WIBR: Hellboy vol. 10: The Crooked Man and Others

I wasn’t expecting much from this volume, now that the title character’s ongoing story had FINALLY gained some direction and momentum, but it turned out to be one of the better short story collections this series has offered up.  That’s mainly due to the title story which has Hellboy trekking through the Appalachian wilds with a former soldier returned to settle some old scores with the titular Crooked Man.  Not only is it an engaging story, touching on bits of American folklore that I wasn’t familiar with, but it’s also one of the creepiest stories I’ve read in this series thanks to Richard Corben’s art.  It would’ve been even better if Hellboy had more of a part to play — his involvement is almost incidental to the story. 

As for the others, Josh Dysart/Jason Alexander’s “They That go Down to the Sea in Ships” is a fun flashback teaming up Hellboy and Abe Sapien on a job to find the pirate Blackbeard’s skull, and Mignola’s return to writing and drawing with “In the Chapel of Moloch” is similarly enjoyable with Hellboy beating on a nasty demon, for the sake of art.  While the final story, a Mignola/Duncan Fegredo collaboration, fleshes out an interesting throwaway idea from “Darkness Calls,” it ultimately winds up being weird for weirdness’ sake.  Even with that miss, fans of the series will find that this will tide them over nicely until the next proper volume.