Review by Frank Plowright

If there’s anything to be taken from The Devil You Know to date it’s what a Herculean task was achieved by Kate Corrigan in keeping the B.P.R.D.’s powerful personalities united and focussed. Previously kept apart via the different missions seen in earlier books, the fractures are beginning to show now they’re together and Kate is no longer around.

As of the end to Messiah, the one big change to the dynamic is Mike Mignola and Scott Allie returning Hellboy, which surely took everyone by surprise when The Devil You Know was originally serialised. His story was thought to have ended with the Hellboy in Hell sequence, but both Hellboy and B.P.R.D. are prophecy-driven, and while those prophecies have proved to be accurate, as yet they remain unfulfilled, with one about Abe Sapien especially disturbing.

This isn’t the Hellboy of old, though. He’s morose, reflective and distant, and the terse dialogue Allie provides in this instance serves him well. Noting that he’s still in Hell is a particularly powerful statement concerning what’s going on around the B.P.R.D. Varvara has played a very long game, but she’s now taking advantage of a devastated planet to move toward her final aim, and demons from Hell are now being unleashed from Manhattan.

Mignola draws the first few pages before handing over to Sebastian Fiumara, with Laurence Campbell illustrating the final two chapters (sample art). They’re very different artists, but unified through the colouring of Dave Stewart. Fiumara is more naturally at home with the energy of flowing action than Campbell, but the latter’s snapshot approach shows events equally well. When it comes to atmosphere, though, Campbell’s the go-to choice, supplying crumbled ruins and burning pits for the cast to wander through. There are some differences regarding how they depict the cast, with Campbell sticking to the established human proportions of Abe while Fiumara’s Abe is altogether more alien and disturbing, larger and always posed as if having a different skeletal form.

Not everyone who begins Pandemonium sees out a graphic novel that lives up to the title, and a spectacularly gruesome fate awaits one long-running character. It’s far more compulsive than Messiah for being a progression rather than a gathering, and the final battle awaits in Ragna Rok.

Alternatively the entire saga is collected as The Devil You Know Limited Edition (hardback) or Omnibus (paperback).