Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice

Mike Mignola’s red-skinned paranormal investigator teaming up with Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s four-legged spellcasters? Is there any way in the world this would not completely rock?

Verdict: Yes, it completely rocks. Mignola and Dorkin worked together on the script for this, and the result is big on action, supernatural weirdness, great dialogue, and great humor. Puggsley, normally the comic relief, gets his chance to shine — heck, everyone gets their chance to shine. It’s a grand story all around, and I’m glad the creators got together to make it happen.

Detective Comics #870

The conclusion of the Imposter Wars storyarc has the Jokerz and the Guardian Bats going to war in the middle of a carnival. It’s no great surprise that the deformed Winslow Heath is behind both the Jokerz and the Guardian Bats, but what is surprising and horrifying is the personal reason behind his madness — and it’s not just the Joker Venom he was exposed to years ago…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice end to the storyline. Granted, it’s an extremely downbeat and grim ending, but it’s likely the ending we had coming all along.

Madame Xanadu #28

It’s 1966, and Charlotte Blackwood is a college student who’s just had her first LSD experience. Unfortunately, once she comes off the trip, everything is vastly different for her — she can’t eat anything without experiencing its entire life-cycle. Tough enough when she has visions of wheat being harvested when she eats a bowl of cereal, but much worse when she feels what it’s like to die in a slaughterhouse while eating a hamburger. Can Madame Xanadu help her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good story, great hook, and Marian Churchland’s art really works well for this story.

Justice Society of America #44

New writer and artist on this series, and they’ve decided to celebrate by completely blowing up the team’s status quo again. Jay Garrick wants to retire as a superhero, Mr. Terrific is slowly losing his intelligence, a metahuman terrorist breaks Green Lantern’s neck, and corralling the terrorist means the team has to almost destroy a city to get him under control.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I remember when this title was the very best thing DC was publishing. Not anymore. And I’m done subjecting myself to the continuing decline of a once-great series.

It’s the beginning of a wonderful Halloween weekend, and that means we’re going to have to make sure tonight’s Friday Night Fights is thematically appropriate.

So we’re going with something from Mike Mignola — specifically “The Wolves of Saint August,” originally published in 1994 and reprinted in Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others. Without further ado, here’s Hellboy fighting a werewolf.

Hope y’all all have a great Halloween, with lots of candy and fun and costumes and bloody human sacrifices to dark eldritch gods. Ahh, those old Halloween traditions are always the best…

I’ve finished up all my regular reviews early so I can devote this week to reviewing a few of my favorite horror-focused graphic novels. Let’s start with something that came out very recently…

Hellboy: Masks and Monsters

This one reprints the “Batman/Hellboy/Starman” miniseries from 1999 and the “Ghost/Hellboy” miniseries from 1996. For some of you fanboys out there, that’s all it took for you to get on the horn to your local comic shop to reserve a copy. Both of these series have been out-of-print for ages — if you wanted them, you had to be prepared to spend a few hundred dollars on eBay. So this collection is very good news for comics fans.

We start out with “Batman/Hellboy/Starman,” with writing by James Robinson and art by Mike Mignola. Golden-Age Starman Ted Knight gets kidnapped while attending a conference in Gotham City. Batman tries to stop the kidnappers, a bunch of spell-slinging neo-Nazis, but they make their getaway. Hellboy soon shows up to offer his aid — the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense has identified the kidnappers as a Nazi organization called the Knights of October. A little detective work lets them track them down, but can they keep them from getting away? In the second half of the story, Ted Knight’s son, Jack Knight, the then-current Starman, travels with Hellboy to South America, where the Knights of October have their secret base. They plan to use Ted Knight’s knowledge of astronomy to raise a monstrous cthulhoid monster to lay waste to the world. Can Hellboy and Starman stop them and rescue Ted Knight?

In the “Ghost/Hellboy” story, written by Mignola and pencilled by Scott Benefiel, we start out with a great sequence from 1939, where a mobster axe-murders a guy, then calls in the local egghead occultist when he can’t get the guy’s ghost to stop laughing at him. And then he kills the occultist, too. Flash-forward to the present in Arcadia City, where Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. try to recruit Ghost, a murdered reporter-turned-spectral vigilante. But she gets tricked by an underworld demon into fighting Hellboy so the demon can carve off Hellboy’s Right Hand of Doom and use it to end the world. How long will it take the two supernatural do-gooders to wise up and start helping each other?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The “Batman/Hellboy/Starman” story is a special thrill because it’s something I never thought I’d actually get to read. It’s incredibly cool to have a comic that features Mignola artwork of both Batman and Starman and the Joker. It’s got Nazis and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and retro-pulp action and buckets of all that Hellboy-style goodness. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the “Ghost/Hellboy” story — it’s deliciously creepy and fun.

The whole thing was released just this month, so even if your local comic shop doesn’t have this in stock, they can still order it for you. So go get it already!

Today’s Cool Links:

• Here’s some nice pre-Halloween fiction for ya.
• Depressing analysis of the future of pen-and-paper roleplaying games.
• Early Wonder Woman sketches, with creator commentary.
• I love this site — MuslimsWearingThings. I’m supposed to be afraid of these folks? Really? All these perfectly nice people?

Hellboy: The Storm #3

Britain’s Noble Dead have risen from their graves, ready to march to war with Hellboy as their leader. But Big Red is getting cold feet — the utter bizarreness of the whole situation has gotten to be too much. He can’t bring himself to trust anything he’s been told by the people who supposedly know what they’re talking about, and his friend Alice can’t argue him back down. He leaves Excalibur with Alice and walks out past his army. He runs into a bum who tells him that even his army of zombie knights have no hope of surviving against Queen Mab‘s monstrous fae army. But maybe if he goes ahead and calls on the armies of Hell. All that, plus Baba Yaga returns to make a bargain, and Queen Mab learns that she’s ultimately serving a force much more powerful.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots and lots of stuff happening, all building up to a great climax. So many cool moments — Hellboy is a playa, Baba Yaga gets a great scene, and the seemingly unstoppable Mab learns who’s really calling the shots for her. Great writing as always from Mike Mignola, and great art from Duncan Fegredo.

iZombie #5

A bit of a wind-down issue here — Amon makes Gwen realize that she can’t remember how she died; Spot tells Gwen that he actually outed himself as a were-terrier to one of his friends; Gwen spends some downtime with one of the monster-hunters; and the vampires want revenge for Claire’s death.

Verdict: I think I’m actually going to thumbs-down this one. It’s 20+ pages of not-very-much-happening, and it’s too early in this one’s run for that kind of stuff.

Today’s Cool Links:

• See the world — or at least a random photo of it — with Globe Genie.
• David Brothers thinks DC may be embracing its experimental spirit again.
• Pop Culture Zombie Studies at Baltimore University? Where do I sign up?

Kill Shakespeare #4

Hamlet and Falstaff have just made a narrow escape from Richard III’s men and are now stuck riding through the forest wearing dresses — thanks to a failed scheme of Falstaff’s to disguise themselves as women. Falstaff takes Hamlet to an inn that’s a secret organizing base for the resistance, and they meet two of the resistance’s superstars — Juliet and Othello. They don’t have very much confidence in a supposed Shadow King who wears a dress, but they don’t have long to debate, as Richard’s men soon attack the inn. Othello is one heck of a fighter, but will his warrior instincts hold up when he learns that his old enemy Iago is on the scene?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m still surprised I’m enjoying this as much as I am — I did suspect that it was a one-joke concept that wouldn’t last beyond one or two issues, but I’m still very pleased with how it’s developing. I’ve heard it described as “The League of Extraordinary Shakespeare Gentlemen,” which isn’t far off the mark.

Hellboy: The Storm #2

Nimue, destroyer of Merlin, murderer of Queen Mab, corruptor of the fae, is on the march — her goal is the death of mankind and the entire planet. Her champion is a gigantic monster transformed from a lowly hedgehog, and he has enough oomph to impale Hellboy on a spear. Of course, Hellboy can’t really die anymore, and there isn’t much he can’t kill when he’s armed with Excalibur, so he and his human friend Alice continue on their way, finding a pub to rest in, while Hellboy reminisces about his boyhood in New Mexico with Professor Bruttenholm.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This story mixes ancient mythology with a giant slugfest with more personal storytelling, and it all seems to work fine. I’m loving Duncan Fegredo’s art here — it’s fun and kinetic and personable.

Baltimore: The Plague Ships #1

Well, there’s this nobleman named Lord Henry Baltimore who’s hunting vampires in a town plagued by an epidemic of, well, the plague. The vampires try to escape in an airship, but a local witch hexes it so it gets struck by lightning and explodes. Baltimore meets the witch and her beautiful daughter, who is desperate to escape from the town. Baltimore is imprisoned on suspicion of being in league with the devil, and the witch’s daughter helps him escape, in exchange for letter her travel with him.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Maybe you need to have read Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s “Baltimore” novel first… but that really shouldn’t be a requirement. There should be something to explain the backstory of the main character and the setting, because if you don’t have that, none of this makes much sense at all.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Erik Larsen, creator of the Savage Dragon, has been taking woman-hating lessons from Dave Sim…
• Noel Murray compares and contrasts “Astro City” and “Planetary.”
• One of those things they don’t seem to teach about in schools any more…

Kill Shakespeare #3

Hamlet has been rescued from Iago by Falstaff, while Richard III makes a political bargain with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Falstaff tells Hamlet that the wizard Shakespeare is actually a good guy, and they’re both visited briefly by another of Shakespeare’s allies, the fearsome but diminutive faerie called Puck. The travelers visit an inn to rest but are ambushed by Richard’s men. Their disguises as some of the inn’s whores is quickly seen through, but they still manage to make their escape. Macbeth, however, finds himself on the wrong end of a betrayal.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I was kinda not expecting to like this one as much as I did, but the appearance of more and more of Shakespeare’s characters is helping to keep this entertaining. The art is very nice — loved the eerie appearance of Robin Goodfellow, and Falstaff is perfectly rendered. I also liked the way Richard’s men wore noticeably different uniforms than Macbeth’s soldiers — you’d expect both to wear stereotypical medieval armor, but they don’t. And I thought the increasingly rude, crude, and lewd nature of the story actually worked pretty well — remember, Shakespeare’s plays were often pretty raunchy…

Hellboy: The Storm #1

Well, Hellboy’s the rightful heir to the British throne, and Britain’s noble dead will soon be rising from their graves to serve him. And by coincidence, Hellboy and his friend Alice are investigating a strange church burglary — someone stole the bodies of three ancient knights. But the priest confides after the local police have left that what he actually saw were the knights leaving the church on their own. Hellboy tells Alice that he’s given up drinking after spending the last few years pretty hopelessly sauced. After a very weird incident with a guy ominously ringing a bell (seriously, doesn’t sound like much, but it’s way creepy), they’re both attacked by a monster pledging to be just the first of an army that will wipe humanity off the face of the earth.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Loves me some good creepy Hellboy comics. Writing by Mike Mignola, art by Duncan Fegredo, and awesomeness all over the place.

Chimichanga #3

The monstrous Chimichanga has been captured by the police, and Lula the bearded girl has been kidnapped by Dinderly Pharmaceuticals, who need her chin-whiskers to make their new flatulence drug. Wrinkle, the old man who owns Wrinkle’s Traveling Circus, can’t find any legal help, and most of the circus performers hate both Lula and Chimichanga, so they won’t help. Only Heratio the Boy-Faced Fish is willing to help raid the city pound to rescue Chimichanga. But even if Chimichanga can find Lula, do they have any hope against the corporate might of a heartless pharmaceutical megacorporation?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s goofy and gross the way you’d expect from an Eric Powell comic, but it’s also got more than its share of sweetness in it, too. (Appreciate the sacrifice, kids — Powell will now order me hunted down and killed for noticing that…)

Today’s Cool Links:

• The Sandman/DCU crossovers
• You know Rodrigo y Gabriela, don’t you? Better get to know ’em, ’cause they’re awesome.
• Holocaust survivor dances at death camp sites. Take that, Nazis!

Hellboy in Mexico

A cool little tale of Hellboy’s past, released by Dark Horse in time for Cinco de Mayo — back in 1956, he was assigned to travel to Mexico to track down a force that was causing vampires, witches, and monsters to attack and murder whole villages of innocent people. He runs into some allies — three brothers, all luchadore wrestlers, who had a vision in which the Virgin Mary commanded them to go forth and fight evil. They team up with Hellboy, and all four spend their days destroying monsters and their nights partying hard. Hellboy gets along especially well with the youngest brother, Esteban. But they get sloppy one night, and Esteban gets taken by dark forces. Days of searching turns up nothing, no matter how many vampires they torture, until they find a poster advertising a new rudo luchadore, Camazotz — and a scrawled note demanding Hellboy meet him for a wrestling match from hell. Does Hellboy stand a chance against his former friend?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Numerous thumbs up. Multitudinous thumbs up. Combining Hellboy with luchadores and vampires and zombies is something that’s been hinted at from time to time — the character Lobster Johnson’s history includes a number of old Mexican luchadore movies made in his name — but this is just beyond awesome. It’s a little surprising that we haven’t seen stuff like this more often — we’ve followed Hellboy into just about every other corner of the world already. It really does combine the two genres — Mignola-style pulp horror and luchadore fiction — perfectly — part scary, part heartbreaking, part pure kaboom-blasting-brilliant. I want more of this stuff so very, very much.

Detective Comics #864

Looks like our focus is now going to pass from Batwoman back to Batman — this time, we’re getting a story about Dr. Jeremiah Arkham, former director of Arkham Asylum. He’s now an inmate of his asylum, despised by his former inmates but still ultimately ruling over them because he’s such a remorseless psycho badass and because he used to be the mad mob boss Black Mask. But Arkham still has some big plots in place — he’s attached a bomb to the chest of a stockbroker to get him to sabotage the stock of every corporation in Gotham. Batman has a plan to get Arkham to reveal the codes to disarm the bomb — he gives him access to his three secret patients — three emotionally damaged people who Arkham has kept hidden in cells deep in the asylum’s depths — but is Arkham prepared for the strange transformations his patients have undergone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Weird, weird, weird. Disorienting and skewed, brutal and mad. Just perfect for a story set inside a madhouse.

Spider-Man: Fever #2

Spidey’s soul has been captured by a bunch of interdimensional spider-demons. They plan to eat him, but they perceive that he’s part spider and part human. So they give him a test — travel into the world of the flies and capture something called the Sorror-Fly. Meanwhile, Dr. Strange travels the mad magical dimensions trying to track Spider-Man down. He gets help from some dog creatures and from an Australian sorceress on walkabout. He travels down a magical river in a mystic swan-boat, meets up with sentient matchsticks (“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t speak Match.”), and makes his way through one bizarre world after another. Will he be able to save Spider-Man? And how close is Spidey’s relationship to the spider-demons?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of awesomely weird stuff. Brendan McCarthy really unleashes his imagination here, with an incredibly mad plot and fantastic, crazed artwork. Spidey’s costume as he journeys into the desert is really cool, and almost every page is just beautifully rendered. It may not always make perfect sense, but it’s turning into an outstanding ride.

Another typically horrendous week is over, and if you’re anything like me, you need to kick your weekend off with a little bludgeoning violence. That means it’s time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

This evening’s fight comes from 1994’s Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by John Byrne and Mike Mignola, as Hellboy gets acquainted with one of the demonic monsters called the frogs:

Everyone have a wonderful weekend — see y’all back here on Monday…

Hellboy: The Bride of Hell

A quick one-shot issue from the superstar team of Mike Mignola and Richard Corben, the folks behind 2008’s brilliant “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” miniseries. Hellboy travels to France on behalf of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense to rescue a girl kidnapped by a cult that wants to make her into the bride of a demon. Of course, things don’t go entirely to plan, as Hellboy is stuck with an unconscious bride-to-be and an angry monster-demon. He finds temporary respite in an ancient cemetery dedicated to a saint reknowned for his powers against the forces of Hell. A lone monk tells him that his order has slowly been picked off over the years by the demon — while it can’t enter the cemetery, it can attack anyone who leaves. Knowing he’ll have to take out the monster in order to get the girl home, Hellboy leaves her sleeping in the cemetery while he goes out to find the demon, who has his own backstory to tell.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mignola’s storytelling is wonderful as always. Corben’s artwork is hully-chee-whiz drop-dead gorgeous. Asmodeus’ story is beautifully told, alternating between chilling and amusing, particularly his boredom after taking over a kingdom and having to deal with the mundane aspects of governing. It’s an absolutely awesome comic, and you should go hunt it down so you can enjoy it.

B.P.R.D.: King of Fear #1

In the wake of the disastrous mission to Mongolia that wiped out a bunch of American military men during an attack by an army of monsters, the BPRD has lost the support of the American government. While Dr. Manning and Abe Sapien try to decide how they’ll take the fight back to the frogs and the subterrans, Liz Sherman looks forward to burning some monsters, and Kate Corrigan takes a trip to the infamous Hunte Castle with her German military friend Bruno and the ghost of Lobster Johnson, possessing Johann Kraus’ ectoplasmic form.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice beginning to this new storyline. Lobster Johnson is an eerie and sad presence throughout the story. And Andrew Devon’s nervousness around ancient Egyptian mummy Panya and her awesome new Queen Elizabeth II hairstyle is an amusing mood-breaker.

B.P.R.D.: 1947 #5

In the conclusion of this story of the early days of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Simon Anders has been rescued from vampires and returned to the New Mexico Air Force base where the BPRD is currently headquartered. Professor Bruttenholm meets a specialist expert he’s brought in to assist — Ota Benga, an elderly former priest who specializes in exorcisms. Bruttenholm needs him to conduct a ceremony to dispel the demonic forces that have taken over Anders’ soul. Most of this issue focuses on the exorcism — played out quietly in the corporeal world but with tons of blood and thunder in the psychic realm — along with the unspoken conflict between Bruttenholm’s friendship with his old exorcist friend who rabidly hates demons and his duties to the young and innocent Hellboy.

Verdict: Thumbs up. In a lot of ways, a very quiet issue, with plenty of discussion and conversation — something that can be a bit rare in the BPRD comics. We also get an unpleasant little hint about what Simon Anders’ future may hold. And Hellboy gets to play baseball. This is the kind of stuff that makes for a good cool-down issue, and I can’t stop enjoying it.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #8

Hellboy has lost control of his demonic side, and he may have killed his friend Alice. Now he’s even more concerned about what’s wrong with him — for years, others have been pronouncing him the Beast of the Apocalypse, fated to bring about the end of the world — and he worries that it may be happening now. But a Russian spirit convinces him that he should stop believing what demons tell him and start believing what Alice herself believed — that he was the right person to carry Excalibur. So Hellboy draws the sword from the stone — and it turns out Alice wasn’t dead after all. So Hellboy’s the Rightful King of Britain — is that a happy ending? Well, Nimue is still out there plotting the end of mankind, and the the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra is making their own plans to end the world. So maybe it’s just a sign that things are changing, faster and faster.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Another great conclusion for this series. I still don’t know if I can buy Hellboy as mystic royalty, but Mike Mignola doesn’t steer us wrong very often, and I’m willing to give him the chance to show how it makes sense.