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: House of the Living Dead, written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Richard Corben (2011): Fun original graphic novel set during Hellboy's "lost months" while on a bender in Mexico during the 1950's, during which time he professionally wrestled and fought various supernatural menaces, generally while either drunk or severely hung over. Forced to kill a young wrestling, monster-fighting ally after vampires turned the young man into a bat-headed monstrosity, Hellboy went on a blackout-inducing bender, the end of which we see here.
Richard Corben's art combines the grotesque and the voluptuous in a variety of fun, pleasing ways, while Mignola's script strikes the right balance between humour and heartbreak. Hellboy has to face his guilt before he can get out of Mexico, but the whole voyage of self-discovery avoids the usual rote, Afterschool Special platitudes and lessons we often see in such a story. Recommended.
