Hellboy

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #2

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #2 comic reviewThe second issue of Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land provides more information about Scarlett Santiago who had become a cult figure and something of a vigilante prior to disappearing over the ocean. Crashing on the hidden island, the Sky Devil was taken in by the island’s ape men known as the Ohnar who not only saved the young woman’s life but also transferred into her the power of their god-spirit Un-Gaah (allowing her to transform into a giant ape herself which turns out to be a useful skill when saving Hellboy from a T-Rex).

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Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #1

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #1 comic reviewAfter their plane is forced to crash in the ocean by a religious zealot determined to kill Hellboy before he grows up and brings about the apocalypse, Hellboy and Professor Bruttenholm find themselves on an island filled with all manner of monsters including gorillas, giant crabs, and velociraptors. So much for the fun archeological dig they pair had planned (perhaps with mummies!), now they will need to survive.

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #1 provides a fun opening to the four-issue mini-series setting the stage for what’s to come. There’s obviously a strong Jules Verne‘s The Mysterious Island vibe here, although we’ve only scratched the surface of what secrets the island may hold as it appears there is something deep calling out the the religious zealot who the Professor and the young Hellboy haven’t seen the last of yet.

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Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Beast of Vargu

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Beast of Vargu comic reviewThe latest one-shot takes Hellboy to 1962 Romania where a series of sightings over the years, along with some recent disappearances, seem to point to some truth behind the legends of a monster tied to the Castle Vargu in the Carpathian Mountains. Any doubts Hellboy had to the legends are soon put to rest by the thorough butt-kicking he receives at the hands of the creature who is in fact devil-worshiper Costache Szilagy who returns from the pit every few years to murder and send more souls to Hell.

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Hellboy

  • Title: Hellboy (2019)
  • IMDb: link

Hellboy movie reviewGuillermo del Toro‘s Hellboy was a flawed film whose biggest asset was the casting of Ron Perlman as the gruff Hell-spawn destined to end the world, but in the meantime work to fight off monsters and things that go bump in the night for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, originally created by comic writer-artist Mike Mignola. Fixing some of the mistakes from his original film, the director went back the drawing board delivering the superior Hellboy II: The Golden Army four years later, but for more than a decade the character has been confined to the comic page (and some straight-to-DVD animated releases).

Director Neil Marshall‘s reboot is a joyless exercise, despite some impressive (and almost always gory) visuals. David Harbour, now cast as the hard-drinking big red hero out to save the world, lacks Perlman’s charm that helped cut through the character’s dickish behavior. What’s so sad about the finished project is that there was obvious understanding and love for the character and universe Mignola created as screenwriter Andrew Cosby squeezes several well-known characters into the story including Nimue (Milla Jovovich), Baba Yaga (Troy James), and Benjamin Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), among others.

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