It's Howdy-Hellboy Time

When it comes to the importance of books, in the popular consciousness comic books hover somewhere between Harlequin romances and novels based on video games. Sure, if you turn them into a graphic novel, then they matter - do you ever wonder how literary culture would would regard Alan Moores' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Tim Sales and Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween, both of which begun as regular comic issues, if they weren't later published in graphic novel form? And, of course, some graphic novels are genuine graphic novels, intended to be such from the beginning, and those are also regarded popularly as a respectable form of literature. But what happens when a story arc spans a collection of diverse short stories, many of which are stand-alone, thus making graphic novelization impossible...but you bind them into book format anyway?

Well, for one thing, you get the "library volumes" of Mike Mignola's landmark series Hellboy, a book which taught me for the first time in twenty years of reading what people mean when they speak of books as mystical objects; how they were encouraged to read after becoming entranced by a book's physical qualities. Looking (and weighing) like the love child of an encyclopaedia and an atlas, Hellboy Volume 2 is a stunning thing, a black-bound creature with no dust jacket and a cover bearing only its title, byline, and a small matted illustration from a fan favourite story contained within. It's so heavy it makes me grunt when I pick it up. With gorgeous glossy pages too thick to flip idly, the sort you feel guilty about leaving fingerprints on...well, there are books, like the dinky little paperbacks I buy because they're cheap and easy to read on the bus, and then there are books. Hellboy Volume 2 is the latter.

And the good news is, it's not just pretty on the outside. Having spawned one spin-off that I know of, a small army of tributes (Mike Mignola lets other writers/artists publish Hellboy stories), and two solid films by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), Hellboy as drawn by Mignola is famous for a groundbreaking art style that relies heavily on clean lines and black. As written by Mignola - I stress this because I have not been impressed with the Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D., which he doesn't write, or the tribute volume I've read - it's also a great, thoughtful story about nature, choice, predestination, and a guy who more or less defines the phrase "loveable curmudgeon".

Opening its story during the Second World War, Hellboy is the story of a little red fellow with horns and a giant right fist who falls into Allied hands after entering Earth courtesy of a supernatural Nazi experiment gone awry. Taken under charge of the U.S. Bureau of Paranormal Research and Investigation (B.P.R.D.) and adopted by one of its agents, Hellboy grows up far quicker than the average boy and is soon engaged as a field agent himself. Hellboy is based on the short story format, and those short stories are in turn based on existing Old World folk stories both famous and obscure (but mostly obscure). It does, however, have several overarching story arcs, the most prominent being that of who - and what - its main character is. The dictionary definition of laid-back, Hellboy spends somewhere between twenty and thirty years unconcerned and uninterested in why, for example, he was born in Hell and has a gigantic and very powerful right fist that doesn't match his left, as he dispatches supernatural evil on behalf of the B.P.R.D. in a very "all in a day's work" way. In that same manner, he loves his adopted father fiercely, is protective of his friends and colleagues at the B.P.R.D., and has a large soft spot for Howdy-Doody (hey, he grew up in the late '40's) and cats. Wry without being hip, an oddly likeable mix of difficult child and grumpy old man, Hellboy is a great character to build a series around. It's Mike Mignola's treatment of Hellboy's nature, however - and the supernatural in general - that makes the story a far better read than your average demon-based comic, spin-offs and tributes included.

As a general rule, the difference between high-quality, mature supernatural fantasy and crappy, immature supernatural fantasy hinges on the respect the author has for his subject matter. People who write this stuff with a low belief in or respect of the supernatural can still turn out a quality product, but one that's also invariably stupid (Joss Whedon's Angel is a good example of this). One big thing that sets Mignola's Hellboy apart from other comics with the word "Hell" in the title, for example Garth Ennis' John Constantine, Hellblazer, is the fact that Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. get along and work in conjuction with the Church. Hellboy has genuine friends and mentors among the priesthood, and his lady friend Liz, also a B.P.R.D. agent with supernatural powers, is a nun in her spare time. Even better than this is that, as far as the Hellboy I've read, Mignola doesn't make the Church a "good guy" character by twisting it into a popular, politically correct something it's not - it's one of the Good Guys on its own merits.

Hellboy may be a put-off to many readers on the basis of its name alone. Well, as they say in showbiz, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it. At its core, Hellboy is the story of a fallen creature born that way who deliberately works on a daily basis to reject his nature and become something better. It's a redemption story, but a strange one as Hellboy turns out to be the literal son of Satan, his real name being Anung Un Rama, the Beast of the Apocalypse, destined to be the Great Destroyer. Even after he learns this, though, he continues to live as he's been living, and what's especially appealing from a storytelling perspective - and indicative of the author's maturity - is that Hellboy doesn't waste time whining about how it may all be hopeless in the end. He just does as he does, grinding down his horns every morning and choosing to live as his adoptive father taught him, rejecting (and actively slaying) evil.

I believe it was Buechner who wrote that the world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a wordly language, or something like that. What sealed the deal for me becoming a Mike Mignola fan was the last story in Hellboy Volume 2, "Box Full of Evil". Due to Hellboy's nature and power, assorted forces of evil both supernatural and earthly are in a constant state of attempting to reclaim him for the Devil's purposes, and this is what motivates the villain of "Box Full of Evil". Though he severely injures Hellboy, he is unable to turn him, and so sets about attempting to claim the nature of the Beast for himself. As Hellboy awakens blind on a supernatural plane, a creature there asks him, "Who are you, boy? What is your name?". Mentally defeated and crushed, Hellboy replies that he is Anung Un Rama. The creature summarizes who Anung Un Rama is and demands to know, "is that who you are?". Hellboy says no, and the creature responds, "then that's not your name, is it?" Hellboy is the story of someone who takes on a new name in rejection of the person their old name belongs to. It is written that when we come under the protection of Christ's salvation, we are born again, become someone different, and start life anew. And what is one of the first things that happens after you are born? You are given a name. "Box Full of Evil" touched me in a very deep and secret way, and I doubt I'll ever read it without bursting into tears as it slams home the heart of God's grace.

If nothing else, Hellboy Volume 2 sparks some interesting thoughts on the size of books versus their perceived value, and what an anomaly this volume is in that regard...but that's a story for another day.