Hellboy: Seed of Destruction is an excellent introduction to the character and to the world of B.P.R.D., as well as a fun pulp action/horror story in its own right. However, in just about every way, Wake The Devil is better. Rasputin returns with another presence from beyond calling the shots, but Mignola also works in a few more historical or legendary figures, including Dracula (or a stand-in for him), Baba Yaga and the Furies, as well as introducing new characters like the goddess Hecate, the evil industrialist Roderick Zinco, the "brain in a jar" mad scientist Herman Von Klempt and several other well-characterized Nazis. Mignola also adds a touch more overt humor to this volume along with some terrific banter and a sense of history between Hellboy and his B.P.R.D. compatriots, hints more at Hellboy's mysterious destiny without veering into "chosen one" cliches and basically maintains and even widens the eclectic mix of genre influences while seeming more focused and sharper in general. There's nothing really wrong with Seed of Destruction, but Wake The Devil is really where Hellboy comes together.
One of the things that really struck me about Wake The Devil was that the characters seemed to be having more fun, and that comes across in some ways as Mignola having more fun as well. Flying solo without Byrne as scripter and obviously bolstered by the success of his first Hellboy effort, Mignola seems more confident of himself, more sure that Hellboy is what he wants it to be, and that confidence comes across not just in a more complicated backstory for the villains but in a general sense of fun in the characters. There's even some outright slapstick, such as Hellboy's jetpack failing or Abe's sardonic "Hellboy's blowing things up again" when Castle Giurescu goes up.
What I really liked, though, was a slight shift in the dialogue. Though it's not so noticeable as to be jarring, Mignola does sort of get away from the more bombastic and Silver Age elements of Byrne's scripting in this volume, replacing it with a more wry tone that veers from scholarly to regular guy with ease. Quotes from William Blake and pompous, insane rants by Rasputin exist alongside good Hollywood banter like Hellboy heading off to Romania in search of good food with the Bendis-like turn of phrase "paprika chicken, baby!" Hellboy in particular benefits from an infusion of a little more humor and confidence, trash-talking his opponents and muttering to himself in self-deprecating tones when he gets himself into trouble. Of course, it's not just in the humor that the dialogue shines, as Mignola has a gift for the villainous turn of phrase, as when Nazi villainess Ilsa utters the memorable bon mot "Oh, I would cut open the world to see it bleed." Now that's what I call a bad guy line of dialogue!
Leaving aside the manner of the storytelling in terms of dialogue, Wake The Devil also benefits from a complexity of design. The plot that Hellboy goes out in search of is tracking down a vampire who may or may not be the legendary Dracula. In the course of this investigation, he runs afoul of his old nemesis Rasputin, who is tied in with an Elder God-like "Dragon" and a trio of Nazis who originally helped raise Hellboy, as well as a mad scientist villain that Hellboy had a run-in with in a previous short story. What's amazing isn't just that all of these villains (a good half dozen in all) are so interesting and well-fleshed-out on their own, but that Mignola's tale links them all, from vampire to Nazi to mad monk to mad goddess to Russian witch/goddess, and it all just flows so well together. There's a sense of a tapestry behind all of this, and if Mignola hadn't figured out by this point just what Hellboy's actual destiny was and how he tied into all of this, well, his script certainly had this reader fooled on that score.
The only aspect of Wake The Devil that isn't an improvement on Seed of Destruction is the artwork, because it would have been very difficult to improve upon. Mignola does open the book up a little, shedding some sunlight and open spaces on the B.P.R.D. and getting them out of creaky mansions and swamps exclusively, but he maintains the mood with European castles, forgotten labs and haunted forests too. The change in colorists, from Chiarello and Hollingsworth to Sinclair, is also a slight change but can't really be called an improvement, as all are expert colorists and Sinclair's work here is excellent, perhaps a little stronger on the brighter, sunlit aspects than Hollingsworth or Chiarello might have been but otherwise just a continuation of the strong coloring we've already seen. In addition, Mignola has some spectacularly choreographed action scenes in Wake The Devil. Probably the most memorable is Hellboy's brief but powerful showdown with Giurescu, but his fight with Hecate or the Furies is equally impressive.
