Twenty Years of Hellboy...

I don't write a great deal about Hellboy, because I tend to think of it and its related titles as "new" comics.  That's how fresh it is.  But the first issue came out way back in March, 1994, which is well within the timeframe for this particular nostalgia-leaning blog.  And I'm a big fan of the property and a lot of the people who've worked on it, creator Mike Mignola foremost among them.  Man, I dig that cat's art and the weird pacing and tone of his writing.

Mignola is the reason I picked up a Hellboy book in the first place-- and it was the Seed of Destruction collection.  At the time, I really didn't care what the story was about or the characters in it.  I just wanted to look at Mignola's drawings.

Mignola first entered my particular radar through his work on the Topps comic book adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola's overwrought vampire flick Bram Stoker's Dracula.  I picked it up out of curiosity because I'd enjoyed the movie in a campy kind of way and I've always appreciated a Dracula story, any Dracula story.  I didn't realize I was actually about to encounter a new artist with whose work I'd become obsessed in the way I had with people like Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Al Williamson, Alex Toth and Mark Schultz over the years.  The comic book, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Mignola and inker John Nyberg, blew the movie away, not the least reason being you don't have to deal with the hammy acting and outrageously bad accents when you read it.  Hooked on Mignola from that point, I started copying his art and looking for his other comics.  But I went about it in a kind of leisurely fashion, because I didn't buy Seed of Destruction until probably around 1999 or 2000...

And wow, oh wow, when I finally got around to it, I found it was full of stuff that fired up the endorphin-receptors in my brain for a full-on rush of pleasure and good feelings.  And from then on, I had to buy every single Hellboy and Hellboy-related comic book I could get my hands on.  Nowadays there are so many to choose from, too.  The cast has grown over the years and there are spin-offs and off-shoots and even "other world" type, out-of-continuity stories.  Two movies, a cartoon.  Toys.  Other people are involved in the writing and drawing of Hellboy and his friends, but it's still Mignola's world.  He has the knack of choosing the best and most appropriate collaborators, too.  There are stories I've enjoyed more than others, but I can't think of one that's a real misfire or mistake.  Twenty years of quality entertainment.

I think this is the ideal model for how to handle comic book characters, creators and publications.  Kudos to Dark Horse for letting Mignola run with this and not trying to screw it up and put their imprint on it the way some other companies might have.  When you think of what could have happened to Hellboy if Mignola had been more successful pitching it to a certain other company before landing at Dark Horse... YIKES.

I should have blown up this blog with a major Hellboy write-up back in March, and I should definitely write more about the 1990s-era Hellboy books here.  And post some art from them because it's so damned cool to look at.

October is Spookey Month: Few things in this world are as perfect as a Hellboy story written and drawn by Mike Mignola

Comicbook.com has a fun little interview with Mike Mignola where he talks about a variety of things including the possibility of Hellboy 3.  It seems the third installment is dependent on Mignola himself raising about $150 million.

Actually, I offered to pay for the whole thing myself if they'll write me in as Hellboy's ne'er do well brother-in-law.  Or sister-in-law.  Hell, boy, I ain't picky.  As long as this movie gets made, and as long as we keep getting Hellboy comics from Mignola and all the brilliant people he chooses to collaborate with.  Yeah, fan-type gushing.  It's been a hard day.  Just trying to end it on a positive note.

Speaking of positive things-- I was a little worried Spookey might have split, but they recently posted a message that they're still together and plan to play again in the near future.  Some sort of unspecified problem stands in the way, but I'm sure they'll lick it and get back to rocking.  It's a dream of mine to finally see them live!  In the meantime, here's another video we've probably seen before but we're definitely going to see again because it's great:

October is Spookey Month: "Hellboy," yet another Halloween reading recommendation

Mike Mignola (1994)

Can you believe Mike Mignola's Hellboy has been around for almost 20 years?  Dark Horse published the debut of four-issue miniseries Hellboy:  Seed of Destruction way back in March, 1994.  In this modest little monster-fighting story artist-creator Mike Mignola and scripter John Byrne introduced us to one Hellboy, the burly half-demon with sawed-off horns and a blue collar approach to the supernatural.  Gruff and something of a smart-ass, Hellboy would just wade in and punch the terror right out of whatever monster, ghost or alien turned up while his buddies at the BPRD (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, the government agency Hellboy works for and housed by) would handle the brain work and clean up afterwards.

After two decades and so many miniseries and titles it can be hard to know where to start with Hellboy.  It doesn't help matters Mignola's chronology jumped around depending on whatever inspired him to write and draw a particular story.  In one book, Hellboy could be in Ireland in 1959 or 1961, then show up in Japan in 1967 for the next, then guest star in an issue of The Goon telling the story about Japan.  Or something like that.  Working it out this way, Mignola and his later collaborators have built a massive narrative spanning decades, continents and even the galaxy, with characters dying and other joining, menaces burbling up from the background, others springing full-blown into the foreground plot.

From his earliest days fighting un-frozen Nazis and their spiritual leader Rasputin-- yes, the historical Rasputin, the one Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and some concerned friends poisoned, shot, beat and drowned in 1916-- to various creatures from European myth, with an underpinning of H.P. Lovecraft, Hellboy now inhabits a sharply defined world with all kinds of incidents and epics.  So how do you jump into this world?

Sorry, I'm not much help there.  I'm not a continuity junkie or obsessed with minutia.  All I ask is whatever story I'm reading to be internally consistent.  And I tend to prefer Mignola's moody, sometimes peculiarly random one-offs with Hellboy himself to the longer apocalyptic tales generally starring the BPRD cast (althought these are good, too).  That's why I say, "Don't worry about a reading order with Hellboy."  My advice is just buy the Seed of Destruction collection and start there.  Move on to whatever story catches your fancy.

In short, you must do as you see fit.

For me, Hellboy pushes a number of buttons.  Let's examine four of them in detail.  Mignola's art is the first.  I love bold, heavily stylized art, the kind where you say, "Now there's a nice drawing, just the essentials" rather than take in something that looks like it was traced from a still frame out of a movie, or a swimsuit magazine.  Mignola's work has become more essentialist and geometrical over time and that's my bag.

The second is my love of the weird and fantastic.  Since earliest childhood, I've read books about cryptid animals, UFOs, alternate dimensions, the Bermuda Triangle, ghosts, urban legends and the like.  I've always loved stories where teams of people investigate the unknown and come to grief, from Kolchak to Venkman, Stantz, Spengler and Zeddmore to Mulder and Scully to Hellboy and company.  I'm a friend to them all.

Folklore and myth make the third.  Mignola draws heavily on European traditions and Lovecraft, but he has broken with this on a few memorable occasions.  Two are team-ups with horror art legend Richard Corben-- Makoma, informed by African folktales and The Crooked Man, set in the Appalachian Mountains of the good ol' U.S. of A.  Both are lovely and strange.  How can anyone not read these?

And the fourth is a specific story.  As an ex-pat living in Japan, "Heads," set in Kyoto, is a lot of fun in a very personal way.  Mignola claims in his introduction to the story not to know a whole lot about Japan.  Yeah, but his art, as influenced by Alphonse Mucha, who himself drew on Japanese ukiyo-e and their extremely linear forms as it is by European woodcuts, Jack Kirby or P. Craig Russell, makes him particularly apt for this kind of material.  I wish Hellboy would revisit Japan sometime in the near future.  If Mignola or any of his collaborators need some first hand experience and reference-- or just want to hang out while doing a research trip-- well, now, I know just the blogger to volunteer his services!

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Monsters #1: A Comic Review

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Monsters #1
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writers: Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Art: Tyler Crook

I've missed an issue here or there of Dark Horse's B.P.R.D. series, so I'm not exactly sure why Liz Sherman is hanging out in a trailer park and living with a couple of goobers. But I've never objected to any Liz-centric story, neither this one nor the recently completed "The Dead Remembered" two-parter starring the character as a teen. Liz has always been a troubled and largely unhappy person. Just a guess here, but it probably has something to do with having killed her family via pyrokinesis as a child. Little things like that tend to make one prone to bouts of mopey behavior.

We love her, though. B.P.R.D. stories are full of fanciful freaks like Abe Sapien and Dr. Johann Kraus, but writers Mike Mignola and John Arcudi have never neglected the human element. They make Liz darkly fascinating and each new story reveals previously unimagined facets of her spiky personality.

So why is she living in low-rent exile among a bunch of drunks and wife-beaters? I'd better pick up some back issues, or maybe Mignola and Arcudi will reveal the answer in part two. In the meantime, they delve into a setting right out of one of the better episodes of The X-Files, with the supernatural elements coloring the edges until the gory cliffhanger on the last couple of pages. As far as I know, we've never met any of these secondary characters before, but Mignola and Arcudi bring them to vivid life with just a few lines of dialogue, despite tagging them with names like Jubal and Jeb. What the heck is Liz doing there?

But oh holy moley, we've got a live one here in artist Tyler Crook! While the amazing Guy Davis will certainly be missed, the creative team has recruited someone with a similar aesthetic-- a kind of loose, Alex Tothian look, perfectly attuned to the story's trashy setting and to its ominous undertones of encroaching menace; according to Dark Horse, he lists the great Milt Caniff as an influence and it shows. You can't go far wrong following Caniff, Frank Robbins or Harvey Kurtzman. Crook makes each character a distinct individual, with shabby fashion sense and deadbeat body language-- slumped over while carrying a case of beer, thrusting hands in pockets, angrily kicking at a frog in the rain. With a few impressionistic gestures here and some heavy black-spotting there, Crook's art-- much like that of his art influences-- is both caricatured and yet has an almost documentary-like believability thanks to a sharp eye for details such as cereal boxes on top of refrigerators, magazines downturned on the floor to mark the reader's place and beer cans tossed in the corner. This is my first encounter with Crook's art and I'm already in love with it. Colorist Dave Stewart-- a longtime series stalwart-- gives it a subdued palette that serves Crook well, all drab neutrals except for the red of Liz's hair.

I hope Crook has a long, long run on this series. People need to see the man's work! I'm looking forward to part two for that and to have all these intriguing questions answered. Or not, because much as I enjoy what Mignola and Arcudi do with their scripts, Crook's going to keep me buying B.P.R.D. for as long as he handles the art.

Hellboy: Being Human: Comic Review

Hellboy: Being Human
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Richard Corben

Mike Mignola and Richard Corben team up for the sixth time* for this touching and gruesome tale in which Hellboy takes his despondent pal Roger to South Caroline so they can investigate a haunted mansion. Roger has every reason to be down—he’s a “15^th century homunculus,” which apparently means he’s a big, rock-like naked guy with gray skin, an iron cap riveted into the center of his chest and some kind of block and chain chastity device covering his crotch. Roger appears to be and acts more or less a man, but he’s still figuring out what it means to be human. Hellboy, the human/demon hybrid with a blue collar attitude towards his job of punching folkloric creatures and Lovecraftian space demons, is the perfect guy to give Roger advice on the topic.

The haunting involves animated corpses, a witch and long-held family grudges. Mignola balances the weirdness with an affecting portrayal of a confused Roger, who despite his strange origins possesses an innate decency. He desperately wants to do the right thing, if only he knew what that was. As with "Makoma" and "The Crooked Man," Richard Corben proves to be an ideal match for this kind of moody, dark Hellboy story. He’s not the kind of artist who gets hung up on classical anatomy, but he gives his stumpy characters solidity and presence with his unique method of modeling, a kind of mottling or stippling. Whether it’s Roger’s stonelike skin or the mossy corpses and fungi-covered walls of the mansion, Corben is your go-to guy for sickening textures and miasmic atmospheres. Looking at these pages you can almost smell the damp plant-life and epic decay surrounding Hellboy and Roger. Corben's characters wear facial expressions that are frequently borderline comedic, but then he treats you to a stark panel where someone’s had a hole blown through her chest with gore draining out in a big red gusher. Yeah, unique. There’s not another Corben out there and we should treasure the one we have.

While I certainly don’t begrudge Mignola his forays into comedy, these uneasy tales of generational crimes and identity questions are the ones that stick with me long after I’ve closed the comic. It’s nice to revisit the tragic Roger and find Mignola amplifying those themes by exploring his character. Knowing Roger’s fate makes this story all the more poignant. "Being Human" is touching, grotesque and altogether memorable, the kind of stand-alone issue that's as rich if not richer than most multi-parters. It makes me long for the days when creators knew how to craft a story in one perfect, self-contained unit.

*Correction. Someone pointed out this isn't the third collaboration between Mignola and Corben. With the economy being the way it is and all, I've had to let go a lot of my staff. The fact checkers were the first to get pink-slipped. And while corrections are welcome and appreciated, for future reference only I am allowed to be snotty in this blog.

Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish: Comic Review

Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Kevin Nowlan

Writer Mike Mignola and artist Kevin Nowlan do an EC Comics/50s sci-fi flick riff in this beautifully drawn and colored but somewhat slight and unaffecting story about Hellboy investigating cow mutilations in the American midwest. While the Hellboy has always had its light moments—a quip here, a funky monster there, the main character's name—and a diversion into full-on comedy starring Big Red himself is more than welcome after a spate of stories where he’s suffered horrifically, this one never becomes more than simply that, a diversion. For a title character Buster Oakley remains a cipher; it’s really hard to care much for his wish or whether or not he gets it. In fact, I’m left confused as to what his wish really was. He seems to be a nerdy Satanist, but he ends up the scientific plaything of flying saucer jockeys. The tenderhearted farmer who tears up when confronted with the grotesque carcasses of his beloved livestock has much more substance and the story might have been better served making him and his wife the focus.

The bulk of the plot has Hellboy fist-fighting old school macrocephalic aliens (Nowlan misses out on the chance to make them ultra-grotesque Wally Wood-type octopus creatures). The notion of aliens advanced enough to cross time and space reduced to having to duke it out with an intruder is amusing, and Hellboy's wisecracks are fun. It’s certainly nice to see him doing something other than moping about his destiny or fighting creatures from European folklore. I have to applaud Mignola for changing things up as far as Hellboy's paranormal punching bags go. I love vampires, werewolves, witches and the Fair Folk as much as anyone, but there are still Yetis, skunk apes, lake monsters, Moth Men and Mad Gassers of Mattoon out there as well. How about Hellboy going a round or two with the hodag? Alom-begwi-no-sis? Kuchisake-onna? Hanako in the toilet?

A little more substance would have elevated this team-up of powerhouse creatives. Ultimately, "Buster Oakley Gets His Wish" feels like one of those Gen13 Bootleg out of continuity one-offs; those were generally superior to the actual series, but in this case the expectations are just too high. But hey, sometimes even Hellboys just wanna have fun.

Today's lesson: Buying comics is an expensive habit!

Yeah. I'm thinking about giving up comics and taking up cocaine again. Just kidding. I've never used cocaine. As far as you know. But today was payday, so I went to JJ's Comics & Cards, my local comic book store, looking specifically for comics featuring Cassandra Cain in her new costumed identity of Blackbat. Which means-- choke!-- I bought a few DC Bat-books! I even bought some I wasn't sure she was in just to make certain I didn't miss even a fleeting glimpse or hint!

But I spent close to 40 bucks. They had stuff there I didn't even know I wanted until I saw it on the shelves. Here's what I ended up buying:

Batman: Gates of Gotham #1: Cass in civilian clothes, towards the end of the issue, just as promised. The way artist Kyle Higgins draws Cass-- her anatomy, her clothing, her body language-- and the way writer Scott Snyder handles her mode of speech do nothing to define her as anything more than just another generic superhero person, which lead to something of an anti-climax. Here's hoping a closer reading proves me wrong.

Batman Incorporated #5: No discernible traces of Cass in civvies or otherwise, but lots of Batwoman. I like Yanick Paquette's art with these Michel Lacombe inks. Solid figurework, nice facial expressions.

Batman Incorporated #6: Chris Burnham's art combines the thin, scribbly lines of Frank Quitely with the deranged facial expressions of Ito Junji. I'm not sure I like Bruce Wayne looking kind of crazed, but there's Cass as Blackbat more than making up for it with a nearly silent action sequence. Leave it to Grant Morrison to give us Cass doing what she does best-- whomping on people and leaving no room for discussion. Liking the pointy little mask and cape, can't tell much else about her costume.

Conan: Road of Kings #5: I passed on King Conan to pick this up. No Cass whatsoever, just Conan in his warrior prime as written by Roy Thomas. Which reminds me-- I need to turn to the back for "The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob," the biographical Robert E. Howard strip by Jim & Ruthe Keegan. It's always excellent. Cass's appearance in this book cancelled due to licensing difficulties between Dark Horse, Time-Warner and Conan Properties International. Too bad. Thomas's take on her would have been interesting, to say the least.

Hellboy: Being Human: Mike Mignola script, Richard Corben art, complete story in one issue. Of course I bought this! No Cass appearance, Cass not referenced in dialogue.

John Byrne's Next Men #6: The return of one of my favorite-- yet somehow frustrating-- titles from years past. Byrne's telling a convoluted time travel mystery but the story feels somehow beefy. I get that same full-belled satisfaction from reading it I used to get from comics, rather than the sense I've eaten a single cookie a lot the flimsy, underwritten books give me these days. Not saying Next Men is gourmet fare so far, but it does hit the spot. Will I be able to keep it down? Cass appears briefly disguised as a Union soldier. Sure, the figure's tiny and consists of just a couple of ink swirls, but I'd recognize her anywhere.

New Mutants #25: "New Direction!" huh? How about A direction? This is a book I've stuck with because I like Dani and Xi'an so much, but it's been nothing but fragments of crossover stories, frequently with the New Mutants team barely appearing on the pages of their own book. And it got off to such a decent start before being consumed by the needs of modern epic storytelling. I'm not quite ready to give up on it yet, but if this book is just going to be a bump on the ass of the greater X-franchise with no stories to tell of its own, then I'll be bailing soon. Very soon. Rumors of Cass taking over as team leader in this issue prove unfounded.

Red Robin #23: Another false alarm. No Cass.

The Rocketeer Adventures #1: The lead story is all about Cass and explains how she came to choose "Blackbat" as her new super-name. Yeah. I didn't make that up. It's... really... I bought "cover 8," the Dave Stevens variant. I also hate multiple covers. But this one is a beauty. And inside there are stories by Mike Allred, John Cassaday and Kurt Busiek. Busiek's just happens to be illustrated by Michael Kaluta. Are there really people who have to collect each and every variant cover of a single issue? Do those kinds of stunts really help publishers? Or do readers just choose their favorite one and go with that? If it's the latter, I'm all for it because it's kind of interactive. If it's the former-- YUCK. But what a gorgeous book! John CASSaday, but no Cass Cain.

X23 #10: I've always hated this X23 character. Well, not the character, just the concept. To me, you need one Wolverine, one Batman, one Superman, one Wonder Woman, one Spider-Man. Not clones and extras. Which may sound strange coming from someone who bought a bunch of comics based on the erroneous assumption a former Batgirl would be in each and every one of them. And I've always been indifferent towards Jubilee. Then a funny thing happened. One day the comic store had nothing I particularly wanted so I picked up the first issue of the Wolverine and Jubilee miniseries. Jubilee as a vampire? DOUBLE YUCK. DOUBLE SURPRISE! It turned out to be a pretty compelling story, quite well-written by Kathryn Immonen and nicely drawn by Phil Noto. It made me care about Jubilee for the first time. So when I saw a comic featuring vampire Jubilee fighting X23 with art by Sana Takeda? I felt perfectly willing to climb off my high horse and--

Cassandra Cain is back in action!

I'm happy with all these purchases, and I'd openly shill for JJ's Comics & Cards because of the royal treatment the owners have always given me-- and they're just so nice-- but these books cost me around 36 dollars. Actually, if I want to keep up my comic book reading habit, I'm probably going to have to give up a lot of other little things. Like electricity, clothing and food. Or I may have to resolve once again to stick only to collections, trades and archives, and then only very selectively.

But there's that Cass factor. Yes, there is.

Tough times at Dark Horse?

I hope not, despite the story I just read on Comic Book Resources that informed me Dark Horse Comics has laid off a number of staffers. Well, I'm not qualified to comment on industry economics or business decisions, but I want to wish all involved the best of luck. I know all too well what it feels like to stress over job hunting and financial insecurity, so I'm offering my sincere hopes and wishes that at least some-- if not all-- of you had some advance warnings and were able to get some paying gigs lined up in time! And as a fan of Warren's horror titles, I especially want to single out Shawna Gore for her work bringing us the Creepy and Eerie Archives books and the new Creepy magazine. I can't thank her enough for being part of the move that enabled me to buy these crazy things!

It makes me nervous for the company's future as well. It seems they've launched a lot of titles recently-- the Doctor Solar and Magnus books, the new Dark Horse Presents, Dollhouse, Let Me In, plus all those traditional favorites-- Star Wars, Hellboy, Buffy and Robert E. Howard comics. And the digital comics. I thought they were doing pretty well with all that product expansion. Just goes to show how much I know. Maybe they need to bring back Dr. Giggles.