Hellboy: Emerald Hell

This is a solo Hellboy novel, and a Dark Horse publication, so
more like something you might find in one of the anthologies, than the BPRD mission based Pocket books.

In fact, for this story Hellboy could really have used Swamp Thing's help. These Southern swamp dwellers, and their diets of squirrel, snake, turtle eggs, and worse are getting to him. "You people are starting to freak me out a little," Hellboy admitted. "How about if if you save the creepy speeches for the next guy who coems down the road and just let me get on with it?"

He appears to have wandered into the middle of what could be a Manly Wade Wellman tale. I don't think this is necessarily an accident, either:

"Hellboy called, "Lament! John Lament! Get your hillbilly butt up, I need some help here!"

Yes, to oppose an evil undead preacher, Hellboy has the help.

"Where could an Appalachian-wandering mouth-harp-plucking, former-child evangelist, backwoods drifter learn all this?"

...

"For an instant Hellboy thought he saw a reflection of silver in Lament's eyes, like a trail of mercury floating by, and then it was gone."

Probable homages aside, Hellboy has come to investigate why a man's daughters have gone silent and barren, all six of them, and work out how it ties in with the other locals, the nasty preacher and the murderous brothers he has as underlings, and Lament himself.

There's another daughter, by a different woman, who can talk, but is nine months pregnant and vanished into the swamp. This girl is the key to it all, and who they have to find if they can get past the monsters and not be eaten by alligators.

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