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Underground > Comic Books >

Hellboy - Conqueror Worm

  
 
Persephone
18:14 / 05.01.03
How much do I love Hellboy?? I don't even know where to begin.

It started, actually, with Blade. We watched the first Blade, and then we watched Blade 2. Which is directed by Guillermo del Toro, who does a really good commentary track on the DVD with the film's producer. It really is good, it's entertaining --del Toro is just a funny guy-- and it's very interesting in that he gives some good insight into the filmmaking process and his own process as an artist; and also he mentions more than once how much he admires Mike Mignola.

So the next time that we're at Chicago Comics, Husb finds Conqueror Worm that has an introduction by Guillermo del Toro. I am busy with New X-Men, so Husb goes off to read his first comic book.

Color

Husb reports, "Hellboy is very dark."

P: Dude, his name is Hellboy.
Husb: I don't mean morally dark. All the colors are dark, except for Hellboy who's bright red.

And that forms point number one of this post, the incredible colors that Mike Mignola uses and how he uses them. He uses color like some people use line. And he's not half-bad with line, if that's not the understatement of the millenium.

Composition

I've been waiting to talk about something that moriarty described in the Batman - Year One thread

And a tiny figure, silhoetted against the night sky, running across the rooftops with wings spread. Most artists would show Batman in a full-on splash to show how powerful or how much of a badass he is. Here, it goes back to the Golden Age, when Batman was a genuinely scary figure seen from afar, frightening innocent and criminal alike.

Because I'll show you what that instantly brought to my mind:



About which all I have to say is: Holy shit, fucking flying head in a jar...

There's another good one of the Nazi granddaughter in the sewer (?) ...it's almost all black, you can see pipes and brick arches ...and a wisp of a woman, and a little balloon with words: "Oh God." Not a soap-opera close-up of her horror-stricken face. A small, small thing swallowed up in the vastness of horror.

Character

Did I mention that I LOVE HELLBOY? I want a Hellboy plush toy with detachable horns. Apart from all his other good qualitities, I love the way he talks and his sense of right and wrong. As in, "Goddamn gun that fires all by itself-- that's CRAP!" He says this sort of thing all over the place, but the one other thing I loved was in Wake the Devil where he's told that he has to go by himself into some haunted castle and he just says, "Hey, no fair."

Ookay, how'm I doing on length here... sheesh. I have a whole other theory about Hellboy and Who He Really Is, but I'll save that for later.

Here's some threads about Hellboy that have already appeared on Barbelith:

Mike Mignola's Hellboy
--lots of great comments about why people here like Hellboy, including "Indiana Jones... if he was a really big red demon instead of Harrison Ford" (Chairman Maominstoat).

Hellboy Movie
Hellboy RPG
Hellboy - idiots guide
 
 
bigsunnydavros
10:33 / 07.01.03
Right- I've not picked up the Conqueror Worm trade yet (due to post-Christmas poverty), but here are a couple of thoughts about Hellboy in general.

I think it’s interesting that the first thing you mentioned in your post was the colouring in Hellboy, cos when I see or hear the word “Hellboy”, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Every Hellboy trade just has this instantaneous mood because of the colouring. It’s a carefully crafted aesthetic, which is just perfect for the pulp-horror mood of the series. There’s also something very potent about the blood-red figure of Hellboy when he’s swamped in the inky black and murky green. There are other comics with very distinct and brilliantly utilised colouring, but for some reason none of them are quite so stuck in my head as the colour scheme of Hellboy is. Weird that.

I’m going to nick someone else’s words to describe Mignola’s composition and storytelling, cos I don’t think I can phrase it better myself.

Here’s P. Craig Russell from his introduction to The Chained Coffin and Others trade.

“It is not just in Mike’s drawing that I take such pleasure, but in all the disparate elements that make simple drawing fit into the larger context of graphic storytelling. It lies in the powerful use of Black, the clever use of expositional panels, the careful attention to the rhythm of balloon placement and sound effects, colour as mood, architectural detail (Mike seems to be the only artist in comics to realise that not all graveyards come from New England~), and most importantly, the plasticity of his layouts. His panel arrangements seem to brief, their size and proportion one to the other in quick and elastic response to the needs of the story.”

There’s so much love in the writing and artwork here that it’s infectious. There’s an unencumbered feeling to these stories, like Mignola is just a really good comic book artist who loves horror stories, folk tales and Jack Kirby comics and decided to mush the three into one (which is probably the case, methinks). Over in the creation forum, where people were talking about creating a comics manifesto, Rizla said

“Too many superhero comics read like they're trying to transcend their pulp origins and failing, whereas I think it would be a lot more profitable for the more ambitious writers to embrace the silliness of the genre to some extent and just write *damn good pulp*.”

I’d say that Hellboy is pretty much my definition of damn good pulp. It’s goofy as all hell, but it’s not played ironically, and I like that. S’not un-ambitious or dumb in any way, but it is just happy to be what it is- big, silly fun with monsters and folk tales.

"Indiana Jones... if he was a really big red demon instead of Harrison Ford" is kind off a perfect explanation of both the nature and the appeal of this series actually… I don’t think I could put it better than that.

Also- does anyone else feel that the use of folk stories here gives the comic a feeling of history without making it feel weighed down and claustrophobic like continuity and a shared universe would?

And last, but certainly not least, there’s Hellboy himself. He is soooo lovable!!!
I’ve always loved characters that were at once both down-to-Earth and ridiculous. He’s got such an Earthy attitude in the face of everything, but at the same time he’s a big red monkey-demon detective who gets to romp around the world fighting monsters and spouting ridiculous lines of dialogue.

Here’s my favourite Hellboy line, and one which I think sums up the character perfectly. It’s from that bit in Wake the Devil where he’s fighting the Gorgon: “Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack ‘cause you’re a major historical figure, but now you’ve just gone NUTS”- it’s a pure classic, so it is.

My fave Hellboy story thus far was that wee two-page number “Pancakes”. Comedy gold that reduces me to tears of laughter every time. I’ve yet to meet someone who is immune to the charms of that story, and I damned well hope I never do…

Anyways, that’s me done for now… I’ll contribute more when my head is working slightly better…
 
 
Hellboy
18:14 / 08.01.03
I am agree with both, Mignola is one of the finest artist in comics. I am a really big Hellboy fan too. The first time I saw his work was around 1994 or 1995 on the covers of some Elseworlds from DC Comics. The first Hellboy comic I read was Seed of Destruction, I also like the work of John Byrne for this arc. Everytime I read one of the Mignola's stories and mostly Hellboy comics I just want more, it's like good sex, you just want more. I read almost all the Hellboy comics and I think that Pancakes and The Corpse are the stories which make me understand Hellboy. Mignola wrote some stories for Batman that also have the same atmosphere that Hellboy have. Sanctum, a one shot that appeared in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, the cover is a classic Mignola draw and its written by Mignola and Dan Raspler. A+++++ . The Doom that Came to Gotham is like a Lovecraft story written and drawn all by Mignola. It's dark and it's really good. A+++++. Also I'm playing Hellboy RPG with my friends, I am the Game Master, the characters are from 1965 and they live in Mexico City and it's weird to find that here in Mexico we have a lot of folklore that fit in the Hellboy plots.

JJPL
 
 
mr Squiggle
12:34 / 09.01.03
re: HB colouring, in the recent dark horse-Reveal Mignola/del Toro/ Scott Allie interview they talk about how HB is coloured with an internal light so he is (almost) always 100% red despise the lighting around him. They are going to colour him in post to achieve this in the movie. So Mignola has strong ideas about his colours & hes also worked with some of the best colourists working today.
I think I first fell in love with HB cause it looks so sophisticated. An action-adventure monster comics that graphic design snobs can enjoy.
 
 
moriarty
18:35 / 11.01.03
"BOOM!"

That's probably my favourite line in the entire book. Hellboy punching Kriegaffe and actually yelling "Boom!" out loud.

What an odd comic. Such a mix of interests from pulp to, well, other areas of pulp. It really shouldn't work. Whenever I try to think about it outside actually reading Hellboy, I can't believe that a comic that mixes floating heads in jars, nazis, Lovecraft, pulp adventurers of the 40s, a brooding centuries old homunculus, aliens, beautiful scenery, and a big, red demon that yells "Boom!" could ever succeed. Then I crack it open and somehow it all makes sense.

Maybe it's the colours, as was already mentioned. Lobster Johnson's goggles are a nice touch, as are the goggles on the gas mask. You always know who Lobster Johnson is, and your eyes are drawn right to him in the darkness, much like Hellboy's everpresent red hue. Speaking of which, after reading this thread and rereading the book, I noticed that Hellboy becomes dimmer when he falls unconscious. It should also probably be noted that Mignola doesn't colour the book himself.

My second favourite part of the comic is when Mignola downplays the action and actually pulls off real creepiness, best shown by creatures talking when they really shouldn't. The snakes and corpses, whispering secrets and muttering unintelligibly. Especially that. There's one page in particular in chapter 3 (the same page Persephone talks about with Laura in the basement saying "Oh God.") where the top three panels show dead nazis coming from the shadows. The first one says "We died in this place." The third, "Revenge." The second, however, just has a little squiggle line. He doesn't make any sense, as if he isn't able to control his vocal chords well enough to give his own indictment like the rest. Brrrr.

A confession. I find Mignola's work to be very, very sexy. Maybe it's because of the close link between fright and arousal, or it could just be the inviting slickness of the lines and plush, velvety coulours. Maybe it's because I have a thing for women in gas masks. Or maybe it's that big, old bear of a man, Hellboy himself.

Hm. I have lots more to go into, as well, but I'll save it for later.

There is a number of Mignola's Hellboy work to be found online. Specifically, the epilogue to Conquerer Worm can be found here, as it wasn't included in the regular four issue series. And here's an excerpt from the Comics Journal interview with Mignola. "The nice thing about having Hellboy in there is, I have such a tendency -- because right now I'm listening to Shakespeare -- and I have such a tendency to go off and take this stuff way too seriously, and write these big speeches and stuff. And with Hellboy, I've got a character whose job is to say, "Shut up!"
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
18:42 / 11.01.03
I think we're all getting too analytical here.

The great thing about Hellboy is-

It's just great.

You either love it, or you don't. It's visceral. To try to figure out why it's ace is to destroy its essential aceness. As is the case with all true swashbuckling poetry.
 
 
Simplist
21:44 / 11.01.03
Hellboy is intelligent pulp (intellipulp?), or pulp elevated to high art: Visually subdued and over the top at the same time, thoughtful but not lacking in gut-level visceral thrills, sincere without taking itself seriously (integrative post-ironic). Mignola is an all-around incredible craftsman. As for Conqueror Worm specifically, I'll add some comments when I've had time to flip through it again...
 
 
Persephone
01:06 / 13.01.03
Look away then, stoatie...

...even if you don't mind a little overintellectualization, this is possibly a spoiler of sorts. Not that I'm giving away any plot, just that this may not be a way that you want to look at Hellboy. And I do agree that the best part about Hellboy is how you can just enjoy him.

I don't say that this is what Mike Mignola intended for his creation. I'm not that big on artistic intention, even as an artist myself. This is just something that I got out of Hellboy, and it was sort of mind-opening and actually helped me with a sort of theoretical problem that I've been trying to work out. Let me say that theory and art can go together in at least two ways. A really good example of the one way is how Byron uses Ken Wilber to interpret Riot at Xavier's --theory informs art. I'm going the other way, which is to say that art is informing theory this time.

It starts with a bit of "info-prop" that grant posted in the Switchboard. Which I utterly hated, and I hated even more because I felt that I was supposed to love it to death. What's not to love? It's anti-Bush, it apologizes for America's atrocious behavior lately. What I hated was the bit that goes, "We're supposed to be the good guys..." At which point I had a sudden urge to smash things.

Cut to Husb. Husb says, "What do you think about this? I think that Hellboy represents the U.S. He's like a big red cowboy that goes into haunted European castles and smashes things."

And about a hundred things fell into place in my head. Mignola's done this really simple thing with Hellboy, he's created a character who was born to bring destruction on the world. His right hand is the Right Hand of Doom! And whatever that crown-thingy does, that's not a good thing. Yet Hellboy chooses to act against his nature, ripping the very horns off his head. But at the same time, he does sort of have a reputation for blowing things up.

See now, I think a problem with Americans is that they believe in this mythology that "we're supposed to be the good guys." Which leaves them --leaves me-- at a loss when things go so horribly wrong. But what if we could understand ourselves as an entity that was born to bring destruction on the world? That that was our essential nature as a nation. And then fought against that tooth and nail? My college Spanish teacher was Spanish, meaning actually from Spain, and we once got her to talk about what she thought about democracy. You know how in speeches U.S. presidents always talk about democracy like it's a godsend? I forget the exact wordplay, but she wrote on the chalkboard a pun on the word "democracy" (in Spanish) that turned it into something having to do with demons. Government by the demons, or something like that. Which of course brings me back to Hellboy...

Lobster Johnson's goggles are a nice touch

Actually I was totally confused --in a good way-- by the similarity of LJ's goggles and the goggle-shaped things on Hellboy's forehead. Even though it said in del Toro's introduction that those aren't goggles. Now that I know about the horns, I love this similarity. It works on a purely compositional level, the red circles and the yellow circles; and it works on a semiotic level in how it makes a relationship between LJ and Hellboy.

Mignola is an all-around incredible craftsman

Totally. Like the thing with the goggles and the not-goggles.... The thing is, you'd almost expect Mignola's art to be praiseworthy and his stories to be forgivable. But it's not even the case that the stories stand up on their own, but that the story is the art and the art is the story. And the words work, too. It all just comes together, like moriarty says. Like it's totally inspired by God knows whom. I'm just on the verge of starting to babble about Mozart and Good Will Hunting. Some people can just... play.
 
 
Tamayyurt
01:25 / 22.01.03
I just read Conqueror Worm and I was looking for Hellboy threads. Damn, can't believe I missed this one. I wanted to thank Persephone for this brilliant thread. You read my mind and typed it up in an elegant and orderly fashion.
 
  
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