My "review":
3 stars here means: It's fine, whatever. I still don't get it.

A bunch of semi-related rambaling:
I went to hear Mike Mignola speak a few weeks ago in the hopes that he was going to clear up my question about cliche' vs. archetype. Instead it confirmed a lot of cliche's about comic book readers and left me more frustrated than before.

Also, did you all already know that when a comic artist (or at least this one) shows up for a signing, that that's all he does? He just signs stuff. No t More...

Finally getting around to reading these. (Thank you Nick, for lending them.)
I didn't expect such a wide deviation from the movie, but, meh... the main elements are there.
I do like that it's narrated by Hellboy himself. And like all good graphic novels, you have to sit and stare at the art long after you've finished reading the page. (and better yet, flip back to see what was in the shadows 2 pages ago, now that you know...)
That being said, it introduces the whole gang, sets them against Rasputin More...

I read the first two 'books.' (Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil) Hellboy was 'called' from the great beyond by Nazis hoping to turn the war in their favor, but he was found by the allies. Years later, he comes up against the wizard (vampire? Rasputin, actually) who conjured him up. Hellboy is invited (and warned) to join in fulfilling his destiny by destroying the world, but he refuses and the fight is on. It's all very magic-y; too much for me. It sort of looked like a second book wasn't More...

The good news is that this graphic novel offers exactly what I loved about the movie. HellBoy is a devil summoned by a mysterious Nazi who wants to unleash cthulhu-like elder gods upon the world. He’s got an anger problem, he’s a smart ass, and he calls himself the World’s Best Paranormal Investigator. The art is dark, yet HellBoy’s attitude adds some levity to the atmosphere.
The bad news is that there isn’t much in this first volume that you don’t know from watching the first movie. Having star More...

When my husband asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told him The Sandman Volume 10: The Wake, the last chapter in the incredible Sandman series. So imagine my surprise when I opened up my present on Christmas Eve to reveal Hellboy Volume 1: Seed of Destruction. Oh well, at least he made it to the right section in the bookstore.

I have seen the first Hellboy movie and the second one is on my “to-see” list. I just assumed that this book would be a rehash of the first movie but again to my surp More...

I’m writing this review after reading through to the third volume, and if were to rate them all I’d give them 5 stars. Generally, so much about this series is mindblowingly different from other books and comics I’ve read so far. The only reason I didn’t rate volume 1 a 5 was because in retrospect I didn’t like it as much as the other two. Also, I think it’s an intro that upon a second or third read I’ll discover its true genius. Although I enjoyed the first Hellboy film, the comic is so much mor More...

I love the Hellboy movies. I am a huge Del Toro fan (the man who directed the movies) but even more so I love the character that is Hellboy. He's witty and human despite the fact that he's a demon from Hell.
I can guess that this is the book that inspired the first movie. The plot is not exactly similar but enough that you can put two and two together and get about 3 1/2. The book shares some of the origin of Hellboy and follows him as he tries to uncover what happened to his "father". The story More...

I recently undertook a plan to re-read every single trade in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. gestalt, in most cases for about the jillionth time.

I started, of course, where it all started, with Seed of Destruction. I was surprised not to like it more than I did. I have fond memories of Seed of Destruction, and own it more times over than any other book. I love the skeleton of the storyline and many of the scenes and images and so forth, and man do I ever love the frog monsters and Sadu-Hem and the old dark More...

First of all, thank you so much, Gramedia, for translating this book and for using glossy papers and for keeping the colors bright and shiny. I totally geeked out when I saw this. I can only hope that Gramedia will publish the rest of Hellboy TPBs.
Now.
About the book.
Mignola's arts were fantastic, of course.
I'm not too crazy about the story he penned with John Byrne on the other hand. It was tepid from the start and as the story went on, I kept wishing it would get better but sadly, it didn't.

May More...

I’m a huge fan of the Hellboy films—the character, the world it creates, all of it. I didn’t realize until after watching it that there was a comic it was based on, and for a while I had no good way to access those comics even after discovering their existence. I did eventually get my hands on a collection of shorts, including the source for that talking corpse from the movie, but never the original miniseries they mainly drew from for the main thrust of the film. That eluded me….until now. The More...

A marvelous origin story for a marvelous tale. This book lacks some of the humour, as well as the depth and breadth of mythology found in the later issues of Hellboy, but it serves as a very solid introduction to the series, and is required reading not just for Hellboy fans but for anyone who is serious about comics.

All the elements that make Hellboy great are present here in spades: it's got the diverse mythos drawn from all over the world, it's got the likable but mysterious main character wit More...

This is the first trade in the hellboy series by Mike Mignola. In the first story in this collection we learn about the origin of Hellboy. We see how he came to earth during WWII. It involves a big conspiracy and the later comics in this book deal with the fallout of that conspiracy in the present day. We also get introduced to some other members of the paranormal investigation agency BPRD namely Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman.

I have read this book before, right after the hellboy movie came out. And More...

Re-read this introductory Hellboy collection this weekend, because I missed the big red ape. I can't say enough about Mignola's skill when it comes to art and drawing some memorably stylish panels.

There's also the nice blend of monsters, Nazis, and folklore that is such a signature of his work, and it mostly works. But my problem with Hellboy in general is also my problem with this book: too much monologuing on Rasputin's part, and while the story starts with great characters and good atmospher More...

Hellboy contains many things I love (like references to Lovecraft and the occult), but what stands up above everything is the amazing art. Were there an Absolute-like Hellboy, it would be well worth the average DC Absolute edition cost just to see the art in DC Absolute edition quality. Oh well, I shall have to make due with what Dark Horse provides me with. It's gorgeous already, so I'm already winning whenever I look at the pages of this trade.
Unfortunately, although I love the art and love th More...

Another of the series i decided to pick up on my first adventures into Comics world and i must confess i was not disappointed i did see the movies before starting to read this comics and i really enjoyed them, after all, we don't get to see a demon, a semi fish-human thing and a fire manipulating woman kick some nazi and Rasputin ass every day.

The comics are also quite entertaining, the art style is very captivating as is the narrating style, Hellboy's the one narrating the whole thing and histo More...

at first glance i thought the artwork looked stunning. but i quickly became quite unimpressed with the lack of shading. the style uses a lot of block colours, which i thought i would like because it emphasises shape. but in combination with some rather murky colour choices and occasional use of dodgey gradients, i ended up not really going for this style at all. interestingly they sometimes use a really bright red for hellboy which is so bright i assume it's a special ink on top of the standard More...

Synopsis-This is a book about a boy named Amung who is a demon. He fights for the BPRD, and internation non-governmental agency. Later On he finds out that he is the worlds greatest Paronormal Investigator.

Classification-This would fit an audiance of kids teens, or young adults. Kids would enjoy all the action. It would really fit an audience of youg males because they like all the fighting that goes on.


Critism-This book is good literature. It has alot of action in it and even though theres not More...

saya suka Hellboy sama dengan sukanya saya dengan cemilan atau minuman berpengawet. Mike Mignola & John Byrne berkolaborasi menggarap jilid pertama, yang menjadi inspirasi Guillermo del Torro untuk membuat film pertama dari dwilogi Hellboy, meski dirombak besar-besaran. ada si manusia katak yang dalam versi movie bernama Samael, yang saya pikir diambil dari komik ini.

Saya merasa terjemahan dengan Hellboy memanggil Dr. Broom dengan panggilan "tuan" itu kurang pas, sehingga terasa ganjil karen More...

I picked this title up last night at B&N in the middle of a rain storm. Perhaps it was the atmosphere in which I began, but this was an absolute blast. The art was crisp and striking. The story was seeminly made for those who enjoy horror, with strange monsters, ancient myths, and sordid plans for mayhem. As for comparisions to the movie, while I enjoyed the films, this cuts the cheese factor way down. And while I thought the movies were okay, I left them with the nagging sense that somethin More...

Man erntet, was man sät

Mignola ist meiner Meinung nach der expressivste Zeichner, den das Comicgenre hervorgebracht hat. Seine Zeichnungen, fast holzschnittartig, sind extrem getuscht, viele schwarze Bereiche sorgen für eine sehr dichte Atmosphäre, die Charaktere sind grafisch brilliant herausgearbeitet (ich sehe immer noch das Bild von Rasputin mit seinen blau glühenden Augen vor mir).

Wer Lovecraft oder Howard oder auch Indiana Jones mag, wird Hellboy lieben - trotz aller Düsterkeit ist Hellboy More...

Back during WWII, the Nazis were experimenting with all sorts of things. One aspect of research dealt with the paranormal. Finally, after years of preparation, a Nazi wizard/researcher/delusional-psycho summoned up a creature from the Deep, a tiny red-skinned, hornless man that would be named Hellboy. Only he showed up on the Allies side...

So begins Hellboy Volume 1: Seed of Destruction, and this intro is covered in a few pages up front. The remainder of the novel fast-forwards several years. He More...

My copy had that big yellow sticker on the cover. I don't know what they're hoping to accomplish with such a sticker. I loved both of the Hellboy movies and avoided Hellboy #1 for many months because of that sticker. Why would I want a thin comic that would mirror the movie? Eventually I did pick it up because it was only $4 and I did want to start reading this series in earnest.

This book was nothing like either of the movies. Sure, the movie had wee bits of his birth/summoning, but that was wh More...

I really wanted to like this book, but I ran into a few problems. The narrative and dialog are poorly written. The story is not well-told - and by that I mean confusing and difficult to follow - and is seemingly sacrificed for action sequences, which unfortunately can also be difficult to follow due to some confusing visual story. The art is gorgeous; Mignola utilizes rich, deep colors that sometimes give his art the appearance of an oil painting. His more abstract work is, in particular, quite More...

Hellboy patří do krátkých atmosferických povídek vycházejících z mýtů, legend či pohádek. Rozhodně ne do dlouhých románových příběhů, ve kterých vyniká, že Mignola sice atmosféru, hlášky a akci umí na jedničku, ale děj, postavy, pointování apod. nikoli.

Tady je to navíc evidentní tuplovaně, jelikož jde o počátek, takže to nemá vlastně ani žádné směrování a jde jen o mix zmateně pospojovaného děje, kde je snad vše od Lovecrafta, mimozemšťanů, alternativní historie a bozi vědí čeho ještě... Nejlep More...

I enjoy Hellboy as a character. My trouble with this book is actually my problem with graphic novels as a medium. They are short and the stories are simplistic.They are not as detailed as say a novel. However, the storytelling is not weak despite the simplicity of the medium. This tends to be a downfall of the medium in general. The art engages and the ideas are sharp. I am a Hellboy fan and actually a fan of the comic medium as well. I am not really bashing. I am just disappointed at what quick More...

I was rather unimpressed. I watched the movies and, stereotypically, the movie is better than the book, right? Eh, not in this case. It's a decent book, but I was expecting something more.

The art is good, but it's not very detailed. While the world is dark, there's too much black used. I'm not a fan.

The writing is almost there, but not quite.

The premise is probably the main point for this book. It's interesting because the character origins are interesting. This might have promise later, but the More...

This is a compliation of some of Hellboy's first mission with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Brought to Earth by a Nazi occultist during WWII, in order to aid Hitler in his war effort, Hellboy is rescued and adopted by Professor Bruttenholm. The Professor raises Hellboy to fight for mankind and against evil. A great and different type of hero who fights all manner of monsters.


How can you not like Hellboy? The guy is a fantastic hero. Despite not being human himself he constantl More...

I'm a big fan of Hellboy, but I'm going to try to be objective here. This is the first Hellboy story, it's essential reading. That said, it is not indicative of the stories that follow. The art by Mignola is brilliant, but he hasn't yet found Dave Stewart, the colourist that will later colour all his works and go on to win seven Eisners from 2003 to 2011. So the colours are functional, but not great. The story, again, is functional, but not great.

It's the script that really lets this book down. More...

Ich hatte ja gehofft, dass bei CD 2 mehr passiert, weil es ja ein Zweiteiler ist. Ich musste jedoch feststellen, dass dem leider nicht so ist. Coole Sprüche, gute Hintergrundmusik und top Sprecher machen eben noch kein gutes Hörspiel. Auf dieser CD passiert fast nichts. Man erfährt ein bischen mehr über Raputins Vergangenheit, es gibt Hinweise auf Apes Vergangenheit und ansonsten eben Endkapf Hellboy - Rasputin mit dummen Sprüchen. Relativ unterhaltsam zum nebenbei Anweisungen für die Unikasse a More...

I am a man who loves good comic books, and Mike Mignola's Hellboy is exactly that. Good.

It's a solid comic yarn with a charmingly antithetical leading man, fitting pencils, beautiful colour and noirish scripting (helped on by John Byrne in this early volume).

Mike Mignola loves a great action sequence, and Hellboy's big ol' "Right Hand of Doom" and terrible aim with "The Good Samaritan" -- the oversized revolver the eponymous leading man received as a gift from the Torch of Liberty -- ensure tha More...