Review: ‘Miss Truesdale And The Fall Of Hyperborea’ #4 Showcases Why Mignola’s Lore Is Timeless

Welcome to the table,

Mike Mignola is the kind of storyteller that not only tells you a story full of thrilling adventures and deeply humanizing moments punctuated by life-or-death struggles, all laced with the wonder you only experienced as a child reading the works of Vern or Howard for the first time… He also has this way of weaving a deeper lore that feels so complete and overarching and secret that it makes you feel special for getting to experience it.

Miss Truesdale and The Fall of Hyperborea showcases why Mignola is not only a spectacular writer who elevates storytelling with each offering. The lore his work encompasses and inspires will be remembered for ages to come.

This penultimate issue of Miss Truesdale and The Fall of Hyperborea holds nothing back. Timelines collide and fold in on themselves and we get to experience this strange overlapping tale of how the legend of a hero begins.

Jesse Lonergan and Mike Mignola really deliver something special with this issue. The moments where the timelines bleed into each other and overlap are so brilliantly laid out on the page. Panels bleed into panels and narration and dialog overlap in such a way that the eternal hero narrative that this series has built towards pays off in the most satisfying way imaginable.

From the beginning, I have known this series was destined to be something special. The story felt like it had a weight to it, that when balanced alongside the rest of the Hellboy lore, seemed to be going to a place that was going to be full of revelations.

The comics of the Mignola-verse are stories that live and breathe and grow and evolve. In other worlds and universes when someone dies you kind of know that all it takes is a new editor or good box office reviews and all of a sudden they are back from the dead with a mullet and some goofy new costume.

The rules of retcon and restructuring though do not plague a world where Hellboy died and Panya lived. When things happen in the confines of these stories it feels like they matter. So the little moments are great and fun and the big moments are world-changing and wonderful, but more than that the revelations of lore feel so much bigger and more impactful because you know that a year down the line someone is not going to come in and say “Ahh… it was Loki in a silly hat and the fourth wall breaking ninja who likes Mexican food is actually the hero of the month this month because his Funko-Pop figures are selling well.”

All of these stories share one timeline… one world….

The weight of that and the joy you experience, when you get to uncover new parts of the secret history of things that started so long ago, is powerful.

I came back to comics because I yearned for the storytelling I missed back when I still enjoyed reading them. The B.P.R.D. omnibuses reminded me of just how much I love this kind of story. Miss Truesdale and The Fall of Hyperborea reminded me just how fantastic the lore that Mignola has created is.

Howard‘s Conan is timeless. Lovecraft‘s Mythos is timeless. Burroughs‘s Tarzan is timeless. In the same respect and with the same reverence…

Mignola’s World of Hellboy is nothing short of timeless.

Until next time, may you find things that truly bring you joy in this life and any lives you live beyond this one.