Hellboy Library Edition Volume 1: Wake the Devil and Seeds of Destruction ~Mike Mignola
–published 2008 (reprints older material)
–288 pages, Dark Horse
–5/5 stars,
In large part due to the successful 2004 adaptation of Mike Mignola’s work by the phenomenal director Guillermo del Toro and a few animated specials, Hellboy is much more of a household name than many other non-super hero comic book characters. However my suspicions are that few people outside of those who proclaim themselves fans of the genre have picked up the individual comic books or the graphic novel collections to discover just how incredible they really are.
I am here today to convince you to do so while reviewing this new collection of the first two graphic novels.
The incomparable Midori Snyder, award-winning novelist and co-editor of THE mythic arts website, Endicott Studio, published an incredibly interesting post the other day concerning The Literary Tattoo. I recommend a detour at this point to read that post before returning here.
I have certainly considered getting a tattoo in the past and if I ever did so the idea of some reference to a beloved book is a great one. In her post she highlighted a project that takes the literary tattoo to another level.
As many of you know, last night Mary, Tori and I had the privilege of going to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (Of Once fame) performing as The Swell Season in concert. The show was fabulous. But let me set it up for you:
Or a Magnesium Pearlcoat lining, to be more exact.
I mentioned to some of you in a weekly email (and possibly here on the blog) that this new WordPress theme seemed ironically attractive to me considering the image of a rusted car on a site entitled ‘Stainless Steel’ Droppings. What I may not have mentioned was that our recently paid off automobile decided to leave our indentured servitude to go to that great junkyard in the sky…or at least somewhere in the Kansas City area.
Film adaptations of comic books can be something of a conundrum for me because I am not the typical attendee to a big blockbuster comic book film–I am actually a fan. I adore the medium, find myself at the local comic shop every Wednesday (new comic book day) surrounded by examples of the genre, and have difficulty removing my fanboy goggles to view the film objectively.
That is one of several reasons I was excited to see Iron Man. Unlike many of the comic book films of the last decade, I knew next to nothing about the character or his place in the Marvel universe. I had this tiny, almost infinitesimal connection with Iron Man as I recall one of the first and few comics I read as a kid was an Iron Man comic, but beyond that there was no reason for me to be any more excited about this film than the others on this long slate of spring/summer films. And then they announced the casting.
