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The first volume of Mike Mignola's amazing Hellboy series does the introduction thing, while maintaining a nice creepy atmosphere with obvious routes in Lovecraftian horror. Unfortunately, it's also co-written by John Byrne, but hey, nothing's perfect.

Possible Spoilers






It's hard to talk about Hellboy and not compare it to the movie. I'm not sure if that's just me, but I'll try my best to do so.

The story opens as we see Hellboy's birth into this world. The ritual performed by the Nazi's and the results that occur hundreds of miles away where the Allies have a small squad standing ready to investigate the paranormal goings ons of the site. From there the story gets moving pretty quickly. Hellboy finds his father Dr. Bruthenholm, alone, half mad, troubled by memories that he can't quite place. An expedition to the artic circle and then months of nothing. Unfortunately he dies before he can puzzle out the pieces, killed by a giant frog creature that Hellboy promptly takes out.

One thing leads to another, and Hellboy, along with Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, all end up investigating the family behind the arctic expedition, The Cavendesh family. It seems that they have quite the background, a house built on a lake with a mysterious past, the family with an obsession to locate a prehuman temple in the arctic.

Of course, as it turns out the family and Hellboys father found the temple and in doing so awoke something.. other.

The end of all this is a confrontation between Rasputin and his pseudo-cthulhuian beastie as he attempts to awake the Ogdru-Jahad from the ancient slumber, and Hellboy and Co.

For a first outing it holds together really well. The combination of haunted house, Lovecraftian monsters and err.. Rasputin works really well without feeling overly convulated. Sadly, the same can't be said for the dialogue. I'm guessing Byrne did the dialogue because it feels.. well, stiff and bland, unlike the later books in the series. Everyone sounds a like and there's internal narration galore! In a way it helps to explain certain aspects of Hellboy, his relation to Bruthenholm, Abe's origin, Liz's background, but then again it's also in the fight scene's which just slow them down immensely. I don't need Hellboy saying that he punches the monster while we can see it right there on panel. Internal narration does pop up in later series, but it doesn't seem as prevalent or overwhelming as it does here. Frankly, I chalk it all up to Byrne.

The art is utterly beatufiful, a little rougher than Mignola's later work, but hell.. rough Mignola is better than most of the stuff out there so it's not exactly a bad thing. It fits the mood wonderfully, and really does more to set and carry the mood then anything else in the book. The dark corners of Cavendesh manor, the bulk of Hellboy, gothic portraits and alien wall frescos. Good stuff.

Also include are several sketches showing the evolution of Hellboy, and two short Hellboy back up stories.

Good stuff, not my favorite of the three Hellboy TPB's I currently own, but it's still very good.

Probably not my best ramble/review, but there's turkey cooking and my stomache's making noises that could be used in a future Godzilla movie, assuming there are future Godzilla movies.