Nothing As It Seems In The Fiendish Family Feud — Reviewing ‘The Crown: A Tale Of Hell #2’

Welcome to the table,

The second chapter of The Crown: A Tale of Hell takes us into the chaotic and corrupted life of the demons who call Hellboy kin.

Let’s get into it.

Written by Mike and Todd, the brothers Mignola, with art by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell and letters by, you guessed it, the always busy Clem Robins, this second chapter takes us deeper into the double dealings of the house of Azzael and the denizens of Hell.

At the end of the last issue, Hellboy’s brothers, Gamon and Lusk, were put on a collision course of conflict by not only the foul machinations of their parents, but the soured words of their sister as well.

Gamon is a simple but physically imposing warlord who is easy to anger and even easier to manipulate, while Lusk has a keen mind and a wit as sharp as a backstabber’s blade. Both are pawns in a power play between their parents, and in truth, as is the nature of all things in hell, not all is as it seems, even in this fiendish family feud.

Gamori, Hellboy’s sister, arrived at the end of the last issue to ask Gamon who had sold him out, only to have to provide the less-than-quick-witted Gamon with the answer. The answer being, his mother herself.

What Gamori brings is not selfless, though. She is not telling her brother of his imminent betrayal to save him. What she is doing is serving as a spark to ignite a game already put in progress by her parents, a game that her uncle Astaroth is also slightly worrying at the edges of, as well, because in hell, nothing is ever as it seems.

–Spoilers Follow–

Gamon goes after Lusk. As the two clash, Hellboy’s father Azzael muses over what a life wearing the crown of Hell could be like. While Azzael is lost in thought, from the shadows lurks the seemingly constant villain of the well-storied world of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.. The demon Astaroth reminds Azzael that he has made too many enemies and there is no way in hell he would be able to wear the crown; a fact Azzael is painfully aware of.

Lusk and Gamon continue to clash, and Azzael, seeming to be at his wits’ end, quells all of the conflict by sending his wife back down into the pit to be chained to a rock for another hundred years.

His sons, Lusk and Gamon, are reprimanded and sent scurrying back to their corners of hell. Azzael is left with Astaroth, who suggests, without suggesting that it would be a surprise if Azzael could have a child with a human and produce a worthy heir to the crown.

The final page of this issue is a bit of a surprise for me.

The last page of this issue shows a witch running through the woods. I believe this witch is none other than Hellboy’s mother, Sarah Hughes.

Then we find out that while this is the final issue of The Crown: A Tale of Hell, the story itself will be continued in The Kingdom.

I’m really excited about this development because I somehow missed that The Kingdom was even coming out, so I expected this to just be a nod to issues of Hellboy I had already read and not more of the Faustian family history I have been enjoying in these panneled pages.

Until next time, this is the kind of thing I really enjoy about the Hellboy comics. History is never reinvented. Things, once they occur, are locked into canon. There is so much more we are not aware of that happens between the moments of haunted history we already know about that the space between spaces could continue to drop new issues for generations to come.