Hellboy vol. 2: Wake the Devil.

The second miniseries in the Hellboy canon is Wake the Devil. In it, the personal story of Hellboy’s destiny is mixed with a classic Romanian vampire, Nazi steampunk menace and Rasputin. In fact, a great story.

First, the Nazis that survive the fall of the regime are very strange. They are mutilated and have supplanted the missed limbs with mechanical devices. A commando send them a message from the master, and the master is no other but Rasputin himself. Ilsa, a nazi leader that has succumbed to the all-powerful Rasputin’s women seduction. She will follow her true master to the end, and that would be seen.

B.P.R.D. headquarters are on the move and send a group of their agents to fight the more than possible menace of the nazi’s to recover the vampire serum program from back the year 1944. Everybody races to Rumania.

Hellboy is a commando in himself. The other agents act in little groups. Hellboy goes into direct confrontation from minute one. Perhaps the worst idea from this miniseries, letting little place to character development. Our hero reacts as a force of nature, while his colleagues behave in a more logical way.

In its way to kill the vampire Giurescu, a Dracula for this series, Hellboy fights all kind of menace. It makes me think the way women are the bad guys of this story. First, the women of the vampire and a flock of half-birds half-women, then a half-woman half-snake, then and Iron Maiden with the essence of Ilsa and the tail of a snake. And, lastly, Baba Yaga and his fellow witches.

There is this Raganarok, this waking the devils that Rasputin tries to achieve by sending Hellboy directly into the prison-hole of the dragon or Ogdru Jahad. It could be easily remembered as the levitating stones where several demons are confined. Hellboy horns start growing, waking the demons and then Hellboy get ridded of the horns, stopping the witches scheme.

Meanwhile, the B.P.R.D. agents are being exterminated (do not worry, not a single main character suffers any permanent damage). They fight almost everything, finding the homunculus that would turn into a B.P.R.D. agent. I wrote about him in a previous post.

Hellboy wins, making Rasputin angry. But now we know more about our hero and I sure want more.