Your friendly neighborhood Hellboy-man.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mike Mignola
Art: John Byrne
Colors: James Sinclair
Letterer: Pat Brosseau
What They Say:
For the first time, Hellboy’s complete story is presented in chronological order for the ultimate reading experience.
With over 300 pages written and drawn by Mignola, this first volume jumps from Hellboy’s mysterious World War II origin to his 1994 confrontation with the man who summoned him to earth. Avoiding his supposed fate as the herald of the end of the world, Hellboy battles monsters alongside Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and Roger the Homunculus as agents of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
The four-volume omnibus series along with the two volumes of The Complete Short Stories collect all of Mignola’s award-winning Hellboy stories in chronological order for a definitive reading experience.
Reprinting Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil, and the stories “Wolves of St August,” “The Chained Coffin,” and “Almost Colossus” from The Chained Coffin.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Lemme get this out of the way: I like Hellboy. The premise of a demon being summoned to our world by Nazis only to be adopted by Americans and raised to fight evil as part of a secret organization that specializes in the paranormal is not only incredibly cool, but general enough for a monster-of-the-week type of formula that can bend to whatever needs the author wishes, no matter how weird.
So to actually delve into the series from the beginning, I’m a bit… whelmed? As incredibly bonkers and uniquely appealing as the series premise itself is (especially for 1994!), you can definitely tell it’s something that was built off a single premise with not much in the way of story planning.
In terms of visuals, artist Byrne absolutely nails it. His love for angles and deep shadows makes for this atmospheric, yet incredibly stylish look into Hellboy’s world. And as often as things are engulfed in shadows, they never come off as overbearing or try-hard grimdark. Sinclair’s colors compliment Byrne’s art perfectly, with gradients kept to a bare minimum, allowing for simple color schemes that bounce well off Byrne’s sunken blacks, even in scenes taking place in the daytime.
It’s the story progression itself that feels like it hasn’t reached its peak potential yet. The overall feel of most the stories told in this first omnibus is much akin to being dropped in the middle of a pool without having learned anything about swimming. You’re bombarded with so much information and world-building, and yet so much of it ends up being less integral to the immediate story, and more like pretty background information (like who would have thought the Hellboy world had actual superheroes in it?). It’s quirky and ambitious, definitely, but it never really gathers its bearings enough to tell a clear story. Even its cast of characters is treated more as garnish than anything of real substance. Things like the death of Hellboy’s adoptive father are used more to progress the immediate story than to really build Hellboy himself as a character.
Villains are treated in a similar style. The omnibus is packed to the brim with crazily designed baddies, from talking heads in jars, to dudes with swastikas emblazoned onto their eyepatch. And yet at the end of the day, there’s very little to explore about their character. Of note, especially, is the villain of Rasputin—for a key figure to bringing Hellboy to earth in the first place, his goals are always very ambiguous. You’re under the impression he wants immortality, but once he’s granted it, it’s pretty hazy as to what he wants to do next with it outside of creating havoc for… reasons. On top of this, he suffers from the very villainy trope of monologuing, times a million. Not only will he pause to embellish and further explain things to the protagonists (who outside of Hellboy and aquatic work-mate Abe are incredibly interchangeable, and disposable), but what he says always comes out as cryptic and nonsensical. At least when a Bond villain monologues, we get some insight into his “why”s and “how”s for villainy, but in the case with Hellboy, Rasputin and many other villains end up reciting ancient scriptures, or repeating the overly long names of millennia-old demons. It comes off as boring in the way reading a textbook is boring, which can be a hindrance, especially in a medium as visual as comics.
I will say, the strengths of this omnibus are its chapter-long stories, as well as the standout mini-arc Almost Colossus. Each short is very self-contained, but also a lot easier to swallow because of that. Author Mignola doesn’t have to commit himself to a single idea for very long, so in this case, his ideas come off as a lot more focused, with the story benefiting from a shorter run-time. Likewise, Almost Colossus feels like the culmination of the things Mignola has learned from earlier Hellboy chapters until that point. Rather than some lofty overzealous arc, Almost Colossus focuses on the relationship between a homunculus, and its brother who influences him to despise humans. What unravels from there is a solid balance of action and low-key comedy that works and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
In Summary:
Hellboy Omnibus 1 has a lot of interesting ideas executed halfheartedly. While Byrne’s art is a spectacle to behold, it’s clear that Mignola is only just beginning to get a feel for what kind of world and characters he wishes to express, his more memorable and focused stories also being his shorter ones. Hopefully, the stories to follow continue in this fashion of slow improvement.
Grade: C+/B-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: May 22, 2018
MSRP: $24.99
