BPRD, v. 1: The Hollow Earth and Other Stories

Collects: BPRD: Hollow Earth #1-3, Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead #1, stories from Hellboy: Box Full of Evil #1-2 (1998-9, 2002)

Released: January 2003 (Dark Horse)

Format: 120 pages / color / $17.95 / ISBN: 9781593072803

What is this?: A series of short tales about the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense after Hellboy leaves.

The culprits: Writers Mike Mignola, Brian McDonald, Christopher Golden, and Tom Sniegoski and artists Ryan Sook, Matt Smith, and Derek Thompson

I wanted to know what Hellboy looked like when there was no Hellboy in it. Turns out, it looks a lot like a fish.

Abe Sapien, the fish-man BPRD agent, takes center stage in three of the four stories in BPRD, v. 1: Hollow Earth & Other Stories. Is he interesting enough a character to take that burden? Well, maybe. Abe begins the book seeking a new direction; it’s beginning to look like the BPRD isn’t where he wants to spend his life. But if he does stay, can he fill the gap in the organization that Hellboy (sorta) filled — that of the leader of the organization’s “special” agents?

These ideas are prominent in the Hollow Earth miniseries, which leads off the collection. While wondering whether to continue with the BPRD, Abe learns pyromancer Liz Sherman is in trouble, so he takes Roger the Homunculus and Johann Kraus, the disembodied German medium, along with him to Asia. There, they find a destroyed monastery, civilizations and monsters inside the Earth, giant war machines, and Nazi wreckage. (The Nazis always seem to play in somehow.)

When I write it out like that, it seems like it has all the winning elements — monsters, action, possibilities for good character interaction. But it doesn’t add up on the page, and I wonder if the involvement of three different writers — series creator Mike Mignola, Hellboy novelist Christopher Golden, and Tom Sniegoski — had something to do with that. The monsters lack the character and distinctiveness that Mignola generally gives the monsters in his Hellboy work, and the Hollow Earth idea isn’t developed enough to engage me. There are some nice character moments between Roger, Johann, and Abe, and Liz’s story gets advanced, but it never feels like enough character moments. “The Hollow Earth” needed something more than pages of operations manager Kate Corrigan looking worried. If the other stories in this collection had moved the characters forward as much as the opening story, perhaps that would have made “The Hollow Earth” a part of a satisfying whole.

The two back-up stories in the middle of The Hollow Earth & Other Stories are very different beasts, despite both being written by Mignola. One is a throwaway story of a 1930s Lobster Johnson investigation, which I would imagine was included for completionists or to add to the page count. The other is a flashback in the life of Abe Sapien, who sees Roger the Homunculus in restraints, about to be dissected by BPRD scientists. Remembering that was almost his fate, he steps in to make one more attempt to revive Roger before the scientists start their dispassionate final work on Roger. It’s an appropriate, if slight, story for the collection and for Abe’s development.

The final story, the one-shot Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead, has Abe in charge of psychic Garrett Omatta, investigating why madness and sharks follow certain ships as they cross the Atlantic to America. I was impressed with the background writer Brian McDonald chose for the story — the reason for the sharks and the possessions of crew members was an excellent idea, well executed on the page. However, there’s a fight scene in the middle of the book that feels out of left field, an action scene meant to fill pages and the requirement for an action scene. Still, there are worse faults to have.

The art in this collection is, generally, very good. Both Ryan Sook, who drew “The Hollow Earth,” and Matt Smith (no, not the eleventh doctor), who worked on the two backups, have styles that fit with Mignola’s art very well. Sook’s work almost seems like he’s imitating Mignola; in any event, even he lacks the spark that separates Mignola from the crowd, the art fits the story, and Sook’s storytelling is good. Smith is more easily differentiated from Mignola, more splotched with darkness, but his art fits in with Sook’s and Mignola’s quite well. The artist for Drums of the Dead, Derek Thompson, is completely different, and although his loose-limbed, slightly exaggerated characters fit the story, his work looks completely out of place in the Hellboy universe. I did, however, think his underwater scenes were very good.

This doesn’t feel like a BPRD collection, and it doesn’t really feel like Hellboy. It feels like Mignola casting about for something to do with his other characters and not quite finding it yet. He has Abe Sapien as a lead character, but the stories in this collection don’t convince me that he is a lead character — the chief character in an ensemble, yes, but not quite enough to carry a collection. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel enough about the BPRD either. Maybe future BPRD collections will settle what the BPRD stories are to be about, but The Hollow Earth & Other Stories feels like there’s a big hole at the center, needing to be filled.

Rating: (2)

Hellboy, v. 8: Darkness Calls

Collects: Hellboy: Darkness Calls #1-6 (2007)

Released: May 2008 (Dark Horse)

Format: 200 pages / color / $19.95 / ISBN: 978-1593078966

What is this?: England’s witches want Hellboy to be their king, but Baba Yaga wants revenge on the demoniform hero.

The culprits: Writer Mike Mignola and artist Duncan Fegredo

The second Hellboy title of the fortnight is Hellboy, v. 8: Darkness Calls — a change for the Hellboy graphic novel series, in that this is the first book in which series creator Mike Mignola provides little of the artwork.

That was what defined Darkness Calls in my mind before I started reading the book, overshadowing anything else it could offer. The first few chapters I was consumed with the question of whether losing Mignola’s artwork in favor of Duncan Fegredo’s made the series lose an essential something that made Hellboy Hellboy. It didn’t matter that Mignola remained the writer; everything about Hellboy, series and character, is laconic, and so much rides on the ability and style of the art.

Happily, Fegredo fits right in. His art for Darkness Calls is similar to Mignola’s, although scratchier and not quite as shadowy or blocky. The loss of shadows works against Fegredo, but that’s a quibble. His Hellboy is slightly different as well, less massive and square — although a quick glance might not be enough for readers to be able to detect the differences. Fegredo’s fight scenes are well choreographed, and readers will have little trouble following the action. All in all, if readers can’t have Mignola’s art, then Fegredo will serve excellently.

The continuity of Hellboy is steadily getting more difficult; soon it will a bachelor’s degree in Hellboyology to be able to follow the plots. Although Mignola makes reference to past stories, you won’t be able to get all of the tangled references between Baba Yaga, Hecate, Igor Bromhead, Rasputin, Giurescu, and Ilsa Haupstein unless you have a decent recall of volumes 2, 3, and 4 (Wake the Devil, The Chained Coffin and Others, and The Right Hand of Doom). Pretty impressive for a comic about a big red guy punching and shooting monsters; on the other hand, I found the feeling I was missing out on some of the story disconcerting. Is this how others feel when the continuity of a superhero universe piles up on them? Hmm. Perhaps.

In the main story, the Russian witch Baba Yaga seeks revenge on Hellboy for putting out her eye decades in the past; she works through proxies, not daring to face Hellboy directly. Her main weapon is Koshchei the Deathless, a warrior who is immortal because he hid his soul inside an egg inside a duck inside a rabbit inside a goat. Predictably, such silly precautions have rebounded upon him, and Baba Yaga controls the goat, while all Koschchei wants is death. This, of course, is a set up for more than three issues of a running fight between Koshchei and Hellboy.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a wide variety of creatures from mythology and folklore; there are. Mignola is never afraid to drop a minor spirit or a great god into a story just as a background character, and that’s the case here as he plunks house spirits and witchfinders and the leader of the Russian pagan gods … Yes, most of the cast is from Russian and Gaelic fairy stories, but even within a specific mythos, these background characters help flesh out the world and make it seem living, like there’s enough of a supernatural population for characters to bump into each other.

Hellboy walks through some secondary plots as well. The witches of Britain are looking for a new king, and they think Hellboy fits the bill even if he’d rather fight on the side of a witchfinder; the faerie Gruagach looks to resurrect a powerful creature to lead the creatures of darkness into prominence; and warlock Igor Bromhead steals the power of Hecate. The last has little to do with anything, it feels like, except allow Hecate a chance to give a final, foreboding speech. Which is a bit of a gyp — stealing the power of Hecate should have had more of an effect on the story. (As should the deicide in the story.) The witches of Britain end up serving as a bookend to the story, the plot that Baba Yaga’s quest for vengeance hijacks Hellboy from. Only Gruagach seems to be an interesting subplot, setting up a more powerful future adversary for Hellboy.

Still, it’s good to have a full-length Hellboy tale after two straight collections of shorter material. It gives Mignola (and Fegredo) to stretch out their legs, so to speak, and tell a story that has room for more than just the main narrative. Even if I didn’t think all of the storylines were exploited to their full potential and even if I found some of the narrative confusing, I enjoyed having a multitude of plot points to chew on as the story went on. And it’s good to see the Hellboy mythos advanced in a more organized manner.

I’m actually looking forward to the next volume, something I wasn’t after v. 7.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

Hellboy, v. 7: The Troll Witch and Others

Collects: Hellboy stories from various Hellboy and Dark Horse series (2003-6)

Released: October 2007 (Dark Horse)

Format: 144 pages / color / $17.95 / ISBN: 9781593078607

What is this?: Odds and ends from Hellboy’s (and Mike Mignola’s) career

The culprits: Mike Mignola, with P. Craig Russell and Richard Corben illustrating one story each

For the first of my two consecutive Hellboy reviews, we have Hellboy, v. 7: The Troll Witch and Other Stories. Troll Witch is a set of miscellaneous short pieces grouped together into one volume; the longest, “Makoma,” was a two-issue mini, but the rest were collected in anthologies or produced specifically for this volume. As with most collections of short pieces, the stories in Troll Witch are uneven.

The title story is the best of the lot. It’s a simple tale that Mignola borrows from a Scandanavian folktale, only to have one of the characters in the story specifically point out the folk tale ends too neatly. The story ends with a nice character moment for Hellboy as well, with the witch seeing a bit too deeply into Hellboy’s psyche for his comfort. “Dr. Carp’s Experiment” is a nice little story as well, involving mad Victorian science, time travel, and demon apes. Unfortunately, it’s a little reminiscent of Inger von Klemt and his Kriegaffe in Hellboy, v. 5: Conqueror Worm.

The other short tales are not quite as impressive, although each generally has some interesting visual. “The Penanggalan” has the penanggalan, a south Asian monster in which the head and all the internal organs separate from the body. On the other hand, there’s not much else to the story, besides Hellboy making fun of the creature’s origin. In “The Hydra and the Lion,” Hellboy gets to fight a hydra and tie its heads into knots, but the explanation for an unexpected ally is a bit too … I want to say “stupid” but I’ll go with “psychological for me to fit into a physical world.” The vampire in “The Vampire of Prague” gets to kick its own disembodied head around for a while, but the story’s resolution involves playing cards and puppets in a way I don’t really think came together. And I didn’t care for the poetry-spouting monster in “The Ghoul” at all, despite a puppet performance of Hamlet in the background.

“Makoma” is the final story in Troll Witch. It tells the story of an African folk hero who defeats giants and dragons and demons and communes with the spirits of the land, as folk heroes are wont to do. Mignola ties the story into Hellboy continuity by telling the story with Hellboy in the role of Makoma and having one of his adversaries tempt him with his demonic destiny. The story itself is interesting — for nothing else, the setting and culture is novel — but the tie-in to Hellboy is less than convincing.

Mignola provides the art for most of these stories. It’s the same Mignola art that readers have become used to, blocky and shadowy and synonymous with the Hellboy Universe. In the introduction, Walt Simonson calls Mignola’s dialogue “sparse” to the point of requiring reader interpolation, but sometimes I find his visual storytelling in “Troll Witch” equally spare, requiring a second (or third) read to figure out why the climax actually makes sense.

Two stories are illustrated by others: P. Craig Russell draws “The Vampire of Prague” and Richard Corben contributes to “Makoma.” Both are excellent artists, but it’s jarring to see Hellboy and his world drawn by someone other than Mignola. (I’ll have to get used to it, as the next three volumes are drawn by Duncan Fegredo and others.) I was excited to see what Russell would do with his story, but it doesn’t fit with the rest of the book: it’s clean, bright, smooth. In another book, I would be all over it, but here, it just seems off. Corben’s work fits better — no doubt helped by “Makoma”’s framing sequence, drawn by Mignola. It’s obviously not Mignola, but the colors are more muted and there are just enough rough edges to remind us that the life of a monster hunter isn’t all pretty people and sparkly vampires.

If you’re a fan of Hellboy, there’s no reason you shouldn’t pick this up, as the book shows some of the monsters Hellboy has encountered in his career. On the other hand, if you’re more interested in Hellboy’s development as a character … this doesn’t move it forward much. There’s a glimpse of Hellboy’s internal conflict in “Makoma” and “The Troll Witch,” but only a glimpse. And if you haven’t read Hellboy before, start somewhere else.

Rating: (2 of 5)

Hellboy, v. 6: Strange Places

Collects: Hellboy: The Third Wish #1-2 and Hellboy: The Island #1-2 (2002, 2005)

Released: April 2006 (Dark Horse)

Format: 128 pages / color / $17.95 / ISBN: 9781593074753

What is this?: Hellboy under the sea! Hellboy, fighting on the beaches!

The culprit: Mike Mignola

To conclude Hellboy Week, we have Hellboy, v. 6 : Strange Places. This is an odd one; the two miniseries that make up this volume were published three years apart, separated by writer / artist / creator Mike Mignola’s work on the first Hellboy movie and other projects.

In 2002’s “The Third Wish,” Hellboy goes to Africa, as promised in Conqueror Worm. He spends very little time there, as he’s almost immediately dropped under the sea. There he doesn’t find singing lobsters or flounders, but he is immediately attacked by three malevolent mermaids who capture him for a sea hag called the Bog Roosh. The Bog Roosh, fearing his destiny is to end the world, plans to dismember him and stop that destiny. In 2005’s “The Island,” he fights a giant worm and listens to exposition. (The latter is less exciting than you’d think.)

Both “The Third Wish” and “The Island” focus heavily on Hellboy’s destiny. I don’t know if most readers will think thats as boring as I did, but I found it didn’t make for a compelling story. Hellboy seems aimless, tossed from one point on the globe to another, with people yelling at him that he will end the world. Hellboy is baffled, then punches people, and the story ends. It’s less than satisfying. Hellboy doesn’t seem to defy or deny his alleged destiny so much as he reflexively punches those who believe in it.

As with Conqueror Worm, Mignola features ghosts or spirits of those killed long ago. In both stories, the dead rise and bring a sense of justice to the story — old crimes redressed in “The Island,” the innocent getting a little comfort in “The Third Wish.” Hellboy has little to do with the moral compass of either story. He’s just … again, he punches and stabs creatures and gets punched and stabbed. He doesn’t even get much in the way of witty dialogue.

That puts the burden of the story on the villains and other characters. The Bog Roosh has one plan and needlessly delays long enough for Hellboy to foil it. In “The Island,” the antagonists are a giant worm and a long-dead heretic who knows the true history of the world. And of course, we get to hear the history of the world and the heretic’s history; neither is interesting. Do I care about the creation story for the entity who will use Hellboy’s hand to destroy the world? No, because he’s a dragon who will destroy the world. That’s all I need to know. Do I care about the heretic’s story or why the Inquisition killed him? No, he’s not interesting either. I do care how the inquisitors were reanimated to torment him, but Mignola doesn’t explain that.

So there aren’t any interesting characters in “The Island” except Hellboy, who doesn’t do a hell of a lot. This is a problem. But man, can Hellboy take the abuse!

The lackluster stories make me want to give a stern lecture to Mignola the writer because he’s wasting the work of Mignola the artist. Mignola notes he mainly wanted to draw rocks and monsters when penciling the story that inspired “The Third Wish.” Those still are Mignola’s strengths, and fortunately, there are a lot of them in both stories. Mignola’s atmospherics are superb, and one scene — one with ghost sailors drinking on a derelict ship in “The Island” — makes me feel the conviviality of the ghosts and the desolation of the true setting. The book also includes the original first eight pages of “The Island,” originally a much different story. There’s no lettering, but those pages are the best part of the book; I’d dearly like to see Mignola finish the story, perhaps by stepping away from Hellboy’s mythology for a few pages.

This book also has a “Now a major motion picture: Hellboy II” sticker on it. I cannot think of a more deceptive way to advertise this book.

Unless you’re incredibly interested in Hellboy’s mythology, the reason to get this book is to look at Mignola’s monsters. I am not enough of a fan of anyone’s art to buy a book for that reason, but it’s worth reading — or least thumbing through — for Mignola’s art.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)

Hellboy, v. 5: Conqueror Worm

Collects: Hellboy: Conqueror Worm #1-4 (2001)

Released: February 2004 (Dark Horse)

Format: 168 pages / color / $17.95 / ISBN: 9781593070922

What is this?: Hellboy vs. Nazis and space worms in Austria, with a little help from a homunculus and pulp hero Lobster Johnson.

The culprit: Mike Mignola

I’m starting Hellboy week with Hellboy, v. 5: Conqueror Worm. Why v. 5? Because I’ve already read the first four and found them excellent. I’ve read v. 5 before too, although I didn’t care for it much.

So I decided to look at it again, especially now that Hellboy is a multimedia hit. (The copy of Conqueror Worm I read told me so: it had a bright yellow sticker with “Now a major motion picture Hellboy II: The Golden Army” on it. The sticker goes very well with the muted reds, browns, and blacks on the cover.) I liked more this time, but the feeling that something wasn’t quite right with the execution lingered.

First, let me say what is unquestionably right: Hellboy drawn by creator / writer / artist Mike Mignola. Nothing looks quite like it, even if everyone’s feet are weird. It’s brooding, dark, and exists so a huge, bright red guy can smash through it. The castle in which the story is set is looming, always about to fall apart but always standing as well; the setting is oppressive and evil without being over the top. Mignola is an outstanding visual storyteller with an excellent sense of design.

There is a strong idea for the main plot: Hellboy has to stop a worm from space, which has been drawn to earth by Nazi superscience, from devouring humanity. There’s a supporting idea, which involves Roger the Homunculus, his burgeoning humanity, and Hellboy’s beliefs. But there’s stuff around the edges that aren’t weird enough to be gripping or strong enough to be interesting. Ghost Nazis and American soldiers? Lobster Johnson? I understand Mignola loves the pulp heroes, but I don’t care about Lobster, nor do I feel his inherent (although latent, for me) awesomeness. The ghosts make thematic sense, given that Hellboy is metaphorically refighting a battle that was fought between the Americans and Nazis, instigated by the long-dead Nazi ideology. But plain ghosts are a jejune, and they don’t get enough play to be more than a momentary flash on the screen.

Which is a shame, because those loose ends divert the focus from the real weirdness. Torture, transformation into inhuman beasts, Nazi science, the nihilistic conclusion of Nazi beliefs, a scientist’s head in jars (I’m a sucker from brains / heads in jars), War Apes. … That’s the interesting stuff. The Nazis are seen as a cartoonish evil these days, but the chanting of the dead and changed Nazis after the Conqueror Worm returns to Earth is creepy in a way I rarely see in books. Mignola also gives the story an emotional element to the story in the form of Roger’s fight for his life and his humanity. Mignola even manages to make the readers feel (briefly) sorry for a Neo-Nazi.

This is a story that is very wrapped up in continuity. Rasputin and Hecate battle at the end after Rasputin wanders through an edge of the story; an alien who had met Hellboy a couple of times before pops into another chapter. It seems random, despite Mignola’s attempt to make these cameos seem less so by tying them into continuity. There are plenty of footnotes also, and although it gave me the feeling I was missing something (having never read the original comics), it did give me the feeling that the story was part of something larger, of a large tale worth reading. As a long-time Marvel fan, I can respect that. It would have been useful to have changed the footnotes to reflect where the stories referenced fall in the collected editions or give a timeline (or summary) on these tie-ins.

There is a sketchbook in the back as well. I would have preferred to have had the covers from the original miniseries instead, but we take what we can get from our publisher overlords. Original design sketches are not going to do much for me unless there are radically different designs or interesting commentary; there aren’t here.

I think my original impression was correct. This is a good story improved by Mignola’s art. But the unimportant details, the odd bits of continuity make Conqueror Worm seem less enjoyable than it should be, nibbling away at the fringes of the story until it looks moth eaten and shabbier than it really is. These niggling bits have a greater effect on the story than they should. Still, their effect is very real.

Rating: (2.5 of 5)