Since Mike Mignola's Hellboy first hit the stands in 1993, it has become a cultural sensation, racking up a dozen Eisner Awards and inspiring numerous spinoffs, from a novel line, to video games, to feature films. This bundle contains all seven volumes of Mike Mignola's landmark Hellboy series. Available just in time for the release of the new movie, Hellboy The Golden Army directed by Guillermo del Toro, this set brings the reader up to speed and gives them an understanding of the Hellboy universe. Truly original stories and fantastic art punctuate this terrific series.
Mike Mignola was born September 16, 1960 in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading Dracula at age 13 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered.
In 1982, hoping to find a way to draw monsters for a living, he moved to New York City and began working for Marvel Comics, first as a (very terrible) inker and then as an artist on comics like Rocket Raccoon, Alpha Flight and The Hulk. By the late 80s he had begun to develop his signature style (thin lines, clunky shapes and lots of black) and moved onto higher profile commercial projects like Cosmic Odyssey (1988) and Gotham by Gaslight (1989) for DC Comics, and the not-so-commercial Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (1990) for Marvel. In 1992, he drew the comic book adaptation of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics.
In 1993, Mike moved to Dark Horse comics and created Hellboy, a half-demon occult detective who may or may not be the Beast of the Apocalypse. While the first story line (Seed of Destruction, 1994) was co-written by John Byrne, Mike has continued writing the series himself. There are, at this moment, 13 Hellboy graphic novel collections (with more on the way), several spin-off titles (B.P.R.D., Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and Witchfinder), three anthologies of prose stories, several novels, two animated films and two live-action films staring Ron Perlman. Hellboy has earned numerous comic industry awards and is published in a great many countries.
Mike also created the award-winning comic book The Amazing Screw-on Head and has co-written two novels (Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and Joe Golem and the Drowning City) with best-selling author Christopher Golden.
Mike worked (very briefly) with Francis Ford Coppola on his film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), was a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). He lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter, a lot of books and a cat.
Really beautiful illustration and a lot of good ideas... but Mignola is a lousy Storyteller: Almost every Story consists of long monolouges explaining mythical backgroung and then Hellboy gets to fight a couple of pages and that's it... Magic and fistfights just don't make a lot of sense... (Sandman is a lot more elegant that way)
How convenient that goodreads let me put 7 graphic novels in one entry.
Dark Horse has always been my favorite comic book company. I didn't really get into comics as a kid until I stumbled across issue #1 of "Star Wars: Dark Empire" in a comic shop. Cam Kennedy's detailed watercolors were amazing and the writers put a lot more thought into that story than George Lucas put into the prequels. In the 90's, Dark Horse books were closer to art than the silly, commercial stuff that DC and Marvel were putting out or the adolescent excesses of Image Comics. But I always passed up Hellboy as a kid, probably because I was morally confused by the title and because I wasn't ready for the stylized, and at times, almost minimalist art. Then the other day, I suddenly and inexplicably had a burning desire to read Hellboy. I don't know why. It's like a memory of flipping through the comics in adolescence reached out of my subconscious and compelled me to walk immediately from the office at 5 pm to the bookstore to crash in the cafe for a few hours and read every Hellboy graphic novel they had.
Books 1 and 2 were great, but not perfect. Reading those first two stories back to back was a bit much, since they're both so broad in scope. I didn't feel like I knew the characters very well and here we were talking about the fate of the universe two graphic novels in a row.
Books 3 and 4 solved this problem, and I enjoyed them a lot more, since they're short stories concerned mostly with the characters and monsters from folklore.
Book 5 was a better "novel" length story than Books 1 and 2, because it was more focused. I love the character of Roger and Lobster Johnson was a great addition.
Book 6 might have been my favorite, but I have to read it again, because it was more abstract and I think I missed a lot. The stories are post 9/11 and rather than addressing the events directly, Mignola lets his tone become more personal and reflective.
Book 7 almost made me cry (in a bad way), because Mignola let some other people draw Hellboy for the first time and those... stories... stink.
Book 8... whoops this entry is only supposed to cover books 1-7.