Review — ‘The Serpent In The Garden: Ed Grey And The Last Battle For England’ #1

Welcome to the table,

It is no secret that I’m a fan of the Mignola-Verse. The various bits of lore and legend that have formed around the world of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. have taken on a mythical life of their own that I personally think will, one day, sit alongside the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft as entries into mythical spaces of mankind. One of the characters I feel will be central to at least some of those stories is the man known as Edward Grey.

I was fascinated to learn that there would be a series — the last supposed series at least for a long while — featuring Sir Edward Grey coming to comic shelves near me. This nineteenth century paranormal-investigator-turned-immortal-occult-wizard-turned-true-believer-in-Hellboy, and his capacity to do good and cast off the destiny that so many had hung around his neck like an infernal albatross, has been a favorite of mine since his introduction, so I was looking forward to this seemingly penultimate run and as of the end of the first issue I am not disappointed.

The Serpent in the Garden: Ed Grey and the Last Battle for England is written by Mike Mignola with art by long time Ed Grey artist and Mignola collaborator Ben Stenbeck. Dave Stewart does some amazing work with the colors here and Clem Robins slays on lettering, giving the whole offering a very dreamy and mythical feel.

The three issue series starts with Gruagach of Lough Leane, a fairy creature and long time adversary of Hellboy now trapped in the body of an anthropomorphic giant man boar, being brought by Morgan Le Fay to her castle, where Gruagach is informed that Alice Monaghan is the new Queen of Avalon, the last place on Earth that has resisted the burn of the flame Hellboy unleashed when he died a second time.

This is huge for a multitude of reasons, but the truncated version is that Gruagach’s tried to steal Alice when she was a baby and Hellboy stopped it. Later in life, Alice sided with Hellboy against the forces of darkness, eventually earned the crown, and is now sat in charge of the last bastion of hope in the world.

While Gruagach is seeking approval or glory from Morgan Le Fay, something has been stripped from him for the entirety of Hellboy up to this point. Meanwhile, we are treated to Edward Grey, in an idyllic home in a small cottage in the woods of mythic Avalon where Queen Alice has called upon him to fulfill a debt by serving as a protector of the realm.

I love the setup here because it truly feels like all the right moves one sees happen when an ancient warrior is called back for one last fight. There is an air of finality to this whole proceeding and the weight of it all feels beautifully bittersweet and properly somber as these characters have been part of my life for such a very long time.

Gruagach finds himself wandering the shattered halls and brambles pathways of Morgan Le Fay’s castle when he encounters a fountain that contains a glowing goldfish. It is the part of Morgan Le Fay she has removed from herself, the soft parts of her, the kindness, the forgiveness, the things she thinks make her weak. The goldfish, who Morgan Le Fay calls her sister, recalls the secret history of Morgan Le Fay to Gruagach, her youth, her first love, her shedding of the goldfish that is her soul so she can commit herself to dark magics, birth her son Mordred, have the questionably good king Arthur, father of Morgan Le Fay’s child, slain. And still, somehow, in all her machinations and twisted puppet string pulls, she lost of the crown now worn by Alice.

In a handful of pages this conversation does a brilliant job of bringing new readers not only up to speed on the history of Hellboy up to this point, but also gives a very nice Mignola-flavored take on the lore of The Once and Future King and the mythology of King Arthur, something that was a huge part of my childhood.

The story shifts back to Grey in the court of Queen Alice where he is transformed into what I can only describe as The Green Man, a humanoid creature of leaves and briars who has served as a symbol of harvest and rebirth.

I was stunned when I saw this. There is a story about the Green Knight who was almost impossible to best, even by the Arthur’s knights, and the Green Man is this forest god in some interpretations, so here we have the dark court of the fairy folk setting up Gruagach as their would-be champion and Edward Grey transforming into the Green Knight, the icon of rebirth in a story that is titled The Serpent in the Garden: Ed Grey and the Last Battle for England.

The weight of this book feels immense with the forces of the light and dark fairy courts establishing a grudge match between Edward Grey and Gruagach, two iconic characters from the long and lauded history of the Hellboy universe. Each page turn feels like you are watching the secret future history of the world unfold and regardless of the outcome, the landscape of the universe will forever be changed by the time this three-issue series draws to a close.

I loved everything about this issue and I can’t wait to see what the next one brings.

Until next time, I have theories about the skull masked figures, but I am keeping them to myself for fear of spoiling things if I am correct. I could spend every day reading the mythology that Mignola has created and be a happy man.