Summary: As a hurricane bares down on Gotham Batman and family plan to evacuate the city. It appears he has a plan in place for everything...when out of no where a two story giant erupts onto the scene drastically changing the team's plans. 

Plot: With two writers involved it's often difficult to say who did what but based on the speed of the plot in King's previous issues I'm going to wager that Orlando did most of the heavy lifting. This isn't a smack at King, his character work with Gotham and Gotham Girl was pretty decent and the action was well written but the pacing put the plot way into the decompressed end of the storytelling spectrum while in this issue the pacing was quick and crisp with out relying solely on fight scenes. Balancing strong character moments while keeping a compressed structure is a hard balance to strike but Orlando managed to toe the line pretty well giving us some good insights into Hugo Strange's character with a few short panels while moving the story forward at the same time. And while so far we haven't been given much that makes this version of the Monster Men story unique from the past iterations, and other than, "Hey, there are giants attacking the city!" no real motivation for the story was given making it feel a little hollow, but for a beat em' up monster mash I suppose it was an entertaining enough start. 

Art: Although the pacing is good, I think the real strength lies in the art. I've only seen a few panels of Riley Rossmo's work in the past so it's interesting to get to see him do a full issue. Generally, I tend to like a cleaner look to the art but in some situations a scratchier look, like the one Rossmo usually utilizes, really fits the bill nicely and a more horror themed story like this one is just one of those situations. Rossmo's distinctive look goes a long way to creating a mood of lurking danger and the inking and his use of a dot-matrix style for the shading creates a great Sunday morning comic strip feel to it that's really fun. On top of that the contrast between the muddy, muted earth tones and the sparing use of bright reds and blues used by Ivan Plascencia is truly eye catching.

Conclusion: While there's nothing here that elevates this to the level of Matt Wagner's Monster Men it's interesting enough to keep me going which is high praise considering my initial negative feelings when the cross over was announced. While I still feel it's too soon to interrupt the pacing and character work being done at the early stages of these titles if it is going to be done at least the story seems like it might be half way decent. I don't know if I'll end up finishing the story through all its tie ins but it get's at least one more installment from me to make a connection.

Grade: 6/10 (Plot: 2 Art:4)

Summary: The end is nigh! With the Ogdru-Jahad drawing ever closer to BPRD headquarters Liz and Johann desperately try to hold it back while the base is evacuated and just when all hope is lost allies spring from the Earth in a last ditch effort to drive the beasts back!

Plot: It's difficult to know where to start here, with the end literally in sight in the comic the pacing here is beyond frantic. The characters involved are all spread out( Liz and Johann holding the monsters at bay, Kate overseeing the evacuation, Payna freeing her mutated pets and contemplating her long existence and Varvara the demon and Iosif the Russian BPRD head returning from Hell ) and their rolls and motivations are so disparate that the flashing back and forth between them really lends a grand scale to the goings on and gives you a frantic pace without making any one element feel rushed in the least. It's like viewing the work through the light of a flashing siren, the pressure is just palpable. And on top of that there is just this overwhelming sense of finality to the narrative, events happen and you just know they can't be walked back, the train's rolling down the mountain and it can't slow down, can't turn back and there's only one end in sight. I've been hard on Mignola's conclusions of Hellboy in Hell and Abe Sapien but it feels like when the end comes here I won't have the same misgivings about it feeling incomplete. 

Art: While Mignola and Arcudi deserve every amount of praise thrown at them for developing this run away train, end of the world feeling let us not forget how well Campbell and Stewart add to that feeling as well. The end of the world is a messy place, full of of fire and brimstone, and with their broad, messy inking and gritty, textured colors you really feel that. It's like they actually took the ashes of the apocalypse and painted this book with them. You see their art and you almost feel it in your lungs, the smoke and cinders burning you as you breath with the characters. The sense of mood and atmosphere that every page just oozes is pitch perfect.

Conclusion: While I hate to see them go I'm loving watching them leave. We've been building towards this end ever since Mignola picked up his pen and wrote the first Hellboy story so it's bittersweet to know the end really is coming for these characters(though fear not he can explore the past for years in books like Hellboy and the BPRD and BPRD Vampire) the feelings invoking by actually seeing it happen are powerful.

Grade:10/10