Mignolaverse

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Not sure if this belongs more in the 'What We're Reading' thread, but last month I read a couple of minor Mignola collections courtesy of Hoopla. One I really liked, his Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham, which is a very successful mashup of Lovecraft and Batman. The other, Zombieworld: Champion of the Worms, I thought was less successful. I gather that Mignola did not have a lot to do with it, beyond the cover and some of the story; it is mostly the work of Pat McEown. It does have some interesting glimpses of Mignola's Hyperborea at the beginning, though (see below):.

Batman Doom Gotham Cover.jpg Champion Worms.jpg
 
I recently re-read the Hellboy Saga up to where I'd left it off, then finally finished it with the end.

Man, I could read Mignola cosmic horror/occult investigation/pulp adventure stories forever. Hellboy/BPRD related or not, just...that stuff. That exact flavor mix.
 
My first exposure to Mignola's art was when he was drawing the covers for Classic X-Men. Those covers were so good.
 
Recently, courtesy of Hoopla and my local library, I read the collection Hellboy: The Silver Lantern Club (2022). Hellboy actually plays little role in it--he is listening to tales about the titular club, which was a c. 1890s forerunner of the B.P.R.D., from one of its former members, Simon Bruttenholm. The stories were fun, but nothing special, by Mignola standards. It was nice to see more of the plucky Sarah Jewell, though.
 
Don't get me wrong, I like Mignola's art. But for me, it's the writing and worldcrafting - the Yog-Sothery++
Funny enough, without Mignola’s art style (or maybe Guy Davis or Richard Corben) I feel like something is missing.
 
Thanks, as usual, to my public library and Hoopla, I recently read the collection Sword of Hyperborea. It's a 4-part limited series tracing how that weapon, wielded by Agent Howards in the apocalypse, came to be in Chicago (where it was found by the B.P.R.D.). There may be a little retconning going on--my vague memory is that originally we got a different explanation of how the sword arrived there--but if so I don't really care. The series gives a few glimpses of characters we've encountered before, like Howards himself, his cave-man equivalent Gul Dennar, and the always nefarious Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra. I think my favorite section, though, dealt with a deep-sea diver hired to retrieve something else who came to wield the sword.

swordhyperborea_1024x.jpg
 
it's a great tribute to Kirby. Started out as a pitch for an animated series that unfortunately never happened
 
I’ve always liked the way he’s drawn Batman for some reason, even with the huge belt.
 
I’ve always liked the way he’s drawn Batman for some reason, even with the huge belt.

Gotham by Gaslight wa my first exposure to his work, and remains my fav Elseworlds version of Batman. I think Mignola really captures the gothic aspect of Batman.

OTOH, I hate Mignola's Superman, lol. I don't think his style works for that character at all.
 
Thanks to the local library, I read the collected Hellboy: The Bones of Giants. It's a 4-issue limited series based on an illustrated novel of the same title by Mignola and Christopher Golden. I've never read any of the Hellboy novels, but I enjoyed this adaptation, which after all is going back to Hellboy's comic-book roots. The story involves an investigation by the B.P.R.D. of the apparent corpse of Thor and the attempted resurrection of Thrym, king of the Frost Giants. Professor Aickman, who featured in a much earlier Hellboy story, makes a reappearance and beings from Norse myth feature heavily in the tale. The dwarfs and dark-elves are well-handled, as is a valkyrie, but I particularly liked the use of Ratatosk, the squirrel that acts as a message-carrier on Yggdrasil. The book also mixes horror and humor very effectively.

Hellboy Bones Giants - Copy.jpg
 
Again thanks to my local public library and the Hoopla app, I've read some new (to me, anyway) Mignolaverse material:
  • British Paranormal Society: Time Out of Mind (2023). This is a collection of a 5-issue series, set in the early 20th century, in which Simon Bruttenholm and Honora Grant investigate the disappearance of one of Simon's colleagues in a small village. It is set in Mignola's universe, but he was not personally involved with it--Chris Roberson was the writer and Andrea Mutti the artist. It's a fairly straightforward tale, but I enjoyed it; you could easily turn it into a Call of Cthulhu adventure, or something similar.
  • Castle Full of Blackbirds (2023). This is a 4-issue series set c. 1967. It follows the story of the young Sara May Blackburn, the 'witch' who aided Hellboy in "The Return of Effie Kolb" as she enters the 'Linton School for Girls,' a training academy for young girls with arcane powers. It is also something considerably darker, as emerges in the course of the series. I won't say much about it, for fear of spoilers; I found it a more engaging, but also considerably more cryptic, tale than Time Out of Mind. I'm not sure if this is because Mignola himself was one of the writers.
  • Frankenstein: New World, Volume 1 (2023). This is the first four issues of an ongoing(?) series. It takes place centuries after the destruction of the world chronicled in B.P.R.D. A remnant of humanity persists in an underground environment, regarding a quiescent vril-powered Frankenstein as their oracle. He is awakened by a young girl, Lilja, who has had visions of a woman/power trapped in some amberlike substance. Trailed by his young acolyte, Frankenstein returns to the earth's surface, where he and Lilja encounter the strange world that has evolved since humanity's fall. There are interesting encounters with several post-human races, and a new threat that has entered the world not long after Frankenstein himself. I enjoyed it the most of the three volumes and look forward to further installments of the story.
British Paranormal.jpg Castle Full Blackbirds.jpg

Frankenstein.jpg
 
Again thanks to my local public library and the Hoopla app, I've read some new (to me, anyway) Mignolaverse material:
  • British Paranormal Society: Time Out of Mind (2023). This is a collection of a 5-issue series, set in the early 20th century, in which Simon Bruttenholm and Honora Grant investigate the disappearance of one of Simon's colleagues in a small village. It is set in Mignola's universe, but he was not personally involved with it--Chris Roberson was the writer and Andrea Mutti the artist. It's a fairly straightforward tale, but I enjoyed it; you could easily turn it into a Call of Cthulhu adventure, or something similar.
  • Castle Full of Blackbirds (2023). This is a 4-issue series set c. 1967. It follows the story of the young Sara May Blackburn, the 'witch' who aided Hellboy in "The Return of Effie Kolb" as she enters the 'Linton School for Girls,' a training academy for young girls with arcane powers. It is also something considerably darker, as emerges in the course of the series. I won't say much about it, for fear of spoilers; I found it a more engaging, but also considerably more cryptic, tale than Time Out of Mind. I'm not sure if this is because Mignola himself was one of the writers.
  • Frankenstein: New World, Volume 1 (2023). This is the first four issues of an ongoing(?) series. It takes place centuries after the destruction of the world chronicled in B.P.R.D. A remnant of humanity persists in an underground environment, regarding a quiescent vril-powered Frankenstein as their oracle. He is awakened by a young girl, Lilja, who has had visions of a woman/power trapped in some amberlike substance. Trailed by his young acolyte, Frankenstein returns to the earth's surface, where he and Lilja encounter the strange world that has evolved since humanity's fall. There are interesting encounters with several post-human races, and a new threat that has entered the world not long after Frankenstein himself. I enjoyed it the most of the three volumes and look forward to further installments of the story.
View attachment 72844 View attachment 72845

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Frankenstein New World looks like Frankenstein the Barbarian.
Please tell me it's Frankenstein the Barbarian.
 
Frankenstein New World looks like Frankenstein the Barbarian.
Please tell me it's Frankenstein the Barbarian.
Well, the character is a bit more like Kwai-Chang Caine from Kung Fu, though he wields a mean Hyperborean blade (he recovers it from Agent Howards' body early in the series). I'd recommend the book; you can actually read a good deal of it in the Google Books preview if you want to sample it. Here is one bit of art I particularly liked for its invocation of Michelangelo's "Creation of Man"--it has to do with the origins of the big-bad for the series:

Frankenstein-Creation.jpg
 
Frankenstein was the creator of the monster, right?
 
Lots of people go by their last name/ family name. I mean he gave himself the first name of Adam in the book, as he was the Adam of his kind. (some argue that he dubbed himself "Adam" and recognized himself as Victor's son making him Adam Frankenstein, but even that is spurious.)
 
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