Hellboy (2019): Savaged by critics and mostly ignored by audiences last summer, this soft reboot of the Hellboy movie 'franchise' is really pretty enjoyable and at least as faithful to creator Mike Mignola's epic comic series as Guillermo del Toro's first two Hellboy movies.
David Harbour makes a perfectly good Hellboy under all that make-up and prosthetics. Ian McShane plays it crusty as Hellboy's adoptive father and head of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, one of a handful of organizations that protects Earth from supernatural disaster. But what price vigilance?
Hellboy doesn't play much like a movie, though, but rather a serial -- the creators cherry-pick characters and situations from what feels like 50 different issues of the comic. Hellboy in Mexico! Baba Yaga! Nimue (semi-hilariously pronounced as in 'Leonard Nimoy' by pretty much everyone)! King Arthur! The Wild Hunt! The boar-headed monster! To accentuate the serialesque nature of this movie, call it THE ADVENTURES OF HELLBOY and watch it in ten-minute segments. Recommended.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. 1952 (2014-2015): written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi; illustrated by Alex Maleev and Dave Stewart: Mike Mignola's Hellboy goes on his first mission in this graphic novel, accompanied by a team from the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.). Weird things are happening in a small town in Brazil. Evil monster monkeys. Disappearances. That sort of thing.
It's an enjoyable story, scripted by perennial B.P.R.D. writer John Arcudi and illustrated in a mostly realistic style by Alex Maleev. You know, and monkeys. There's a bit of continuity stuff that I'll be damned if I remember what it's about. I probably need to read all of Hellboy again and all the volumes of B.P.R.D. I haven't read. That's like a job! I don't think this would work for someone without at least some familiarity with Hellboy. It is an enjoyable diversion with a number of nicely choreographed battles. Recommended.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. 1954 (2016-2018): containing:
Black Sun: written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson; illustrated by Stephen Green and Dave Stewart: An assignment to the Arctic to investigate a mysterious monster plunges Hellboy into a battle with... flying saucers? Looks that way! A nice diversion.
The Unreasoning Beast: written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson; illustrated by Patric Reynolds and Dave Stewart: Almost an X-Files episode, if Hellboy worked for the FBI. Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. investigate a vengeful ghost monkey in suburban America. Enjoyable stuff, though illustrator Patric Reynolds is maybe a bit too realistic to maintain supernatural dread.
Ghost Moon; written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson; illustrated by Brian Churilla and Dave Stewart: Hellboy gets dropped into a John LeCarre spy scenario by way of some sort of soul-eater and a bunch of traditional Chinese demons who are perhaps not the problem but part of the solution. Brian Churilla's pleasantly cartoony style reminds me of the animated Hellboy movies.
The Mirror; written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Richard Corben and Dave Stewart: A short from Hellboy creator Mignola and horror-comic legend Richard Corben involves a magic mirror and a lesson to Hellboy on how to deal with the supernatural. Slight but beautifully illustrated.
Overall: Recommended.
Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea (2017): written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Gary Gianni with Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart: Beautifully illustrated in an almost classically fine 19th-century style by Gary Gianni, Into the Silent Sea occurs during Hellboy's time spent walking the Earth and especially the oceans of the Earth somewhere back around midway through Hellboy's main arc. What we have here are ghost ships and crazy monsters from the haunted deep. It doesn't take long to read, but one can profitably linger upon or return to Gianni's fine linework. Recommended.
Hellboy in Hell Volume 2: The Death Card (Collected 2016): written and illustrated by Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart: A moody and magnificent and hopeful and dark conclusion to the saga of Hellboy.
Is it the end?
Well, BPRD continues, as things look dire on Earth. Down below, though, Hellboy, dead but alive, battles enemies in the Underworld in the wake of his execution of Satan in the previous volume.
Satan's death has sent Hell into turmoil. Hellboy still has miles to go before he sleeps, however. But as one character notes, you're dead, and yet your story continues.
More background gets filled in, explaining Earth's ongoing peril over in BPRD even as hope is offered up against those forces of darkness that continue to gnaw at the world's vitals. Hellboy's role in the Apocalypse is also vital, though utterly unlike that which he was born and bred for before his premature arrival on Earth allowed Nurture to defeat Nature.
There is some two-fisted action here, but the overall tones bounces between the bleakly comic and the elegaic. Saying much more would give things away. Suffice to say that Hellboy meets his destiny, both like and utterly unlike what one might have guessed more than 20 years ago when this crusader against evil, born of evil, first appeared. The end cycles back to Hellboy's arrival on Earth, bringing things full circle while leaving a certain amount of mystery in place.
Mike Mignola, writing and on art, and with collaborators that include Duncan Fegredo and so many others, has crafted a moving, personal, hilarious, dark epic of fantasy and superheroics. It's a great achievement. Highly recommended, though not as a stand-alone volume.
Hellboy in Hell Volume 1: The Descent (2015-2016/Collected 2016): written and illustrated by Mike Mignola: Mike Mignola's Hellboy series moves inexorably towards its conclusion in this, what may be the penultimate volume in the long-running series. The end of the last book saw Hellboy dead on Earth and plummeting into Hell. And now we open, on the borderlands of Hell.
Hellboy is his usual acerbic self as he fights an assortment of demons and, well, more demons. Some have personal grudges against him as he sent them back to Hell during his heroic, monster-fighting career above-ground. Meanwhile, Hell's capital city of Pandemonium is strangely empty, and Satan himself is asleep in a basement. Hellboy has help in Hell, but will it be enough to see his mission through -- if there is a mission?
Well, that's the question. Hellboy in Hell marked the return of Mignola to drawing Hellboy as well as writing it after several years of having Duncan Fegredo handle the art duties. It's a welcome return. Mignola has simplified his line, his shapes, and pretty much everything about his style. It's a marvelous, evocative evolution of cartooning that can attain startling effects both comic and horrific.
Hellboy's purpose in Hell seems a bit vague, but some of that reflects Hellboy's own rejection of the 'destiny' the first couple of years of Hellboy set up. He's not going to usher in the final act of the Apocalypse, having rejected his demonic heritage. Why, then, does he not remember committing a major act of violence in this volume?
If you've never read Hellboy, this is not the place to start. If you have been following Hellboy, this is pretty much essential as we approach the end of a remarkable horror/fantasy epic. Highly recommended.
BPRD: Hell on Earth Volume 4: The Devil's Engine & The Long Death (2012/ Collected 2012): written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi; illustrated by Tyler Crook, James Harren, and Dave Stewart: The eruption of Hell onto Earth-Hellboy continues in this collection of two miniseries dealing with Hellboy's former unit, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence. Things are grim. Monsters are everywhere. This volume contains two 'snapshots' of the ongoing conflict/apocalypse, nicely scripted by John Arcudi and possessed of a number of fine visualizations of those monsters by Tyler Crook and James Harren.
An unusual, freaky, and disturbingly visualized Wendigo seems to owe at least some of its visual debt to Jack Kirby's white monkey of fear from his 1970's series The Demon by way of Steve Bissette and John Totleben's visual reimagining of the character early in Alan Moore's 1980's run on Swamp Thing. It's all enjoyable, though a bit light on the textual side of things. Recommended.
