Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

The Right Hand of Doom is Hellboy's fourth collection, and brings together a lot of shorts and mini-series.   It's a nice collection that spans quite some time, not only as far as Hellboy's life, but as far as when these were originally printed.  

The first is a couple page short called Pancakes about a young Hellboy.   The punchline at the end had me laughing out loud, too, and I reread the whole thing just because it amused me that much.   While the rest of the story carries it's own brand of morbid humor, nothing quite as surprisingly refreshing as the unexpected fluffiness of... Pancakes!

And Mignola is not afraid of dark.   His writing is very often dark, and he takes Hellboy to very dark places, especially during moments of reflection.   Especially when Hellboy is reflecting on himself and his place in the big picture.   Mignola does like to use bright colors - red being the most obvious, although there was quite a bit of white in this volume - to highlight the dark colors that make up the majority of his palette.   Lots of shadows, lots of black, and dark greens, give his artwork a truly creepy feeling that adds to the horror of his work.   

Then again, I am a Mignola fangirl.   Writing, art, whatever?   I love it!   I get disappointed at a Hellboy story that isn't written or drawn by Mignola; people may do an adequate job, or even an excellent job, but no one nails the dark humor of Hellboy quite like his creator.   Not only that, Mignola is a man who knows what he wants from a story and researches to make it work.   Even his introductions, in which he talks about mythologies - European, Japanese, Judeo-Christian - makes it clear that he puts in a lot of thought to what he's trying to accomplish and how.   He's very aware of how he's manipulating the legends for his own purposes, and fully admits that he adds or omits as he sees fit.  

And I'm all up for authors playing with legends, so long as they're doing so with awareness of how they're playing around.    Mignola not only has that agency, he has an excellent sense of what will fit in the world that he's created, when to add details, and when to leave out what is not pertinent to his story and his world.   He references older stories without batting an eye, adding to the sense of continuity in this world.   Hellboy doesn't just make mistakes, doesn't just win victories, he learns and reflects, and this influences his actions in the future.   

Everything has its place in Mignola's world, and everything in that world fits perfectly.   He even had a loose end, in the Right Hand of Doom and added to the mini-series that followed to try and wrap that up.   Even when Mignola slips, he confronts that without batting an eye, and tries to deal with it as appropriately as possible.   And he does so perfectly.   

Looking forward to reading more Hellboy, as always!