The Wednesday Club is Geek & Sundry’s weekly talk show chatting about all things comics. This week, hosts Amy Dallen, Matt Key, and Taliesin Jaffe were joined by Liam O’Brien to talk about Hellboy.
“In my opinion, there is no more beautiful comic book page than Mike Mignola’s Hellboy,” said Liam.
“Every single book is like a cemetery at 3 AM,” described Matt.
If you’re only familiar with the character because of the 2004 film, prepare to have the Mignolaverse opened to you by The Wednesday Club.
Hellboy was first published in 1994, and his story begins with the Russian wizard Rasputin. “Hellboy was brought into our world in World War II,” Liam said. “The story is full of real historical figures, and folklore and myth, but made real.”
Rasputin is communicating with beastly cosmic creatures with the goal of starting the world over with a clean slate. He uses the resources of the Nazis, Liam explained, to perform a ceremony to unleash the demonic beasts. Far away, “a little red baby boy with a gigantic stone hand is just suddenly brought into [the world],” he said. Enter: Hellboy.
As Hellboy grows older, he eventually takes on a day job of hunting mythological monsters with his formidable strength and dry wit.
“He is constantly falling and getting back up,” said Matt. “And I think that’s a major core component of the character.”
Take a look at the gallery below for reading recommendations from the episode.
In a first for The Wednesday Club, publisher Dark Horse Comics also followed along and chimed in on Twitter, recommending the upcoming paperback omnibus Seed of Destruction for new readers of Hellboy.
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All Comic Images: Dark Horse Comics
Photo: Geek & Sundry
