I love Hellboy, and have done from the first time I saw a cover and wondered who the large red chap with the odd right hand was. The book’s combination of pulptastic monster punching, fun characters, beautiful art and colossal over-arching plot was unlike anything else on the shelves at the time. Even now, there’s not much like it. Although there is a lot OF it. See?
That? Is everything written to date that’s been set in the Hellboy universe (Click twice to embiggenify). Mark Tweedale of Multiversity is the warrior scholar responsible for putting together and curating that and I’d recommended you go check out his stuff. He’s great.
Now, the thing about this is, there’s a lot of it. A space, and wallet, challengingly huge amount of it in fact. I love this stuff but if I picked every volume up then not only would I maybe be sleeping on them but also eating them too. So, for ages I’ve enjoyed the odd bit of Hellboy and not worried too much about the whole thing.
Until now.
This is the Hellboy page on Comixology. Every volume on that list, from what I can see, is now on the digital comics platform for the price of several cups of coffee each. Or, if you’re lucky, one bucket of coffee.
So here’s the plan. Once a month I’m going to buy a volume of Hellboy, read it, and talk about it. I’ll be doing that in the order you see up there. So we’ll cover BPRD, Lobster Johnson and all the other side projects too. It’ll take, assuming no breaks, four years.
I can’t wait. It’s a rich, thematically chewy series with a wonderfully realized world and a ton of excellent characters. This’ll be my first real exposure to most of it, so come along and let’s find the fun stuff together.
So, if you want to find out just why Hellboy is a modern classic and just how much fun it is, then check back with me at the end of next week for the first installment of The Hellboy Project with Volume 1-Wake The Devil. I SWEAR this won’t be the theme tune…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peiuYuDB1PU]