I love it.
Wow guys, I just read the issue and now your posts and to be honest my thoughts on the ending is a little bit different.
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I am more like "That's it?"
I guess I expected a longer ending cycle with not everything quickly resolved. I knew the Osiris Club still had a role to play and I was waiting for it but it is done so quickly.
And to be honest I find the ending a little depressing. Sure I knew Mr Mignola mentioned that the world would never be the same again after these events but I still had kind of hoped for a different outcome.
Silly perhaps but I had hoped that the aliens/Followers of the Left Hand? (I keep mixing up the ones that went underground and the ones that left Earth) would show up and at least evacuate a portion of humanity into space. (my excuse is that I love the idea of space travel and the idea that humanity is now reduced to a pre industrial population living in insides of the Earth is depressing for me.I had hoped that some would have been zooming across the stars a la Star Trek )
Heck I had hoped that some may had been able escape to the parallel Earth which has been mentioned in the series from time to time.
So am I disappointed with the franchise in general? No there is sufficient stuff that I do like and I am looking forwards to read all the stories "in between" when humanity still ruled the Earth but I am not so sure if I am going to read the "conclusion" any time soon again.
Well Mr Mignola hinted that there may be a few more stories set after TDYK, so perhaps we get some stories of how people will try to adapt underground or what Hellboy will do next. We know Pluto is still around.
BTW, what happened to Varvara? I must have read over what happened to her.
It has been a nice ride and I know we still have a part to go but we now know what will happen to the main characters so the stories in between will definitely have to rely on what surprises are introduced.
It's very fatalistic, no doubt, and I think it seriously affects the re-readability of the whole series. But I think I still liked it?
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I am also slightly confused about Varvara's fate.
As for the rest, it was all foretold. It was beautifully done, but there wasn't really anything that we hadn't been long told would come to pass.
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My guess is that Rasputin used her form to recreate himself. Her physical self would be gone. I mean, if it wasn’t, then she either ran off to the hollow earth with everyone else, or she got burned up.
It may have been a story with no surprises, but that is a surprise in and of itself. Abe was told in his own book that he would never make it back to the hollow earth, and that he had something else to do. Liz was always an instrument of the apocalypse. Her final scene as a non-amber encased living being was a direct repetition of her scorching the hollow earth previously, making that first instance a vision or future echo the same way all of her prophetic dreams of the apocalypse were.
For Hellboy, Hecate said they would be “together” at the end of things, the pair of them being representatives of life and creation (Hecate) and death and destruction (Hellboy.) That reinvention of the recurring aspects of many ancient mythologies, where the earth itself grows from the blood of an ancient God (telegraphed by flowers growing from his blood all those years ago) isn’t just intelligent, it’s sublime.
Thanks to these final issues, you could read all of the mignolaverse as the birth story of an entirely new mythology, like how the Norse Gods’ world grew from Ymir’s blood, or that the Norse Ragnarok led to the creation of our world, or how Gaia and Cronos slew Uranus to create the world, but then Zeus slew Cronos to create a different world.
The fact that Mignola and Allie didn’t throw us significant curveballs here show a maturity of storytelling that rewards us for being patient and attentive readers. Yes, we knew where we were heading. Yes, we were rooting for our heroes to make it out alive. But, it was beautiful, and special, and great and I cannot wait to see what comes next.
I mean, when a long-running story comes to an end then the ending will always to some extent affect the way we view the story as a whole. If the endings is as definitive as this one then that seriously impacts your experience when you revisit the story. And because this ending is also very fatalistic then it's hard to root for the characters on a re-read when you know that their efforts will ultimately be futile. I think most of us like to think that we have agency and we can make a difference but this story ultimately goes against that notion. It's not a sad ending per se, but it doesn't care for the wants, needs or goals of the main characters.
Loved this particular issue. But as a whole TDYK really didn’t grab me as much as I was hoping. Maybe it’ll read better in one long read, but so many little stories are chopped and scattered together that month to month it was difficult to ever really become attached to any
The whole thing felt very impersonal. Characters were dispatched left and right, with seemingly little care or thought.
A lot of this felt like it was just checking off the list of things it had to do, rather than doing those things in a thoughtful or meaningful way. Hellboy ends up the only one we really get any sort of thoughtful end with. Some of that is fitting, as the world is literally coming to a violent end, and that's fine for the characters in story, but less satisfying for readers of the story.
Really that's my only complaint. Everything else was mostly what we'd long been told would come to pass.
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I did really like that Abe, Liz, and Hellboy all transformed into something else that brought about the new world. I think that was a lovely touch.
Absolutely loved the last issue. This was the ending I was hoping for from Hellboy in Hell. I will say though, it was a better ending for Hellboy than it was for BPRD.
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as a series, I think this could have worked better without Hellboy. Having the BPRD focussing on Rasputin and getting people underground, followed by a one or two issue Hellboy series focussing on the aftermath. Imo having Hellboy come into the BPRD world felt awkward and distracting.
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Okay, I dig that. I don’t know if I agree that the characters wants and needs weren’t addressed. Liz, Abe, Howards, O’Donnell and Hellboy all went into the final fight with an express goal. For many of them that goal has been the same for a while. Over Hell on Earth it changed from save everything to save as much as possible, and by The Devil You Know it is save anything. Anything at all. The whole of B.P.R.D has been an exercise in futility, because we know the world is going to end.
I’d say the story ends on the hopeful note that mankind’s time on the surface earth may be over, but that mankind hasn’t been extinguished, and that life goes on.
What did everyone make of Hellboy having two eyes before he enters Hecate’s iron maiden?
I thought it was a wonderful issue, a perfect ending to the series.
What do you guys think happened to Alice and the new world tree?
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Did it burn up with the rest of the world? That would be kind of sad
I have, like, the last year's worth of BPRD comics sitting in a stack waiting to be read and I won't be picking up the new, final issue until this weekend. I'm going to try to avoid comic news sites and the like on social media to prevent being spoiled until then (Hellboy bring back was and ceremoniously spoiled, after all).
Wish me luck!