Hellboy

[Jedi Knightrider 3000]

Hellboy rocks! this book is so cool, because it deals with nazis, monsters, fish men, the end of the world, and a working class demon who just happens to be the beast of the apocalypse...

i am too psyched that there will be a movie about this character. the use of old myths and wives-tales and superstitions in this book is extraordinary. anyone else read this?

[jjreason]

I have only read the 2 part limited series Hellboy /Batman. I really, really liked the character but failed to follow up on buying his book. Soon, my pet. Soon.

[Jedi Knightrider 3000]

"the chained coffin and other stories" is a good buy for all the random old-world myths used with this character. "seed of destruction" is basically the origin story, and supposedly what the movie will be based on... almost everything done with this character is still available in TPB form, so it's pretty easy to pick up. like sin city, the stories are self contained, so you don't have to go from the beginning first, although it does help. on the whole, they make a much larger picture, however... incredible book!

[Eternal Padawan]

I think I have the original books somewhere. It seemed like a pretty cool concept at the time, but it didn't really jump out at me. maybe it's improved in the last ten years. Mignola's artwork was nice, if simplistic.

Who's playing Hellboy?

[Jedi Knightrider 3000]

it's being directed by guillermo del toro, who directed blade II and turned down III for the chance to do this project - hellboy is being played by ron perlman who was the vampire in blade II that had the bomb attached to his head... both del toro and mignola had him and only him in mind to play hellboy - talk about serendipity...

[Eternal Padawan]

Ron Perlman ROCKS. I remember him way back from The Name of the Rose with Sean Connery and later as Vincent on Beauty and the Beast. It's cool to see him getting a headlining role!

[Eternal Padawan]

Yup. Just checked my big book of comics. I have the original 4 issue series. What's that going for these days?

And have you seen the pics online of Ron in makeup and costume?? Freakin' COOL. This movie is gonna make LXG look like the Hulk!

[Jedi Knightrider 3000]

i liked the hulk, but i know what you mean...

the makeup for HB looks great, but i'm REALLY impressed by the suit for abe sapien... he looks AWESOME!!!

[anarky]

Nine years? Wow. I thought this was a popular comic book.

Anyone (vyn) have a road map of sorts to tackling this series?

[vynsane]

HA, yeah... been a while since this topic was dusted off.

reading them in publishing order is probably the best way to go about it. it's asynchronous, but everything published builds upon the previous installments. luckily, Dark Horse was one of the first publishers to appreciate the importance of TPBs so it's all numbered accordingly - just follow it by volume number. "Seed of Destruction" is vol. 1, which sets up the origin story and all that. i believe they're up to vol. 12 now.

some of the volumes begin and end in one miniseries, others collect one-shots or two-shots under one title (generally speaking, their volume names end with "and others"), but it's all collected in order of publication, basically. have a look at the list of collected editions. you might want to spring for the library editions to have fewer books lying around. there's also House of the Living Dead which is an OGN, not a collected edition.

everything else in there is not strictly considered canon like "Hellboy: Weird Tales" (which is fun) and various crossovers like "Hellboy/Savage Dragon" (which is also fun), "Hellboy/Ghost" (which i don't think i have) and "Batman/Hellboy/Starman" (which is awesome). then there are some novels, too, but i never got into those.

and then there's BPRD, which is an absolute BEAST to get into at this point. once again TPBs are your friend, and they, too, are numbered in publishing order. there are 15 volumes in the initial run with three more under the current 'Hell on Earth' banner. BPRD has basically been an ongoing series chunked up into miniseries' (a series of miniseries', even morso than hellboy itself) since about 2005 with Vol. 3 "Plague of Frogs" being the beginning of the series proper - the first two volumes are the collected sporadic minis and one-shots. it's all intertwined with the Hellboy universe, but not intrinsically necessary to get his story.

then, if you take Hellboy and BPRD as two parts of the whole, there are even more ancillary characters that continue to flesh out the universe. there have been two minis for "Lobster Johnson", a pulp hero from WWII era, who has played a small part in the Hellboy U: "The Iron Prometheus" and "The Burning Hand". and there were two minis of "Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder" called "In the Service of Angels" and "Lost and Gone Forever". he's basically the Victorian Era Hellboy (except human... most likely) and personal advisor on the occult and supernatural phenomenon to Queen Victoria herself, after saving her life (in his first appearance in Myspace Dark Horse Presents issue 16, story 1).

[anarky]

Ah--thanks for the info on paperbacks. You read my mind (no way in hell am I tracking down the whole series in floppies). I was afraid this was going to be like Savage Dragon, where Larsen apparently hasn't learned yet that having paperbacks current and available (not to mention easily navigable) would be a good thing.

All the comparisons between Atomic Robo and Hellboy have made me interested. I know it was meant to get people reading AR, but, hey, it's not like the reverse is harmful or anything.

[anarky]

It doesn't look like there's any advantage to the Library Editions, and they cost more than the paperbacks they collect. It may be a different story with BRPD, which look to be considerably cheaper in the hardcovers (with the first volume apparently OOP). Am I missing something here?

[vynsane]

All the comparisons between Atomic Robo and Hellboy have made me interested. I know it was meant to get people reading AR, but, hey, it's not like the reverse is harmful or anything.

honestly, the comparisons between hellboy and atomic robo pretty much fall apart just below the surface. they're both inhuman average joes who fight oddities, but while hellboy leans heavily on the mysticism and mythology, robo is all about the science of weird. hellboy, while a lot of fun, also takes itself a lot more seriously. robo is MORE fun, and a lot more light-hearted, almost to the point of being all-ages appropriate, if it weren't for the science angle that would leave young kids in the dust. it's not just pseudoscience, either. sure, a lot of it is theoretical and some of it is purely made up, but you can tell clevinger puts a lot of research behind his sciency mumbo-jumbo, whereas arcane lore and old fairy tales are mignola's research materials. there's also more emphasis on continuity in hellboy. that is not to say there is no continuity in robo, there most certainly is. however, everything published in hellboy is built upon what preceded it. you can read 'almost colossus' without having read previous installments of hellboy, but you won't get as much out of it. you can pick up any volume of robo and just dive in. previous installments enhance the experience, but aren't inherently necessary to understand certain things.

also, hellboy doesn't have Jenkins...

It doesn't look like there's any advantage to the Library Editions, and they cost more than the paperbacks they collect. It may be a different story with BRPD, which look to be considerably cheaper in the hardcovers (with the first volume apparently OOP). Am I missing something here?

i think the 'library editions' are oversized and possibly contain 'special features' and ancillary materials. the BPRD hardcovers are, i believe, just hard-bound reprints containing multiple TPBs each.