Mignola, Mike - various Hellboy comics
Thu, May. 6th, 2004 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI read Seed of Destruction, The Chained Coffin and Others, Wake the Devil, The Right Hand of Doom, and Conqueror Worm. I think those are roughly in order for the grand storyline, although half of The Chained Coffin and Others takes place after Wake the Devil. Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil and Conqueror Worm are miniseries and fairly complete stories in and of themselves, while the other two are compilations of short stories (short... comics?).
To my surprise, I actually liked the collections of stories the best. While the longer plotlines are interesting, Mignola doesn't manage to carry them to a climax very well, and too often I was left sitting there wondering, "Is that it?" They suffer from the same problem of the movie -- Mignola's strengths seem to be iconic characters and scenes instead of a constant development of his characters. In Sandman, if you read all the stories chronologically, it's interesting to watch the progression of Dream's character and of the events. Sandman felt like an unwound skein of yarn, slowly being gathered up, sometimes getting tangled and picking up lint, but eventually getting wound tighter and tighter. Er. That was a horrible simile, my bad.
Anyhoo... Hellboy feels the opposite. One of the few constants in the series is Hellboy, who I completely adore. He still vaguely reminds me of Buffy, like I said before, if Buffy were big and red. He's got this wonderful matter of fact approach to everything, and the best parts of the comics are Hellboy's comments. He treats being a paranormal investigator like a completely normal job, and it's so funny to watch him grumble and groan and finally shrug and try to kick the bad guy's ass. I think also this is showcased best in the shorts, when Hellboy is simply going around investigating various paranormal occurences. Mignola really gets to play with myths and legends in the shorts, and he tosses Hellboy in a tale of the Faerie, into a Japanese ghost story, and various Gothic ones.
The main problem is that Hellboy seems to be a mostly static character, so when the fate of the universe lies in his hands (you know, one of those standard fantasy choices of choosing good or evil), I never doubted what Hellboy was going to do. Mignola doesn't even show Hellboy being tempted the slightest bit to choose evil, so it's not very dramatic at all. (That was the problem I had with the movie climax too) I was fascinated by the character of Liz Sherman, the amazing human torch, but most of it was residue from the movie. I can see her being a very interesting character though.
Most of what's delightful about Hellboy is Hellboy himself, and he is just enormously fun to read. The other thing I really loved was just how old everything felt -- Mignola has many evil Nazis running around trying to raise various sorts of demons, and though most of the action is in present day or 1950s-70s, they feel much more gothic in tone. It also feels as though Mignola's generally having a huge blast writing these and seeing just how much mythology/legend/ghost story stuff he can throw in there (while connecting it with evil Nazis, of course).
I'm also struck by a burning desire to go see the movie again, because it was so pretty and Ron Perlman was the absolute perfect Hellboy (of course, I say that because I saw it first, but honestly, he has the perfect Hellboy voice). And now that I know the plot is insane, I don't have to try to make sense of it.
To my surprise, I actually liked the collections of stories the best. While the longer plotlines are interesting, Mignola doesn't manage to carry them to a climax very well, and too often I was left sitting there wondering, "Is that it?" They suffer from the same problem of the movie -- Mignola's strengths seem to be iconic characters and scenes instead of a constant development of his characters. In Sandman, if you read all the stories chronologically, it's interesting to watch the progression of Dream's character and of the events. Sandman felt like an unwound skein of yarn, slowly being gathered up, sometimes getting tangled and picking up lint, but eventually getting wound tighter and tighter. Er. That was a horrible simile, my bad.
Anyhoo... Hellboy feels the opposite. One of the few constants in the series is Hellboy, who I completely adore. He still vaguely reminds me of Buffy, like I said before, if Buffy were big and red. He's got this wonderful matter of fact approach to everything, and the best parts of the comics are Hellboy's comments. He treats being a paranormal investigator like a completely normal job, and it's so funny to watch him grumble and groan and finally shrug and try to kick the bad guy's ass. I think also this is showcased best in the shorts, when Hellboy is simply going around investigating various paranormal occurences. Mignola really gets to play with myths and legends in the shorts, and he tosses Hellboy in a tale of the Faerie, into a Japanese ghost story, and various Gothic ones.
The main problem is that Hellboy seems to be a mostly static character, so when the fate of the universe lies in his hands (you know, one of those standard fantasy choices of choosing good or evil), I never doubted what Hellboy was going to do. Mignola doesn't even show Hellboy being tempted the slightest bit to choose evil, so it's not very dramatic at all. (That was the problem I had with the movie climax too) I was fascinated by the character of Liz Sherman, the amazing human torch, but most of it was residue from the movie. I can see her being a very interesting character though.
Most of what's delightful about Hellboy is Hellboy himself, and he is just enormously fun to read. The other thing I really loved was just how old everything felt -- Mignola has many evil Nazis running around trying to raise various sorts of demons, and though most of the action is in present day or 1950s-70s, they feel much more gothic in tone. It also feels as though Mignola's generally having a huge blast writing these and seeing just how much mythology/legend/ghost story stuff he can throw in there (while connecting it with evil Nazis, of course).
I'm also struck by a burning desire to go see the movie again, because it was so pretty and Ron Perlman was the absolute perfect Hellboy (of course, I say that because I saw it first, but honestly, he has the perfect Hellboy voice). And now that I know the plot is insane, I don't have to try to make sense of it.
totally unrelated to this entry,
Thu, May. 6th, 2004 02:29 pm (UTC)Re: totally unrelated to this entry,
Thu, May. 6th, 2004 09:22 pm (UTC)