The latest in my "I am reading" threads. See also, I am reading Cerebus, I am reading JMS's Spider-Man run, I am reading Ultimate X-men, I am reading Bruce Jones’ Hulk run, I am reading Annihilation, and I am reading Silver Age Marvel.

This thread is dedicated to Bill & his monkey, who made it all possible.



http://www.amazon.com/dp/1593070942/?tag=imwan-20

Hellboy Vol. 1 - Seed of Destruction

A very interesting start. Mike Mignola (with some help from John Byrne) doesn't hold your hand or serve you with massive infodumps. Instead, he just launches you into this world he's created and trusts that you'll keep up.

I like that.

Lots of good stuff to wrap your head around, too. I'm fascinated by the Bureau and intrigued by Hellboy's origins. There is a nice teasing element there, akin to the days when Wolverine was still a good character. Hints, tidbits, but little more than that. I get the sense that there will be a lot to explore as this goes on.

The bad guys are neat. Nazis always make cool villains. Tossing together Nazis and horror has been done before (Return of Castle Wolfenstein, for instance), but this is handled well. I like that the horror isn't a real standard kind of gothic horror. It's non-traditional. A bit of magic, a bit of superhero, a bit of myth, all mixed up. Very cool.

The writing was okay; the characters often had the same voice. It rarely felt as if different people were narrating/talking. At times a bit difficult to differentiate between the characters.

Speaking of narrating, the lettering was off. Three times I read things in the wrong order and it wasn't my fault! But both of those are minor faults; not deal breakers by any means.

Oh, and the art? Yes, the art. The art was AWESOME. Just awesome. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Moody use of (mostly) flat colors, GREAT stylization by Mignola, good storytelling. Superb visuals all around.

I really enjoyed this. It didn't blow my mind and won't have me singing from the mountaintops, but I can see there will be lots of fun stuff to chew on, and can't wait to get to it. This was a good start. (As of this writing I've read a few more volumes; they get better with each one.)

Oh, and just to offer a little bit of background, though I really like Mignola's work, I hadn't read any Hellboy before this. I've seen most of the movie, but only in bits and pieces; never from start to finish, and I'm sure I missed a lot (including the beginning and ending).

I'm reading Hellboy alongside two books and one other comic series, so this thread may be a bit slower with updates than my other I Am Reading... threads.

So the comic book doesn't start with the deep backgrounder that the movie does? The movie starts with the origin story (rushes through it, really). Comic book does not?

It sort of starts with the origin, but not exactly. We see how Hellboy came to Earth, but not who/what he is, where he came from (Hell. Duh.), or how he hooked up with the Bureau, nor do we learn about his hand. You get the general gist, but it leaves a lot of questions open.

The first scene in the movie and the first scene in the book are very similar, some of it almost shot for shot. But the origin of Hellboy is more complex in the comics (see "The Chained Coffin").

General thought is that it's better NOT to start with an origin sequence, but to start with the characters as they are now, in the action, and bring readers up to speed over time.

Hellboy is a lot of fun! Enjoy!!

The related series are fun too, Taft's got a lot of reading to do.

I agree. Loved the whole Hellboy universe.

Hellboy is phenomenally good and the first trade is the worst of the bunch. Get ready for the art and writing to get progressively better as the series continues.

I loved Hellboy, Probably time to reread it, then rewatch the movie again.

Shouldn't it be "Heckboy" in the Playroom?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1593070950/?tag=imwan-20

Hellboy Vol. 2 - Wake the Devil

What an interesting, sometimes confusing, sometimes compelling story.

Even more hints at who and what Hellboy really is? Check. More Nazis? Check. Vampires and strange creatures? Check. Suggestions something much larger is at work? Check.

Cool.

Mignola's unique, wild style is cool as hell. Strange angles and swaths of shadow and rough-hewn edges abound. It's dark, exciting art, as if Gene Colan's horror work were merged with Jack Kirby's wildest 1970s imaginings, and then tossed into a Frank Miller blender for good measure. He uses this style to great effect, giving us a story about vampires and talking heads and mysterious elder gods. Hellboy was maybe sent here to destroy the Earth or something, and Rasputin never really died and is conspiring to release some cosmic dragon or something, and it's all tied together into some big end of the world thing.

What?

Got to admit, there is a lot to swallow here, and it's thrown at you without hand-holding. There were brief moments when I had to pause in order to wrap my head around what I was reading. Mignola is sparse with his text and forces the reader to pay close attention to his rapid shifts in perspective. He doesn't litter his stories with captions, either. He just go, go, goes, leaving me sometimes scratching my head and saying, "What's going on here?"

But part of that is because he's clearly not playing his entire hand. He's got more to show you, but is in no rush to do so. Keeps you guessing. Keeps you interested. And that's cool with me.

The parts you do get are really interesting. Mignola seems to have taken a bunch of real mythologies and mixed them up and dished them back out as something new. I love stuff like that. I like the bits he's playing with, how he's reinventing stuff. Makes me curious to see more, to see exactly what he's got up his sleeve.

Solid stuff.

I haven't read it, but when I saw the movie, I detected a little similarity with the first volume of Sandman. Do you?

Not much, no. In a strange way, I feel like Hellboy has more in common with the cosmic works of 1970s Jack Kirby than the pseudo-horror of early Vertigo. That despite Hellboy very much being a horror-tinged work. I suppose there is a little bit of that first Sandman there in the form of ancient relics and even more ancient demons and evils in the world, but the style, approach and presentation is so different it's hard for me to suggest they dwell in the same sort of world.

Knowing where Sandman went after the first couple issues, it is hard to see much in common between teh two books. I too really enjoyed Hellboy. It was pretty novel, in my opinoin.

Can something be 'pretty novel' is that like being 'most unique'?

I just meant the way the bad guy sorcerers had a following, conjured from another dimension to capture a "demon" for their own purposes, but then he turned on them. And it occurred earlier in the 20th Century. But Sandman went in a different direction, and Hellboy escaped right away and was never captive.

But I wondered if Mignola was influenced.

He had to have been influenced, cuz he had to have read the book. Perhaps his influence was making sure that he didnt parallel too closely the story of Morpheus. So many times when I have what I think are neat story ideas, I realize that even tho they are 'mine' they hew closely to some other story, and would seem derivative.

Sandman is the best comic book since Claremonts Dark Pheonix.

Potentially. As Todd rightfully notes, it would be surprising if Mignola didn't read at least some of Sandman. That whole theme is pretty common in mythology, though, something from which Hellboy draws heavily, so it's entirely possible that Mignola and Gaiman were simply drawing from the same well of common influences.

I enjoy these threads Taft. Since I finally dove into Preacher, I'd be interested in your take on that series (down the road of course).

Hellboy is great by the way. The latest mini (Darkness Calls) was the weakest of the bunch so far though IMHO. Duncan Fegredo did a bang-up job on art, but I missed Mignola.

I think they both lifted it from Byrne's work in The Champions.

Glad you enjoy them. You might be happy to know Preacher is in the queue. I'm reading the Ennis Hellblazer run at the moment (haven't started a thread, but I plan to), and will jump right into Preacher after that. Haven't read it since the last trade shipped, so it's been a while. I'm curious how I'll see it now.

The spell that caught Sandman was pretty straight ahead magic with actual cloaks and daggers and magic circles. Hellboy had that weird Mignola twist to it with all the electronic gizmos. But I remember the chant in Hellboy reminding me of the chant in Sandman.

I would be very surprised to learn that Byrne, who was the nominal scripter of the scene, had read Sandman. He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about the British Invasion of the 80s. But it's possible that Mignola wrote the chant as he did much of Seed of Destruction. It certainly doesn't sound like Byrne.