So… I caught the Hellboy movie on TV today. I wasn’t floored by it, but I’ve heard good things about the comic, and I’m on a graphic novel binge of late. The wiki made the story sound really interesting… Nazis + The Occult? Yes please. If there’s a fan out there on the SDMB, could you sell me on it? Is there some collection I could pick up?
Yes, Hellboy is any good. It is, in fact, every good. Very highly recommended. Especially if you’ve got even a passing interest in folk tales and the like. Mike Mignola has an incredible talent for putting his finger on exactly what makes any given folk tale interesting, distilling that element out of it, combining it with similar elements from other folk tales, and creating an engrossing amalgamation of the original sources. With Nazis. And the occasional cybernetic ape. Seriously, check this shit out. There’s nothing else like it in comicdom.
Mignola also did a one-shot comic called The Amazing Screw-On Head, which is being floated as a new series for the Cartoon Network. You can see the pilot here. Also very highly recommended.
Okay, then I’m down. What should I buy first? Amazon.com has a series of volumes… should I buy those?
The first Hellboy volume is Seed of Destruction, and it’s a good place to begin because the movie was based largely on that storyline.
http://www.tplist.com is a great resource for finding out which order trade paperbacks (TPBs) are published in, and what each volume is about. I can’t link directly (damn frame-based site!), but they list all the Hellboy TPBs in order, with brief synopses for each.
I’m also a Hellboy fan, although I hadn’t read the comics before seeing the movie (there are many differences between the two, as you’ll see, but I think each stands well on its own). So much to love about Hellboy: secret agents, a paranormal defense agency, Nazis, the occult, Rasputin, World War II, Lovecraftian monsters, dry wit and sarcasm, undead monsters from beyond any known dimension, to say nothing of pancakes and cats. Damned good stuff, and not like anything else you’re likely to read.
I understand they’re filming “Hellboy 2” in the next year or so. I read the comics through interlibrary loan, so I didn’t have to shell out money for comics that I didn’t like. If you want to build up a collection, check out the Wikipedia article on Hellboy and you’ll get a feel for where to start first.