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[Spoilers]State of the Mignolaverse
Bobby Derie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I've been a fan of Hellboy & the B.P.R.D. since back when they were the same book. I've followed all the spin-offs - Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien, Witchfinder, the stuff in the 1940s, etc. Hell, I've even followed the non-canonical stuff like Hellboy, Jr., Itty Bitty Hellboy, and the Amazing Screw-On Head. I've even read the novels! (First rule of Hellboy novels: the anthologies are better, Second rule of Hellboy novels: ignore anything not written by Christopher Golden, Third and final rule of Hellboy novels: Golden's only good Hellboy novel is The Bones of Giants.)
Spoilers ahoy.
So, state of the 'verse:
Spoilers ahoy.
So, state of the 'verse:
Hellboy is dead, and went down to Hell. Honestly, this wasn't quite as good as I was hoping for it to be. I liked the stitch-in with Sir Edward Grey, since it means that loose plot element is finally tying together. Movement on this front is fairly glacial, but I think that's because Mignola has Big Plans and wants to keep room for other stuff to happen between Hellboy punching out gods of the Abyss or whatnot. I want more Mignola/Corben stuff with Hellboy in Mexico, maybe something with a werejaguar.
I can't believe I have to spoiler-tag this, because seriously there's an entire mini called Hellboy in Hell. How did you think he got there? A blazing motorcycle down a road of bone dust and night-black asphalt called "Good Intentions Highway, Route 616"?
B.P.R.D. has kind of gone off the rails. It's Armageddon, the team is broken, and a lot of the early promise of the series seems to have gone. A lot of good characters are dead, and not always for good reasons, and the replacement characters aren't really doing it for me. Ben Damio, damn. Still, it might all tie together. I do like the bit where the vampires are taken about by the whole end-of-the-world thing, and the return of the Black Flame was unexpected and very cool. The new guy with the sword might be interesting though. Honestly, I'd like to see more "unique" agents come out of the woodwork and do some traditional B.P.R.D. thing. Maybe that's what the upcoming trip to New York will all be about.
B.P.R.D. 1940s on the other hand continues with relatively tight storylines that don't feel too forced, while feeding into little bits and pieces of things we've seen before. I think it's important to contrast the 1940s BPRD with the contemporary BPRD - they're both fighting wars, and you can feel and see that, but the 1940s is a little cleaner, the monsters a little more human, the mysteries more oldschool. This also applies to Rocket 44, which made me interested to see how they got the Vril Suit back in action.
Abe Sapien is wandering off because...I dunno. I get that maybe he's disoriented with getting shot and transforming further, and I get that Mignola is building him up for the whole New Race of Man stuff, but I don't know if this walk in the wilderness is really doing anything for me so far. It's interesting that of all of Mignola's characters, Hellboy has stayed the most the same and Abe Sapien has gone through the most dramatic changes. I mean, you can kill Hellboy and he's still Hellboy whereever he goes, but it seems like every thirty or forty issues Abe needs to find himself or get reinvented or something.
Lobster Johnson one-shots and short-series are a current favorite, maybe because at the moment it's the only Mignolaverse title with anything really approaching a hero doing heroic things; the ultra-pulpy feel really helps. The sad part is, we pretty much know how this is going to end...but the ride getting there should be pretty damn fun.
Witchfinder appears mostly on hiatus, though I'm sure there are tales yet to be told.
Itty-Bitty Hellboy - eh. I'm not immune to all-ages Hellboy shenanigans, but seeing this makes me realize how much I miss Roger. Talk about losing the heart and soul of the team.
I can't believe I have to spoiler-tag this, because seriously there's an entire mini called Hellboy in Hell. How did you think he got there? A blazing motorcycle down a road of bone dust and night-black asphalt called "Good Intentions Highway, Route 616"?
B.P.R.D. has kind of gone off the rails. It's Armageddon, the team is broken, and a lot of the early promise of the series seems to have gone. A lot of good characters are dead, and not always for good reasons, and the replacement characters aren't really doing it for me. Ben Damio, damn. Still, it might all tie together. I do like the bit where the vampires are taken about by the whole end-of-the-world thing, and the return of the Black Flame was unexpected and very cool. The new guy with the sword might be interesting though. Honestly, I'd like to see more "unique" agents come out of the woodwork and do some traditional B.P.R.D. thing. Maybe that's what the upcoming trip to New York will all be about.
B.P.R.D. 1940s on the other hand continues with relatively tight storylines that don't feel too forced, while feeding into little bits and pieces of things we've seen before. I think it's important to contrast the 1940s BPRD with the contemporary BPRD - they're both fighting wars, and you can feel and see that, but the 1940s is a little cleaner, the monsters a little more human, the mysteries more oldschool. This also applies to Rocket 44, which made me interested to see how they got the Vril Suit back in action.
Abe Sapien is wandering off because...I dunno. I get that maybe he's disoriented with getting shot and transforming further, and I get that Mignola is building him up for the whole New Race of Man stuff, but I don't know if this walk in the wilderness is really doing anything for me so far. It's interesting that of all of Mignola's characters, Hellboy has stayed the most the same and Abe Sapien has gone through the most dramatic changes. I mean, you can kill Hellboy and he's still Hellboy whereever he goes, but it seems like every thirty or forty issues Abe needs to find himself or get reinvented or something.
Lobster Johnson one-shots and short-series are a current favorite, maybe because at the moment it's the only Mignolaverse title with anything really approaching a hero doing heroic things; the ultra-pulpy feel really helps. The sad part is, we pretty much know how this is going to end...but the ride getting there should be pretty damn fun.
Witchfinder appears mostly on hiatus, though I'm sure there are tales yet to be told.
Itty-Bitty Hellboy - eh. I'm not immune to all-ages Hellboy shenanigans, but seeing this makes me realize how much I miss Roger. Talk about losing the heart and soul of the team.
Bobby Derie on
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Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
There was also this extra BPRD stuff that seemed a lot less than necessary-the War on Frogs miniseries was largely garbage, and the first BPRD prequel stuff, 1946, was damn rough, to the point of being what I'd have to call largely subpar in comparison to the standing body of work. It filled in some plot points to be sure, but the art was downright painful in comparison to what had come before, and the overall story was...well, the whole thing should've been given more time to cook.
The newer pre-modern stuff like BPRD Vampire is showing great promise, however, and I'd put it just about as good as the original BPRD Universal Machine run for my feelings on it.
Really, you can't go wrong with BPRD up through the Garden of Souls event. After that was right about where the gloves came off and something seemed to shake the focus of quality until recently.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
On the other hand, the pure, unvarnished pulp of the Lobster hits all the right buttons. I want to see him descend into the depths of New York's sewers to fight cannibals and giant albino alligators.
The folklore stuff is pretty excellent. It just feels like it exists on an entirely different grade from the lovecraftian material, so sometimes it's a little hard to reconcile them both into the overall plot.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Need to catch up on the Abe trade I've missed with the Russian zombie guy's origin. And I see that all the titles seem to have had a big rush of releases recently. Looking forward to more 194X stuff.
How does Witchfinder fit into main series continuity/mythology? Tie in much or mainly doing its own thing? Not got around to getting any of those yet either.
My Mignolaverse collection is almost spreading to a second shelf it has grown so weighty. This is a good thing.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
I noted, with some increasing disapproval, how somehow, Liz's dislike of Daimio turned the group dynamics into Liz/Kate and then Daimio/Abe/Johan, like, for some reason all the existing relationships got arbitrarily routed where the female characters only hung out with eachother and the male/posthuman characters the same. A book is a lot less fun when you can barely get your characters to want to be in the same room together. It seemed incredibly cheap.
I find it frustrating, like a lot of Hellboy stuff, because all of the supernatural elements seem random but assumed - everyone but Hellboy seems to know exactly what's going on and it makes perfect sense to them. Only sometimes Hellboy does know exactly what do to, even if its seemingly random or crazy except in an extremely symbolic or subjective sense. I'm not even talking about the times when he draws on resources in the BPRD, like using enchanted knucklebone reliquaries they've dug up or cold iron to wallop an elf, I mean the times when he's completely mired in some illusory world and suddenly knows to grab the right enchanted umbrella to knock out the bad guy and save the day.
And there was Hellboy's apparent murder of Satan. Couldn't we have spent a page or two exploring just who Satan is in this setting? What's his relation to the Ogdru Jahad or the Watchers? If that's not important, why include him at all? Why have Hellboy murder him at all, then forget it happened? We have Grey say 'some things people don't want to remember' and that's that.
In both cases Hellboy just shrugs his shoulders and goes along with it. He just seems to get blown about so much by whatever the hell is going on without any concrete answers. It's kind of frustrating.
I've always like the science-fiction elements of the story more than the fantasy ones - the Ogdru Jahad and their Lovecraftian progeny, the new races of man, the ancient Watchers and all the strange things hidden within the Earth... basically what the BPRD's got to deal with now. But I don't get what the Jahad and their offspring have to do with the forces of hell and demons and magic and where they fit into things - the fantasy creatures have been talking about the Jahad and their role in the end of everything forever, but I don't really understand how they even fit into a cosmology that includes the infernal afterlife.
Also, in Hellboy in Hell:
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
I don't have time to jump onto a Hellboy wiki or anything, but off the top of my head one of the graphic novels gave the backstory to most of this. Essentially a host of angels rebelled against god and stole the fire of creation. Their attempt to create life didn't turn out very well - the Odgru Jahad and all their horrific progeny. For their sin, those angels were cast down and became the lords of hell. I think that's of it, but someone else might explain it better.
Their king Thoth captured three "angels" and imprisoned them in his garden; the woman that would be Hecate, but she slew them and painted their secrets in their blood on the wall of the temple, and that was pretty much the start of the end for the Hyperboreans, who split into right-hand and left-hand paths. Some repeated the sin of the "angels" and created a lesser race and machines of war powered by geomantic energy and vril; these rebelled against their creators and then fled into the underworld after the Hyperboreans were pretty much destroyed, with only a few outposts and remnants remaining - such as the monastery at Agartha and the yeti-folk.
The occult knowledge and some of the artifacts of Hyperborea were passed on to the next race of man - humans. Some were trained to use this to fight the Ogdru Jahad, others became black magicians and witches.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Frankly, there's a lot about the cosmology of the Mignolaverse we still don't know.
The Island storyline probably gives the best rundown of all that. Great read and great art. It's the first time Hellboy gets the whole story about the Ogdru Jahad's origins and the nature of his hand. (His response - 'Hey! Screw you~!' to the ghost telling it to him).
I'd like to know how the afterlife feeds into all this though - how big a deal is the Ogdru Jahad destroying the earth if there's heaven and hell? Will they all be burned out as well? Or is there no heaven and hell is just some kind of prison-dimension for the Watchers that become demons? Did the demons come there later, maybe as some offspring of the Watchers that remain on Earth? Are all demonic entities and powers just an expression of the cosmic power the Watchers wield?
I'm hoping for some hard answers to hammer out the cosmology now that Hellboy's in the actual hell.
Those may not be forthcoming,
If nothing else, I hope
At any rate, I'm certainly agog for the next issue.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
I always loved that name, even back when I first heard it during the original Hellboy movie.
Agreed. The eldritch aboms in this series are wonderful. Love how the Jahad is actually an entity composed of multiple entities each with their own name (but are still referred to as a single being), and how they've birthed the 'Ogdru Hem' creatures.
That BPRD storyline where the second Ogdru Hem awakens has one of my favorite scenes, where the monster howls its way across the country going 'NYYYAAAAA!' and a BPRD scientist flips his wig and screams 'Katha-Hem! Katha-HEM!!'
KATHA-HEEEEEM!!
"I...I think I made a mistake."
Nothing specific. But mentions of both Hell and Heaven. When confronting a beast that eats recently dead ghosts:
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
I saw it at my shop the other day and didn't even look at it. I've got nothing against the style of comic, I'm just...kinda good with Hellboy as is.
Just felt like something that doesn't have an itch for it to scratch.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Latest Abe Sapien.
Latest BPRD.
Latest Baltimore.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Hellboy in Hell #5 is another fall back to form - essentially a retelling of an old folk story (or something in that vein), with HB along for the ride and a tip-of-the-hat to some of Mignola's presumed non-canon stuff in The Amazing Screw-On Head & Other Curious Objects hardback (which, again, is brilliant). It begins and ends with HB still in hell and only a little bit of sketching out the story there; it's treading the line between moving forward and the fairytale-style which has informed so much of HB's sidetreks, so we might get literally anything with the next issue.
Sledgehammer 44: Lightning War picks up on the end of the Sledgehammer mini (which was itself a Lobster Johnson spin-off) and the Lobster Johnson A Scent of Lotus mini - yep, this is the return of the original Black Flame, promised to us waaaay back in the early BPRD series. Also with a very special guest star whom I won't spoil. Honestly, not a lot happens in this issue but it's kind of a BPRD 1940s accessory and just setting up the plot.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos