Review by Ian Keogh

In Victorian London Miss Truesdale seems shy and insignificant. She has, however, lived past lives, one of them as a warrior woman toward the end of the Hyperborean era. Given this information she’s able to access her past life and relive it in her mind. In 1883 she retires to her room to the great consternation of her friends, while in the past she battles as Anum Yassa, whose unfortunate circumstances are revealed.

Jesse Lonergan brings both Victorian times and the Hyperborean era to convincing life, the former with austere surroundings and clothing, and the latter with distinctive creepy architecture and mystical atrocities such as snakes bursting forth through mouths. There’s cause to contrast both eras on the same page, and Lonergan’s cross-cutting between them establishes Miss Truesdale’s journey to inhabit the body of her long distant life, and a chapter-long expansive battle with all sorts of monsters is impeccably delivered.

Since Hellboy ended Mike Mignola has been dancing around the edges of the series, filling in here and there, and the purpose of Miss Truesdale’s experiences appears to be as the vehicle for detailing how Hellboy’s origins lie with the gods of the Hyperborean times. The severed hand of the god Anum falls to Earth, and it sure looks mighty familiar. However, in either incarnation Miss Truesdale never transcends an archetype. In comics at least, the wan and withdrawn Victorian woman is a lesser seen creation than the warrior, and working out her suppressed anger in a different identity is interesting, but never really highlighted. Instead, we could be seeing Red Sonja.

The epilogue section actually featuring Hellboy has a greater resonance, and Mignola has some faith in Miss Truesdale transcending this material as she returns in The Rise of Man.