Review: ‘Miss Truesdale And The Fall Of Hyperboria’ #3 Blooms

Welcome to the table,

Do you know the story of Saint Leonard the Dragon Slayer?

The Æthelweard’s Chronicle of 770AD mentions that “Monstrous serpents were seen in the country of the Southern Angles that is called Sussex”. The story goes that St. Leonard went out looking for these creatures and was injured in his conflict with them and where St. Leonards’s blood fell to the ground, Lilies of the Valley grew.

Some time later there is a story where Hellboy, the bearer of the Right Hand of Doom, travels to England in 1954. His adoptive father, Trevor Bruttenholm, sends him to meet with the shady at best Osiris Club, and they ask him to slay a dragon. They tell him the story of the Saint Leonard Worm, a dragon slain by a monk fourteen hundred years ago and Hellboy wanders off into Leonard’s wood to find the beast and slay it.

As Hellboy is exploring Leonard’s wood, he approaches a clearing with a statue of Saint Leonard and while he is looking at it the dragon attacks him. The dragon wraps itself around Hellboy and the statue, and in doing so the force in which the dragon constricts Hellboy becomes so great that it breaks the statue, and the stone sword the statue is holding falls off and kills the dragon.

As Hellboy bleeds from this fight, where his blood hits the ground, Lilies of the Valley grew.

Okay, now let me tell you about Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperboria #3.

Written by Mike Mignola, with art by Jesse Lonergan, and letters by Clem Robins, this book continues to absolutely delight on every conceivable level.

The issue starts with the hand of the angel Anum, encased in stone, wielded by a living vessel that visits rage upon the kingdom of Hyperborea. Then, once liberally drenched in the blood of the people of the fallen city, it hurled itself from the walls of the city and was destroyed… shattered into pieces.

Well, all save the right hand of course. 

The story continues to pull the threads of then, now, and forevermore together as the consciousness of Miss Truesdale, in all their incarnations, begins to understand what they are and we get glimpses of how they fit into the larger Hellboy Universe.

As someone who has been reading Hellboy and all of the various Hellboy Universe books since very early on, this book has some moments that feel so important to the greater web of lore. Like, secret histories and the importance of what is happening in these pages is actually blowing my mind. I feel like I can’t even fully talk about any of this until the next issue is about to drop just based on what could be spoilers or take moments away from the readers who love this world as much as I do.

So my thought on it all is going to go a little like this…

Those who are versed in the lore of the Hellboy Universe are going to find the contents of Miss Truesdale and the Fall of Hyperboria to be nothing short of a revelatory addition to the ever-weaving threads of a world full of wonder, horror, and spellbinding mythology that is as timeless as the charicters who drive it.

I will leave you with this story. An ax bearer, who was bitten by a viper, is taken to a funeral skiff and sent down the river into the wild places beyond Hyperboria. The blood from her wounds soaks into the soul of the dirt placed within the skiff, and where her blood fell, Lilies of the Valley grew

Until next time, this book is important. I can feel it in my bones.