Something Spooky — ‘Hellboy: The Wolves Of Saint August’

Welcome to the table,

“Once a man kept a wolf in his stomach and the wolf slowly ate him from the inside out. And the wolf grew. Finally, the shell of a man could no longer contain the wolf…” 

That is a passage from “The Wolves of Saint August.” As many of you may know, Hellboy and the greater Mike Mignola universe are very near and dear to my heart. When I am asked, though, the majority of the time I think I will say that “The Wolves of Saint August” is my favorite Hellboy story.

It is Mignola’s first time taking on — in his own words — the “full writing job” aspect of comic creation. On the hoves of the first Hellboy miniseries, “Seed of Destruction”, “The Wolves of Saint August” was serialized in Dark Horse Presents #88-to-#91 in 1994. It was later collected into one book with some new pages to fill in a few blanks on the page.

The story was inspired by an Irish legend Mignola found, in which St. Patrick curses a group of pagans so that every seven years they turn into wolves. This fusion of legend, history, and a demon paranormal investigator with a large stone hand and a love of pancakes and cigars really comes together in this twisted tale.

The tale kicks off in 1994 when a priest arrives in Griat, a small village in the Balkans of Eastern Europe, holds an Easter service at a crumbling chapel taken back by nature … and the site of murder most foul. At some point, years before the story starts, the villagers trapped the royal family who owned the building in the crypts below it and tortured them, their retainers, and their children for sport. The priest is informed of this cruel act by a villager who, — once he has led the priest down to the crypts and explained this horrific happening to both he and the reader — transforms into a massive werewolf and makes short work of the priest.

It’s one of those hallmarks of Hellboy comics that I have come to love. This thread that, in a handful of panels, paints a world where monsters and mysteries abound. You don’t need to see it all happen. The few shadowy drawings on a page, and a bit of dialog, paint a sordid and sorrow-filled history that leaves a mark on the world and causes all manner of malignant monstrosities to move in. You get ghosts, skeletons, and a flesh-shredding monster without needing mountains of build-up. I know Mignola says in the intro that there are “plenty of parts” that he winces at. But it’s precisely the rough edges and pulp aspects of this story that I love so much. It just drops you into the middle of things and you are along for the ride until the bloody end. And it does get bloody.

Hellboy and Dr. Kate Corrigan show up nine days after the event with the priest to find the whole village slaughtered or near their beds. It seems some wild animal brought death to the entire tiny town in a single night. Kate and Hellboy start their investigation making note that the police did a rush job and the plan is to bulldoze over everything soon. Clearly an indication that everyone would rather leave whatever echoes, living or dead, that haunt this place buried with the bloody past.

Kate shares a story in which a monk named Philp of Bayeux stumbled across the village back in 1214. He heard a bell ringing in the castle and was drawn to the sound, so he made his way to the chapel. When he arrived, he did not find his god, but the god of another pantheon being celebrated. He cursed those in attendance to turn into wolves every seven years. The town changed its name to avoid the Inquisition and destroyed the bell tower so there would be less of a landmark confirming the story that Philp of Bayeux spread far and wide.

Kate and Hellboy go on to meet ghosts, encounter the cursed spirit of the recently dead priest, and eventually — as all great Hellboy stories showcase — come face-to-face with the monster. In this case, the man who splits open his skin as if he is unzipping a flesh suit, and strolls forth from the mortal shell a hulking wolf-like beast. Hellboy and the werewolf fight and, as is the nature of such things, Hellboy bests the creature. It leaves the landscape basically unchanged: the village is still uninhabited and no one is there to benefit from Hellboy’s success. As a reader, you are left with this sense of emptiness and loss as you realize it was the judgment of a Christian ideology that condemned non-Christians into becoming creatures of fang and fury.

From a moral perspective, even if this is all fictional, I certainly don’t condone allowing werewolves to run rampant, eating a whole village, and cutting down a priest by any means. It is not lost on me, though, that in the confines of this story, the real horror — at least for me coming from where I come from — is the judgment of a priest who, uninvited mind you, showed up in someone else’s village and got pissed off they did not play with the same imaginary friend he liked to play with. This guy got so mad that he used his magic powers to turn this family into werewolves and then, rather than stick around and be real cool about it or even try and help anyone, he just left them and the surrounding villagers to their own devices to be slaughtered.

Outside of the deep-rooted theological and moral conversation this book can conjure up, the art in these pages is some of Mignola’s best. It all comes together in a brilliant artistic confluence of shadow and form with dynamic color that really strikes home the style that has made Hellboy such an iconic staple in the comic space for all these years.

Hellboy, B.P.R.D., and the expanded universe went (and often still go) into this big-picture, world-ending, almost Lovecraft-toned state of things. The world is cast into this catastrophic landscape of frog creatures and black flame fanatics. I love all of that to be sure, but this story hits home for me because of how small it is. It’s quiet, it’s brutal, and it has a ton of moral and ethical implications laced into very few words and a ton of really cool, but not hyper-realistic images. It’s a nightmare and a daydream spilled on the page; akin to a dream you try to remember upon waking but only have glimpses of. The story is there, in all its parts, but it feels half-faded in a way that makes it timeless and timely every time you return to it.

For me, it is one of the perfect stories for a Halloween season.

Until next time, I’m tired…