And Then I Read: HELLBOY, THE CROOKED MAN and OTHERS

Images © Mike Mignola.

Richard Corben seems like an odd choice of artist for Hellboy, as his style and Mignola's own are so different, but in the title story it works surprisingly well. Written by Mignola for Corben, it's inspired by the dark folk tales of Manly Wade Wellman, whose character Silver John wandered the backwoods of America's Appalachians encountering all kinds of monsters and menaces in stories written for the pulp magazines originally, later for book  publication. Mike does an excellent job of capturing that eerie genre of witchcraft,  demons, ghosts and other bad doings, which Hellboy tackles with his usual matter-of-fact approach: ask questions when you can, punch when you have to.

Richard Corben has been a mainstay in comics since the 1960s, but always outside the mainstream, first in undergrounds, then Warren horror, and gradually into markets like DC's Vertigo imprint. I think, if anything, his art has grown more accomplished over time, while his style remains uniquely personal. He follow's Mignola's lead in drawing Hellboy himself, but the rest is pure Corben, and full of Corben's brand of grotesquery, sexuality and creepy horror. Great stuff. The rest of the collection has an Abe Sapien  pirate story written by Josh Dysart and drawn by Jason Shawn Alexander that I thought was pretty good but not great, a book-lengther written and drawn by Mignola (the first in a while) that is top notch, and a short drawn by Duncan Fegredo that's more of a nightmare episode than a story, but pretty good all the same. Recommended.