Hellboy: Bride of Hell

It's sometimes hard to comprehend Mike Mignola's consistency as a creator, writer, and still occasionally, artist. He has been exploring the same sort of themes, with the same character, and with the same sort of quality writing for so many years. This time Mignola continues developing Hellboy’s relationship with the Catholic Church and his relationships to other demons but throws into "The Bride of Hell" a fascinating parallel and then, startling contrast between Hellboy's employer, the B.P.R.D, and the many other secret organizations at work in Mignola's universe.

Though it's quickly stuffed into the background, it's important to remember that the root of the story is the search for a missing girl and the missing girl's father turning to the B.P.R.D. Most of this story is Hellboy going at it alone, in the shit so to speak, but it hovers in the background of the story, only showing up on the first page or so. The B.P.R.D. isn’t even mentioned by name, just hinted at in the press release narration and made clear via the silent official drinking from his B.P.R.D. mug staring straight at the reader. It's a memorably strange intro to one of the weirder Hellboy stories.
Mignola doesn’t show the organization's inner-workings but he does make a special point to note that it is a special branch of the U.S. government and is made a shining beacon when contrasted with other organizations like the Catholic Church, the Knights of Saint Hagan, King Solomon, and the Asmodeus’ disciples. Even though Hellboy doesn’t complete his mission, the truth of the situation is revealed and solved...and it's all the more disturbing because it doesn't have a healthy conclusion.
The B.P.R.D. shines because Hellboy is its figurehead and main agent. Hellboy lives in a world of grays while Asmodeus and Hagan’s disciple, Fitzroy, live in a world of absolutes. This gets at the main thrust of the Hellboy universe: Hellboy is a descendent of the old world but becomes a hero for the modern world. It’s the cycle that every generation goes through: the young replaces the old. Interestingly, "Bride of Hell" puts all characters and sensibilities up against the wall.

This tension between the past and present, from shifting values and sensibilities to more apparent things like how the world has physically changed is what's going on in something like Ware's Jimmy Corrigan too. Each generation of Corrigans adds its own weight to the succeeding one ultimately dooming the modern incarnation to a muted worthless man-child. Hellboy sees these dying institutions for what they are--demons of the past, like relatives trying to hold him back--and sheds them off with a quip, then punches them in the face. Of course, that’s not enough to get through unharmed. Hellboy kills the demon but his mission is essentially a failure. Even though he’s a champion of practicality and reason, it’s not enough to overcome the brute force of a harsh world and he's confronted with a character he can't save...because she doesn't want to be saved.

That I can review a comic drawn by the legendary, gets-better-with-age Richard Corben and not mention the art is a testament to how strong the writing is in "Bride of Hell".

Awesome Spanish-Language Corben Site

I recently found this great Corben blog "La Leyenda De Richard Corben" (The Legend of Richard Corben) which frequently updates to analyze and discuss Corben's work. Unfortunately, it's in Spanish, so I'm mainly just looking at the pretty pictures or slowly moving my way through a Babel Fish translated version of the site, but either way, it's well worth checking out. Dude even bought a page from Corben's super slept-on Big Foot series: "Mi Primer Original (My First Original).

And while we're at it, here's a part of Corben's animated short Neverwhere that's on You Tube and labelled "Neverwere" for some reason. It's pretty much a stranger, artier version of the "Den" story in Heavy Metal:

On Variant Covers...

To most people, variant covers represent the very worst of the comics industry. Perceived as total cash-ins, an attempt to rake in collectors' money on a given issue two, three, four times over, variants are the style over substance mentality defined during the crazy 90s comics boom. They're an easy target though. The go-to for snobby comics fans to make fun of Marvel and DC but read and love everything Drawn & Quarterly drops. No one has to buy a variant and fans willing to shell out some extra cash for a cool cover by a cool artist are getting what they want.

Additionally, and quite respectably, the variant cover is basically big corporate comics makers throwing your local comic store a couple extra bucks. Really cool comics stores just stick the variant in the pile of comics, but even the ones that order the variant, bag and board it upon arrival, and up the price to $9.99 or whatever are schlockmeisters, but there's worse way to make a couple extra bucks than upping the cost of something that fans have shown, time and time again, they'll pay for. It's the beauty of the ideals of capitalism in miniature, a big guy with a lot of money, sorta helps out a guy with a little less money, and they sell a product at a competitive rate for dummies like myself to choose to purchase or not purchase.

Also, it's a little easier to not be too cynical towards variants when one is as great and weird and playful as this Richard Corben drawn variant for the latest issue of Cable. Corben's one of the few artist who seems to get better and more interesting with age, switching up his style in subtle ways while avoiding egregious "reinvention" or trend-hopping that a lot of the older Gods can sometimes stumble into. Having come to Corben rather late, his early and most famous work--stuff like Den or Jeremy Brood--is totally amazing, but has a weird, air-brushed quality to it (Corben's cover on Olivetti's book should remind readers the debt Ariel Olivetti's work owes to early Corben), that his more recent work lacks. Corben's slowly taken all the smooth-ness out of his work and tossed in a ton of R. Crumb/Basil Wolverton lines and dots and specks making all the characters haggard and tired, like their skin's made of the gross stuff that grows on something you left in the fridge for too long.

And so, it's pretty much perfect that Marvel would give Corben an assignment connected to Marvel Zombies--I'd probably read the thing if Corben did all of the art--because he's an expert at illustrating decay and horror and smart enough to make it a little ironic, just like the Marvel Zombies series overall. The most playfully fucked-up aspect of the cover is the zombie baby, which doesn't even look alive (or dead-alive or whatever), but decayed and absent of insides, like a dead goldfish stuck to an aquarium filter for a couple days. Corben adds some particularly cartoony flies hovering around and while there's all kinds of great gnarly stuff going in the human arm (love those stringy, underside of the arm muscles sticking out), the way Corben draws the robotic arm as limp and dead in its own way, is really effective.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man #3

The last issue of “The Crooked Man” was legitimately fucking scary. Most horror comics, like horror movies, aren’t actually scary or anything, but Mignola hit this weird anything can happen sense of narrative that when mixed with Richard Corben’s signature art didn’t really read like anything else.

The moment where it suddenly went from noon to midnight, foreshadowed by a striking image of wailing witches flying through the air, the gaggle of down syndrome redneck witches surrounding the church were so rarified and disturbing that it made the appearance of the titular Crooked Man almost an afterthought.

This latest (and final) issue wraps the story up and turns the Crooked Man into an actual character, which really does make him less scary and switches the focus from creeped-out Lovecraft-ian atmosphere to something close to say, Jeeper Creepers. There’s nothing wrong with this and once again, Mignola’s narrative hits this point where the “anything can happen” feeling that only comics give you gets beyond palpable. It’s crazy to see Hellboy pierced by some stakes in the fence thrown by the Crooked Man, and it gets weirder from there.

And Corben’s art is the perfect match to all this. Like the Crooked Man himself, Corben’s work is great because it’s unpredictable. He does lots of weird stuff with perspective, sometimes purposefully giving someone a head that’s a little too big or present an image from some odd angle like it’s got a fisheye lens on it or something. There’s also the weird effect of it being really cartoony but not fun or cute at all. There’s lot of Silver Age sound effects and ‘Looney Tunes’ smoke. It’s all pretty ugly, but it’s never too much.

Mignola’s writing is similar. He treats the Appalachian Mountains the same way he’s treated some weird, fucked-up town in Eastern Europe, which is refreshing because it would be easy to fumble into grotesque caricature dealing with the South. It’s also not too cute and sensitive either. Tom Ferrell’s a skinny-ass redneck, but he’s a human too with fears and concerns who just wants to do the right thing. He’s given an amazing level of bravery when his response to the Crooked Man’s request for the cat bone that’s protected Tom is simply: “…he’s got me. Fair’s fair, I used that cat bone.”

One of the smarter aspects of Mignola’s writing is the way the story never wraps up as quickly as you expect it to. Sometimes this is a bit frustrating and makes a story feel overlong, but it’s a great way of throwing in some final weird emotions that wouldn’t fit if plot--instead of character and emotion--were the sole focus for Mignola. Additionally, it adds a sober, realistic aspect to the story's end. The pathetic creature clutching the gold, Hellboy and Tom walking in the woods the day after, the return to reality after all the supernatural stuff.