoken. He times pauses to allow the reader to feel the impact of what was said. He makes the talk relevant to the plot, and at the same time he uses speech to draw the characters together. Duncan Fegredo aids Mignola by imbuing realistic gestures to "the girl." She brushes back her hair in one panel, a tell-tale sign that she likes the other conversant. He creates through her an illusion of eye contact with Hellboy that strengthens the growing bond. Even when Hellboy isn’t featured in the panel, she looks up at...
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Remember how, earlier in this decade, Duncan Fegredo's work was being completely wasted on the abysmal Ultimate Adventures comic by Ron Zimmerman? Even back then, Fegredo's artistry almost made that comic worth reading. In "Hellboy: The Wild Hunt," Fegredo's work looks even better, and coupled with Mike Mignola's majestically sad story, this is a comic that you simply must read. In his Hellboy work, Fegredo spots blacks like Mignola but still maintains his own storytelling habits. It's Mignola filtered through Fegredo's sensibility, and I like it just as much as Mignola's own work on the character (and since Mignola is one of the best artists to ever work in comics, that's saying a lot). And as a writer, what Mignola mostly does is get...
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