Hellboy And The B.P.R.D.: Night Of The Cyclops ~ Hellboy Gets To Play Tragic Greek Hero [Spoilery Comic Review]

In Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops, our titular hero gets to play the role of a Greek hero straight out of mythology. Complete with a tragic ending too.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops ~ Details

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops is the latest of the Hellboy and the B.P.R.D series of comic books. Mike Mignola wrote this particular issue along with Olivier Vatine. Vatine is also the artist, colorist, and cover artist; with Clem Robins as the letterer. Lastly, Dark Horse Comics is the publisher for this comic book, as they have been for the Hellboy comics in general.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops went on sale on May 25, 2022 for a retail price of $3.99. You can purchase it directly from Dark Horse Comics, whether you want the digital version or the physical version.

Warning: spoilers for Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops below. If you want to read about how Hellboy does in a Greek myth, then stop here, and come back once you’ve survived the Olympian wrath.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops ~ Plot Summary

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops begins with Hellboy concluding a mission to arrest a minotaur, breaking both of the minotaur’s horns in the process, and only getting a damaged jacket in return. After making sure said minotaur gets on the H-34 “Chocktaw” helicopter that will take him to Athens, Hellboy decides to stick around because his supernatural Spidey senses are tingling.

Hellboy’s instincts turn out to be right when he encounters and decides to follow a talking goat who calls him Aegipan. His journey reveals the talking goat to be a female satyr in disguise, who leads him to her village of other satyrs. She takes him to her grandmother, who reveals that they aren’t actually satyrs. Well, not originally.

Apparently, they used to be humans. Unfortunately, one of them turned out to be a very pretty woman who caught the eye of Aphrodite, but in a bad way. Not even for doing or saying anything. Just for catching the eyes of some of the male gods, and taking some attention away from Aphrodite. Thus, she sends her son Eros to curse the woman into falling in love with a local actual satyr. However, Eros refuses after falling in love with the woman herself. Thus, Aphrodite curses the entire village into turning into satyrs, and sends an annual cyclops to ravage the village every harvest season. What cyclops, you might ask? Well…

Of Goddesses and Half-Demons

The aforementioned cyclops chooses that moment to appear and start wrecking things. Hellboy takes exception to this, especially when the cyclops takes the satyr girl. He grabs a conveniently sharp piece of stone column, and rams it into the cyclop’s eye. Cyclops dead and satyr girl rescued, you’d think it’s the end of the mission, right? Well, no.

Aphrodite herself shows up (as a multi-story tall spirit woman, no less) along with Eros. She tries to squash Hellboy and the satyr girl alike, but crafty Eros talks her out of it at the last second. She even agrees to dispel the curse she put on the village. However, the price she demands is that Eros fire one of his arrows into the satyr girl’s (whose name is revealed to be Aelita) heart and make her love “Aegipan”. Eros seems to agree that this is a better alternative, and fires at Aelita. Hellboy steps in the way by accident though, and the arrow hits his heart instead.

Hellboy wakes up to the Chocktaw pilot trying to wake him up. He initially thinks it’s all a dream, until the Chocktaw pilot yanks a golden arrow out of his chest. Hellboy is medevaced onto the helicopter, leaving behind a hidden and heartbroken Aelita. It seems that even without the arrow hitting her, she still fell in love with “Aegipan” after all. However, Hellboy flies off into the sunset, with only that golden arrow as his souvenir from this adventure. And so ends Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops ~ The Good

As a fan of Greek mythology, I approve of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops. Not just for the appearance of satyrs, cyclops, and even an appearance from Aphrodite herself to boot either. The plot itself feels pretty mythological. It’s really as though Hellboy found himself playing the role of a classic Greek hero, with all the tragedy it implies. The Ancient Greeks really did love their tragedies, and Hellboy makes a good (if surly) Greek hero. Better than almost all of them, really. I swear, those Ancient Greek “heroes” were all actually violent psychopaths, but that’s a subject for another day.

The art of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops. It looks very recognizably and classically Hellboy, and yet, Olivier Vatine did a remarkable job adding his own subtle touches that distinguish his art from Mike Mignola’s art.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops ~ The Bad

I have 2 complaints about Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops. My first complaint is that it’s very short. Too short, in my opinion. It’s only 24 pages long. I could finish the whole thing in minutes. This means that there’s just not enough time to flesh out scenes or the plot. I feel like this story could’ve been better if it was a 2, 3, or even 4-issue long comic book series, rather than just a one-shot. They could’ve just divided the story between the beginning when Hellboy was following Aelita, when Hellboy was exploring the village with Aelita and meeting the grandmother, the climactic battle with the cyclops, and then the other climactic “battle” with Aphrodite, although that was more of a curbstomp on the goddess’s side than anything else. I feel like the story could’ve benefited more if it was in that format.

My other complaint is how little character development Aelita got. It felt like she was a one-note character who got virtually no character development at all, rather than the deuteragonist Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Night of the Cyclops implied she was. Granted, this is more of a consequence of the short story than anything else. If they had made the comic longer, I’m fairly certain the problem with Aelita wouldn’t be present. Alas though, we’ll just have to settle for Aelita being a one-note side character.

Source: Dark Horse Comics