Hellboy

Okay, so I got into Hellboy through unusual means. Specifically, through reading a Wikipedia article on Russian folklore back in April. One thing led to another, and my interest was piqued. Soon after, I bought the first volume to read on my iPhone. I haven't looked back since.

I now own the first nine books (only two of which I had to pay for- I did a lot of favours for a friend over the summer, favours that he repaid with graphic novels) and both feature films. In short, I'm hooked.

I think the thing I like best about the franchise is that it's totally my idea. Okay, so Mignola created the character when I was still learning how to talk, but the series is more or less the kind of thing I would make up. If Mignola hadn't created Hellboy, I would have, eventually. I love it when I find a storyteller whose work so closely fits my mind.

So, yeah, I love this stuff. I'm going to start reading my way through BPRD in a little while, but I'm most excited about the current series, "The Storm". Any other fans of the Right Hand of Doom and its erstwhile owner?

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You're going to love BPRD. It hits some highs that are just as good as, if not better than, the main series', and the latest mini was one of the best.

Cool. I look forward to more Abe Sapien- I love the character, and I was saddened when Hellboy left the Bureau, since that prevented the two characters from interacting, at least for a while.

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I love the HB-verse to death as well. 'Twas the first movie that got me into it, but I don't care for Hellboy II.

I've just been buying the TPB's rather than individual issues. I've got the Hellboy books through The Crooked Man and Others, and the BPRD books through The Universal Machine, and that Lobster Johnson miniseries.

I didn't write any of that.

Ah does anybody remember the name of the little Russian ghost girl?

Vasilisa the Beautiful.

I didn't write any of that.

I just picked up BPRD: Garden of Souls and 1946 on my way home today. Kickass.

Haven't actually had time to read them yet.

I didn't write any of that.

I love Hellboy to death. I own every main Hellboy TPB, and most of the BPRD ones, and I'm searching out the library editions. My only complaint is that Darkhorse apparently uses Elmer's school glue to bind the TP Bs. My Seed of Destruction fell apart 2 days after I bought it, which was a total bust, and I'm now deathly afraid of actually reading any of the others I own more than once.

After seeing the tv pilot for Mignola's The Amazing Screw-on Head, I am disappointed there isn't a decent Hellboy animated series based on the comics.

IJBM lives on here! Sign up!

There are two animated Direct-to-DVD movies, though.

They're not very good. Sword of Storms had some good bits (one part was an almost-verbatim adaptation of the short story "Heads") but the melodrama didn't work and some of the CGI was embarrassingly cheap. Iron and Blood was better—nothing obviously bad, but nothing notably good about it either.

They didn't even try to copy Mignola's wonderful art style—it was all in Timm Style.

I bought both of them cheap at Wal-Mart, watched them once, then gave them away as white elephant gifts.

edited 10th Oct '10 4:56:32 PM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.

Specifically, they used the exact same style as The Spectacular Spider-Man. Which is a very odd choice for Hellboy.

I prefer Blood & Iron, because it draws somewhat on Wake The Devil, my favorite volume.

After I re-read the miniseries The Crooked Man, I was struck by something. Hellboy doesn't really do anything, other than serve as The Watson for Tom Ferrell. HB engages in some fisticuffs, but Tom could have just done that himself and the story would not have lost anything.

I guess HB is a Pinball Protagonist in a lot of the stories, but making him play second banana to some new guy is just taking things too far. Grrr.

I didn't write any of that.

Nothing? He beat the crap out of the Devil (or at least a Devil) with a holy shovel.

I actually liked the animated films. They were the first actual exposure I had to the series, after I read about them. Thank God for Netflix Instant Watch. They pretty much sold me on the rest of the franchise, though they obviously aren't of the same quality as the books or live-action films.

Okay, I now have Crooked Man and the first two books of BPRD. All awesome. I would buy more BPRD, but the holidays are coming, so I just sent my various present-providers a list of all the rest of the books in the series.

I love how BPRD delves into the characters' personalities. In the main series, most of them really don't do much, so it's nice to explore them more for a change. I like how Abe is more of a Deadpan Snarker here than he is in the main series, for example.

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Oh, the first two BPRD volumes aren't exactly representative of the rest. There's still character development, that's for sure, but they ditch the short-story format for a Myth Arc that's so far (I'm at volume 7 at the moment) every bit as epic as the one that Hellboy's going through.

I'm not sure, but I think I actually like the BPRD series more than the main Hellboy series.

I didn't write any of that.

I look forward to it. I figured that the first few volumes would be fairly different from the rest of the series, if only because they have '...and Others' in their names, while the later books do not. I'm pretty psyched about getting into the Myth Arc, though the early Monster of the Week stories were certainly fun in their own right.

Of course, the main series changed a lot going from the first volume into the second. I'm glad John Byrne left the book as a writer after the first arc- he did a decent job of setting the story up, but I disliked his form of exposition; gritty inner monologue just isn't Hellboy's style, so I'm glad the idea was abandoned once Mignola started writing the series. I consider the first volume to be the weakest of the series by far, though that's not to say that it's actually bad or anything.

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Hellboy is very, very, very, very, very awesome.

That said, I find him to be too much of an indestructable hero in some of the stories. But that's ok, because in those stories you read it for the weird folklore and fairytales. And then there's the one's that are origonal to Mignola and he's not so indestructable there.

My favorite at the moment would have to be the Makoma issues. it pretty much just does a African legend but with Hellboy. It has nothing to do with the plot at all, yet it fits perfectly with who and what Hellboy is.

I thought Makoma was weird and out of place when I first read it, but when I looked at it a second time, I realized that it was actually awesome. Not my favorite story in the series, but still good.

My favorite story in the series is probably The Island. The story had gradually been building up in terms of greatness, but it was only after The Island when I realized that I wasn't reading just another graphic novel series; I was reading an epic on the scale of The Iliad, Beowulf, or Star Wars. It may sound like hyperbole on my part, but I know an epic when I see one.

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Hellboy is indestructible. That's why the real threat he's facing in the Myth Arc isn't some monster that he can punch into submission; it's his destiny. It's his own dark side. HB is trying to do the right thing, but it's unclear how much longer he can fight off his dark side, and it seems even his good deeds are leading him towards the destruction of the world.

I didn't write any of that.

Yep, so any story that's just him shoehorned into a myth or folktale, eg, The Corpse = Teig O'Kane and the Corpse, he can't lose and the focus is really on the tale itself. Whereas the stories more set in Hellboy's own mythology, well, everything goes out the window and stuff actually happens.

So, I just recently discovered Hellboy: Masks and Monsters, which is a non-canon crossover thingy. There is a Batman / Hellboy crossover, drawn by Mignola himself. Awesome.

I didn't write any of that.

Don't forget the Batman/Starman/Hellboy crossover, written by James Robinson and drawn by Mignola. Also awesome.

As for myself, I'm currently awaiting The Wild Hunt from my library, and I still need to start BPRD. I really need to get on that.

I'll turn your neocortex into a flowerpot!

And there's a Hellboy / Batman story! Drawn by Mike Mignola!

I didn't write any of that.

I'm trying to order the next couple BPRD books from Amazon, but I can't figure out how to fir my new dorm's address on Amazon's New Address form. My address is written like:

Name

Box #

Street

Town/State/Zip

But Amazon asks for:

Name

Street/Box #

Appartment

Etc.

I can't get it to accept my address. Damn it, I need my BPRD!

edited 9th Jan '11 7:55:51 AM by Moogi

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I got volumes 8 and 9 of Hellboy for Christmas, and "HOLY CRAP!" sums up my reaction pretty nicely.

I've got two guns pointed west and a broken compass.