I tend to appreciate the Hellboy short story collections more than the longer plot arcs. These shorter works tend to concentrate on tone and character, and ironically, are much more effective at building the world than the explanations and exposition of the longer pieces. It is easy for an author who is concentrating on the endpoint of a long plot to forget about the moment, writing in expectation that the conclusion will justify all that came before.

Even when an author does endeavor to set an interesting tone, filling the rest of the story with wordy explanations works against that tone. This was precisely what happened with the previous Hellboy collection, Strange Places, which was almost comically filled with detached exposition. I would have thought that this was anathema to a mystical, unknown world of magic and horror, and it pretty much was.

So, I was excited to return to some shorter works in this collection. I usually like the quirky, non-endings in these tales, drawing more on fairy tales than modern action plotting, but in this collection, they were much sillier than usual, which was a bit disappointing. Then again, after revealing the secret workings behind your magical world, it is hard to keep things mysterious and unusual.

The final story in the collection, 'Makoma', is drawn by another artist, and it is much more unusual and expansive than the rest, perhaps owing to Mignola freeing himself up to concentrate only on the writing. I didn't mind another artist taking a stab at Hellboy, even if I am fond of Mignola's expressive draughtsmanship.

I'm looking forward to the next volume, even if it is a longer story; perhaps Mignola will be more capable of handling both story and setting as a sole writer. I also have nothing but praise for the new series artist, Fegredo, whose work on Milligan's Enigma helped to create one of the most powerful and experimentative stories ever to appear in comics.