If you’re a fan of comics, odds are I’m not going to have to sing the praises of B.P.R.D. or Hellboy to you. Mike Mignola’s creations via Dark Horse Comics have long been industry standards of quality and creativity, and any release of new material is a moment of celebration from your’s truly.
Fittingly on Cinco de Mayo we’re getting a one-shot in this universe titled Hellboy in Mexico (Or, a Drunken Blur) from the Eisner nominated team of Hellboy: The Crooked Man – Mignola, illustrator Richard Corben, and colorist Dave Stewart. That’s about as good of a trio as you can get in comics, but high quality creators only can do so much.
Could they pull off a Cinco de Mayo miracle and make this book awesome? Find out after the jump.
Hellboy in Mexico (Or, a Drunken Blur)
Written by: Mike Mignola
Illustrated by: Richard Corben
This comic, to me, is perfect.
I want to start off with that to let you know how much I enjoyed it. This issue finds Hellboy and Abe Sapien traipsing through a desert in Mexico with something evil in tow in a foot locker in 1982. It seems they just finished a mission and are now awaiting a pick up from BPRD central, when they come upon a destroyed old building that says “Comida y La Gasolina” on the outside. When Abe goes in to investigate, he notes a statue with a slew of photos and news stories up behind it, including one that features Hellboy with a trio of luchadores.
It seems back in 1956, Hellboy had been in the same area on a mission for BPRD. An old woman told him that the Devil lives at the center of the Earth and essentially blows his own gas up a hole to the surface, which attracts all sorts of beasts and monsters to the area. As Hellboy says, “up till then it was the worst I’d seen.” While he can handle it due to his badass nature, his BPRD partners-in-crime took this as a good time to amscray, leaving Hellboy all alone…until he meets a trio of luchadore brothers.
What follows is both a very entertaining and tragic story of what transpired when he and the brothers storm the Mexican countryside ridding it of the evil that had infested it.
Hellboy’s relationship with the youngest brother Esteban forms the crux of the issue, as they quickly became “mejor amigos” even with the reserved nature of the other two brothers in the mix. It seems that they would kill monsters by day and drink themselves into oblivion by night, and that methodry worked until it didn’t, and in that time Hellboy became as close to Esteban as he had been to anyone besides possibly Professor Bruttenholm to that point. It’s an interesting snap shot into Hellboy’s life, as it gives us a few of him when he wasn’t so jaded and alone. He’s not quite pancakes innocent, but there is still the glimmer of hope in him.
To say Mignola has a good grasp on this universe is an understatement. It’s his world, and he controls it like a conductor of the finest symphony in the world, cuing emotions like one would raise a swell of strings. Throughout this issue, he gives us something to cheer for and then he gives us something to tug our heartstrings, and in its own little way it further clears the image of Hellboy and who he is as a person and how he became the way he is today. There are very few wasted movements in your average Mignolaverse book, and in this one there is no fat to trim. It’s remarkable work.
The oddest thing about Richard Corben’s work to me is that I had never seen it (knowingly, I suppose) before The Crooked Man, and while it took a bit to get adjusted to it I quickly figured out the raw genius of it. Long a legend, Corben’s work effortlessly blends into the Mignola school of art while managing to take the formula and take it to almost new heights with personal strengths. Like Guy Davis, who makes B.P.R.D. soar with his titanic imagination, Corben fuels this title with his emotive figure work and his impeccable sense of shading and the moment. It takes a lot for me to say that someone matches the master (Mignola), but Corben manages to do so with this one-shot.
One of the best things about this issue is, unlike a lot of the mini-series, I genuinely think I could hand this book to anyone and they could get a lot out of it. There’s a real universality to its themes, touching on friendship, loss, vengeance, and many other things with a deft hand and a real feel for storytelling. It also encapsulates everything that is so tremendous about this universe, and for that reason it earns a tie for the highest grade I’ve ever given out (although not a 10, as it will take an act of god for me to hand that out).
Final Verdict: 9.8 – Buy
