WARNING: this post contains severe spoilers for the end of Koshchei in Hell, the Hellboy universe in general, and the seemingly ultimate fate of the mighty Sir Edward Grey.
It always seemed a bit unfair for Sir Edward Grey, the premium occult investigator of the Victorian age in the Hellboy universe created by Mike Mignola and friends. After a lifetime of service, he becomes a literal shadow of himself, a form-less and ruined shade of a man.
He's still hanging in there, still dispensing advice and offering any help he can, but he is a ghost bound by arcane magic, and knows his fate.
But then, right at the end of the recent Koshchei In Hell series by Mignola and Ben Stenbeck, there is a little grace note for old Sir Edward. The series is more about the the redemption of the title vampire, but there is room for something else.
Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder, is given new form and an old role as the protector of England, in all its forms. No mere wraith, but a reborn man of vim and vigour.
There are a lot of Hellboy mini-series rolling down the line at the moment, even after the world literally ended in the final pages of BPRD. I genuinely can't keep track of them all, so I just get the ones that Mignola writes solo, because that seems to be the heart of the saga.
And I found this tiny moment at the end of this series to be a lovely note, especially after Sir Ed had just accepted that he was no longer a man, but a creature of Hell.
In a series about the absolutely inevitable end of the world, but there are these touches of grace and hope and light. Even as the world burns, it reforms. And England remains as a magical place, cut off from the rest of the world, but it still always needs a protector.
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