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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 11, 2021 7:53:13 GMT -5
Goodbye Mister TodArt and Story by Mike Mignola  The Monstermen: The Skull and the Showman Dark Horse, 1999 Year: 1979 Summary: When an emergency call from a medium get's rerouted to the BPRD Hellboy gets roped into an odd encounter with another world. Plot: This is a story that really makes me pine for the past, when not only were little stories like this one popping up seemingly everywhere like little treats...but they were fantastic too! Mr.Todd originally appeared as a back up feature in Gary Gianni's Monstermen, which is a fun turn of events as The Monstermen(which is a fantastic book!) originally started out as a back up to an earlier Hellboy story. Clocking in at just six pages there isn't much to this story; Hellboy gets a call to help a spiritualist in need, he arrives to find that the spiritualist has been consumed by an ectoplasmic being, he gets eaten by said being but cause it to explode although it's too late for the spiritualist. That said, though short and simple the story stands out for how it's a prototype for several story elements that would become important in the future as Mignola really began developing the world of Hellboy. The first is the idea of a physical medium with control of ectoplasm, this was something Mignola had been toying with from the start when he first imagined Hellboy as a team book similar to X-Men:  It never went far, and we don't know much about this early team but the guy in the center was titled "The Ectoplasmic-Man" and it seems the idea stuck with Mignola as here in Mister Tod we finally saw what that meant: a medium who can conjure spirits using the moisture from their own body. But the evolution didn't stop here as we'd see it again with the creation of Johann Kraus just three years later when Mignola finally did make a proper team book in BPRD. Not only does Kraus use ecotplasm(and is a spirit made of it) but both his origin as a medium and phyisical appearance both resemble Mister Todd so it seems like Mignola may have been a little sad that he wasted the idea in this story by killing off Mister Todd at the end.
More important than the connection to Mignola's evolving ideas on the team concept however is the nature and depiction of the monster itself. Though the evil opponents of Hellboy, the Ogdru Hem, had been mentioned previously and even briefly glimpsed as a writhing mass of tentacles in the first full fledged Hellboy story The Seed of Destruction, not much beyond them being eldritch abominations like H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu was known. But in this issue we see them as beings bereft of physical form floating in the "deep end" of the spectral world just looking to cross over to ours and while obviously not a deep characterization it's the beginning of the lore that we got further development later on in 2001's Conqueror Worm which is by far one of the most important Hellboy stories ever done. So with all that said it's easy to see that while not the most exciting story in and of itself, Goodbye Mister Tod is an important stepping stone in the development of Mignola's world.
Grade:7/10 |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 11, 2021 16:09:06 GMT -5
"Birth" of Abe Sapien Written by Mike Mignola Art by Matthew Dow Smith, Ryan Sook and Mike Mignola  Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #2, 1994 Hellboy: Box Full of Evil #2, 1999 BPRD: The Hollow Earth #2 2002 Year: 1979 Summary: Found in a basement by a pair of plumbers, Abe Sapien's career at the BPRD almost ended before it began. Plot: Like my reviews of the origins of Hellboy and Liz Sherman, the story of Abe's beginning isn't based on one single issue but is cobbled together from scenes in three separate issues. Based off of the fact that it's not a real story but just some flash backs I stitched together for the purposes of reviewing Hellboy along its internal timeline you'd think that it wouldn't be possible that it could even approach anything like a cohesive narrative...but it actually works surprisingly well! From the simple two panel introduction(seen above) from Seed of Destruction to the parallel look at the "birth" of Abe and Roger in Abe Sapien Versus Science in Box Full of Evil #2 to the scene of Hellboy pulling Abe from his test tube you really do get a real journey for the character that was really fun to see. The fear and repulsion of science that Abe feels here is really is totally understandable and the scene where Hellboy says, "they never stop until someone says 'enough'...well I'm someone and this enough." and then takes Abe for his first ham sandwich was incredibly powerful. I really love just how much Hellboy is at the heart of these origins, tying these disparate cast of "monsters" together in a way that highlights just how human they really are. If Dark Horse is reading, you should totally package all these little scenes into a single primer issue for the Hellboy Universe, they just work so well together. Grade:8/10 |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 12, 2021 6:09:45 GMT -5
..but it actually works surprisingly well! From the simple two panel introduction(seen above) from Seed of Destruction The image isn't working. Funny, I must have read this one ages back, but I have no recollection of this two panel sequence. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 12, 2021 6:37:24 GMT -5
..but it actually works surprisingly well! From the simple two panel introduction(seen above) from Seed of Destruction The image isn't working. Funny, I must have read this one ages back, but I have no recollection of this two panel sequence. Wikimedia seems to be blocking it...and I was the one who originally uploaded it there! I used to have it scanned, but lost it, I just posted a shot from another source though the text is missing. It was a really brief sequence in the second issue that introduced both Liz and Abe by giving the readers a brief look at their BPRD personnel files. |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 12, 2021 8:18:20 GMT -5
Ah, I remember those panels now. I'd assumed there's been something in the way of a brief origin story from your write-up. Now it makes sense!
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 12, 2021 8:50:57 GMT -5
Ah, I remember those panels now. I'd assumed there's been something in the way of a brief origin story from your write-up. Now it makes sense! Surprisingly there has never been a full on origin, just flash backs. |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 12, 2021 9:44:21 GMT -5
Ah, I remember those panels now. I'd assumed there's been something in the way of a brief origin story from your write-up. Now it makes sense! Surprisingly there has never been a full on origin ...yet. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 12, 2021 9:52:55 GMT -5
Surprisingly there has never been a full on origin ...yet. Very true, with the retroactive series Hellboy and the BPRD inching ever forward there is definitely a strong chance we'll get more in depth origins of Liz and Abe in the not too distant future. |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 12, 2021 10:00:58 GMT -5
Very true, with the retroactive series Hellboy and the BPRD inching ever forward there is definitely a strong chance we'll get more in depth origins of Liz and Abe in the not too distant future. For a franchise to run this long under multiple titles, I have to believe that eventually every story will get told. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 13, 2021 5:42:59 GMT -5
Very true, with the retroactive series Hellboy and the BPRD inching ever forward there is definitely a strong chance we'll get more in depth origins of Liz and Abe in the not too distant future. For a franchise to run this long under multiple titles, I have to believe that eventually every story will get told. Yeah, there are very few blank spaces yet to be filled in. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 20, 2021 14:38:33 GMT -5
The Last Witch of Fairfield Written by Mike Mignola and Scott AllieArt by Sebastián Fiumara Published in Hellboy: Winter Special 2017 Year: 1979 Summary: Hellboy attempts to give Liz and Abe a simple taste of the out doors in a missing persons case...but things quickly go awry.
Plot: This is one of those stories that feels like it should be a home run but somehow misses the mark completely. It starts off promising with a tried and true set up of a simple one off some how going pear shaped as Hellboy's excuse of participating in a non-supernatural search for two missing girls in the woods outside the BPRD head quarters in Fairfield Connecticut quickly gets out of hand when they find the unquiet spirits of a witch who executed in those same woods becomes involved. It's a great premise, and it was immediately interesting as although I've spent most of my life in Massachusetts and was absolutely obsessed with the Salem witch trials I had no idea that there were similar hysterias elsewhere in New England around the same time so it was a great introduction to learning about more local history...but at the end of the day it was mostly just back ground noise and wasn't something that was developed all that much further than providing Hellboy something to punch. On top of that the dialogue here is incredibly wooden and stilted under Allie’s pen. Now, to be fair this story does take place a good fifteen years before we regularly see Liz, Abe, and Hellboy together so the team dynamic is naturally not going to be as developed or easy as it will be during their adventuring heyday the 1990’s, but that’s not really a good excuse for what we had on the page. Allie seems to think that dragging out dialogue over multiple panels, sometimes pages, is the best way to disseminate information, and thinks that half-answers are clever and fun to read... but they aren't, so instead we're left with stiff dialogue that doesn't actually tell us much or help progress the story. It's frustrating, but I guess not every story can be a winner.
Art: The highlight here is the art of Sebastián Fiumara, who is able to deftly maneuver us through a short but meandering story and give it a sense of purpose with his excellent action scenes that are just chalk full of beautifully grotesque imagery.
Grade:6/10 |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 25, 2021 14:31:13 GMT -5
"Shattered" Written by Ron Marz Art by Jim Starlin Hellboy: Weird Tales #5, Dark Horse Comics 2003 Year:1979 Summary: Hellboy travels to Guatemala to investigate an ancient Mayan artifact called Xul Chalak which can control time.
Plot: I don't normally "count" stories that Mike Mignola had no hand in creating, and thus although I liked the Hellboy: Weird Tales anthology I've skipped most of the stories from there...but with when a story has a pedigree like this one you just have to include it even if the story itself isn't terribly consequential in and of itself. In a lot of ways Marz story here hearkens back to the early Hellboy stories I love, we start in the thick of things with Hellboy fighting a giant iguana while an evil archaeologist screams about how his bauble will help him change the world and then Hellboy punches out the iguana, then the bad guy and sees a peak of his destiny when he touches the gem. It's short and sweet and though a tad formulaic it was fun none the less. Part of wishes we would have gotten a greater look at Mayan mythology as that's something we haven't explored much and I'm not entirely sure Xul Chalak is real Mayan artifact, never mind an actual Mayan word but it gave Hellboy a reason to fight an iguana so I guess you can't expect much more than that from a story only six pages long.
Art: For his part Stalin does a great job of giving us a look at Hellboy's world, he nails Mignola's knack for atmosphere and has a great handle on the action. I think my only qualm is that Hellboy's famous Right Hand of Doom looks more like the glove worn by that craggy faced villain Starlin is perhaps better known for rather than a hand made from stone but other than that the proportions of Hellboy are spot on.
Grade:7/10 |
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 11, 2021 9:17:54 GMT -5
Abe Sapien: The Drowning Written by Mike Mignola Art by Jason Shawn Alexander Abe Sapien #1-5, 2008 Year: 1981Summary:Abe travels to the island of Saint Sebastien off the coast of France on his first mission with out Hellboy and encounters an Old God. Plot: This is one I've been looking forward to re-reading and reviewing here for a while as it's by far one of my favorite Hellboy stories of all time...and Hellboy only appears in it for a scant few panels in a vision by Abe! The story combines all my favorite Hellboy elements: local myths and legends, a fantastic mood of foreboding, a feeling of a larger world...and it not only refrences my favorite story by H.P. Lovecraft but fully incorporates it into the over arcing world of Hellboy. Although he got his first one shot in 1998's Drums of the Dead(which occurs later in the time line) this is the first Abe miniseries, and it was so well received it led into Abe getting his very own spin off title which lasted(with only a few gaps) for 46 issues until it merged back into the BPRD ongoing book. And while the later half of the stories served as a companion piece to the then ongoing stories these earlier issues, like the drowning chronicled Abe's early days with the BPRD which I found much more satisfying as they filled not only an empty gap in Abe's history but also in the over all Hellboy universe. And though these various looks back at Abe's early days were fun this story in particular was incredible, not only for the reasons listed above but because of the way it was crafted. Instead of giving us a deeply mythological and textured story right off the bat, as the modern Hellboy stories often were Mignola went back to his roots here giving us a mission that at face value felt very akin to the early Hellboy stories: the Professor calls Abe to his study and tells him that he has located a lost journal of the famed Witch Finder, Sir Edward Gray(whom you'll no doubt remember fondly from here and others if you've been following along!) that gave the location of a long sought after mythical Hindu dagger. After a little folklore lesson Abe heads off and encounters a series of over sized sea creatures summoned mysteriously by an old sea hag which results in Abe getting tossed around but after getting his ass handed to him for a bit he manages to come out on top. Sounds like a story arc you've heard by now right? So the only difference here is it's Abe instead of Hellboy? That makes it special? Wrong. While those early Hellboy tales ended abruptly with out woebegone hero standing over the latest monster of the week with out any real character progression Abe's story only gets bigger with the expected conclusion. Falling into an old pattern here not only made this early Abe story mirror those early Hellboy stories, which is fitting for a quasi-origin, but it lulled you into a false set of expectations for the story and when it gets blown up at the end of the issue with us finding out that the Hag wasn't the bad guy here and that Abe had unleashed some unspeakable evil it feels all the more shocking and the world suddenly feels all the more bigger. And the feeling doesn't stop there with tie ins to the black Goddess Hecate, and Hyperborean myths and the ghost of Edward Gray joining the fray it goes from an isolated, but fun, Abe one off to feeling like something that really has a lot to contribute to the over all mythos that Mignola was creating. And that feeling of a shared world didn't stop with just links to existing Hellboy stories either as it became the first to really give us a direct shout out to H.P. Lovecraft's work with the hag and the village people borrowing the religion of the people first seen in Lovecraft's 1936 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth...but it goes further than that too, Mignola doesn't just ape plot points from Lovecraft's creepy fish god worshiping villagers he fully incorporates it into his own story and uses it to build up a unique mythology for Abe that compliments the prophecy surrounding Hellboy. With prophesies about sacrifices made to insure a new world and a new race of man and with Abe being hinted as being the son of Oannes(who protected the village from evil) it makes Abe an interesting counterpoint to Hellboy, while Hellboy shall bring about the end of the world Abe represents a new beginning...and it all came from a simple folklore infused beat em up story! For so long, Abe was just kind of there, he was just a Creature of the Black Lagoon knock off, but here at last he got some depth of his own and his legacy is one that has fasinated me far more than Hellboy's and is something I hope Mignola revisits again in the near future now that {Spoiler}{Spoiler: Click to show}the world has ended Art: I've loved Jason Shawn Alexander's art ever since I first saw it in the comic tie in for Vanhelsing, and while I knew movie tie-ins get a bad rap I was pumped for Vanhelsing so I picked it up anyway and was just blown away! Alexander's dark, detailed and moody style really elevated the book not only above the quality of a cheap promotional comic...but also above the quality of the film itself(and I still think it was a good flick, so sue me!  ) and he brought that same intensity here to this book. From the inky depths of the sea to a village that felt real and lived in despite the horrors inhabiting it every page was stunning making the book a perfect ten out of ten! Grade: 10/10
Of "Historical" Note: Although it doesn't feature much in the actual plot of the story, the Hellboy novel series by Christopher Golden gets its first in comic mention here with it being noted that Hellboy has left the BPRD to join his then girlfriend/archaeologist Anastasia on a series of globe trotting adventures. Though we've "seen" her post break up in the novels(which I may include here latter on) we've never actually seen them together in the comics but as we draw closer to the 80's in the flash back book Hellboy and the BPRD I'm hoping that's a whole that gets filled soon. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 16, 2021 16:23:50 GMT -5
"Casualties" Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi Art by Guy Davis Dark Horse Digital Exclusive, 2011 Year: 1981 Summary: On the hunt for a werewolf Abe grapples with the emotional fall out of being the only agent to return from the last mission.
Plot: This is another one of those rare stories that some fans of the Hellboy Universe may not even know it exists. Though it's recently been collected in the Abe Sapien omnibus, for years this little eight page story was only available to patrons who shopped at select comic stores back in 2011 as it was an exclusive story that Dark Horse commissioned as an incentive for shops to sign up for their Digital Retailers program. It was a pretty limited program and each store only had 100 codes for this digital book which meant that I had to go to three different Newbury Comics locations before I got one and although it was short the fact that it was a direct follow up to one of my all time favorite stories The Drowning made it totally worth it in the end. There's not a lot of meat to the story here, directly after the events of The Drowning Abe is once again tasked with leading a mission in Hellboy's absence and this time he means for everyone to come home alive. Obviously that means we get some great development for Abe as he grapples with losing his previous team...but it's also a great moment for Liz as she explains that she and Abe are different than the other agents and that he has to accept that human members will always likely die while the "freaks" live on; it's a really dark moment and her frustration at being the "other" and it's fate in comparison to others is a great bit of foreshadowing to how she always seems to want to be rid of her "gift" in future stories.
Art: I was a little bumbed out that the "sequel" to the drowning didn't feature art by Jason Shawn Alexander, you really can't complain too much when the artist is Guy Davis. Man, do I miss seeing him on Hellboy books; it's a crying shame that he was pretty much chased away from Dark Horse comics because he spoke out against Scott Allie's behavior.
Grade:9/10 |
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 24, 2021 14:02:22 GMT -5
"The Haunted Boy"
 Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi Art by Patric Reynolds Abe Sapien #6 Dark Horse, 2009 Year: 1982 Summary: Abe Sapien is tasked with investigating a possible haunting in Vermont at the site of a drowning.
Plot: While the essential plot points of this latest adventure of Abe Sapien are pretty straight forward, the drama of the two families dealing with their loss brought a more realistic sense of horror than we normally see in Mignola's books. Coming out after the heals of the five part, Lovecraft inspired, story The Drowning I was initially a little disappointed in this one shot because it lacked the Gothic feel that I normally look for in a good Hellboy story but it's really come up in my estimation after revisiting it this time around. The plot is still pretty predictable, from the start it's blatantly clear that the ghost child would reveal to Abe that the other child, the one who avoided drowning in the lake, was the one responsible for the ghost's death, and there aren't any connections or plot points that create any kind of an "ah-ha" moment from previous Abe stories...but there is a real sense of melancholy in the pages here really starts to build with in you as you read this that I really enjoy. From the alienation felt by Abe as he tries to help the two families despite their repulsion of him to the very real pain the mothers feel in losing their sons to a tragic accident on a frozen pond this is a book with a very different sense of darkness than I'm used to experiencing but after a year spent in near isolation and bearing witness to so many daily acts of ugliness it really hits a different chord in me than it did all those years ago when I first pulled this off the racks. This may never be my favorite Abe Sapien story but I'll certainly never say this wasn't a well done story ever again.
Art: Though the art duties are in different hands with this issue than the opening arc Patric Reynolds is definitely a great artist to choose to continue Abe's adventures as he has a grittiness to his style that is highly reminiscent of his predecessor’s. Normally I'd really miss Mignola's creepy, gothic visuals and dark, brooding atmosphere but with the emotional conflicts in the story being the greater focus over the supernatural elements, a more realistic, gritty style helps to truly focus the reader’s attention on characters and their pain.
Grade: 7.5/10 |
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) and he brought that same intensity here to this book. From the inky depths of the sea to a village that felt real and lived in despite the horrors inhabiting it every page was stunning making the book a perfect ten out of ten!