Review: "Hellboy Omnibus, Volume 1"

[x_los]

- Hellboy does that thing where people’s High-Register English is a garbled mess. I really don’t think it’s supposed to be a question of Rasputin simply not knowing how to speak German, or whatever language the story’s opening ritual was conducted in (it’s unclear). He addresses Hellboy later, presumably in English, and this is not quite how ‘whence’ works:

(Though really, why would Literal Rasputin (Cthulhus Edition) speak English well?)

- Hoopla’s panel zoom is clever idea for mobile comic reading, imperfectly realised. It doesn’t always pick out the dialogue well. It offers you no hint that a given panel will have a ‘zoom’ view, and indeed, because of the aforementioned issue, not all of them do. So you read the teensy font, then swipe and realise you didn’t have to do that this time, because it was going to zoom you, and you ought to have trusted the screen-reader. When you become more accustomed to the function, this process transitions into a lot of unnecessary, mildly annoying swipe-checks to determine whether you’re truly doomed to engage with Size 7 font this panel.

It’s a clear accessibility issue.

- We really could have felt Hellboy’s reaction to his adopted dad’s death a bit more. This falls somewhat flat.

- Same, buddy.

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- Based on 19^th century novels, I think Belle Epoque Russians mostly just thought Germany was a shitty bullshit country. It’s not like they’re the Mongols—talk about your Ancient Enemy, eesh.



- Rasputin’s decided to usher in the end of humankind, bread-and-salt-the-earth, so fuck knows why he’s still so keen on the motherland. You’re gonna kill everyone, dude—Russia doesn’t get a protective shield that works against Cthulhus.

- I can’t say I think they’re a cute couple.

- In 1994???? Please, sir. A Balkan Bitch wears jeans. It's Bosnia, not Gormenghast.

- This werewolf story tries to give you a lot of details, but they’re fairly fruity. I really do not think a medieval town could have changed its name and identifying details inside a decade, and hushed up everyone who’d ever been there, in anticipation of a publication they’d yet to see (how could they guess what architectural features would be identifiably described and need obscured?). How does this writer think Catholicism in the Balkans in the Middle Ages worked, or pamphlet circulation? No. This is some silly shit.

- This guy’s forehead vag: no me gusta. It’s a no, from me.

- An unintentionally(?) hilarious list of places:

“I’m huge in Town, BIG COUNTY and town!” Satan is big in Japan, and Wolverhampton!

- Every Dracula daily meme:

- This blonde girl/Vampire set up is like, ‘and now, a break for some Nazi relationship gossip—’

- Even Hellboy is tired of Nazi arcs and origin stories.

- This is the only reaction to the reveal of one’s secret dark origins that I have ever respected:



‘Time to care!!’ No.

- Y’see I’ve got my good eye, and my Nazi eye—

- ‘No, I can’t come with you to Bucharest, I have to fight this bird—’

- I have time for this bitchy old skeleton, sure.

- Buddy we all ‘draw down the moon’ sometimes, at least until menopause.

- We’re doing Koschei myth now. Earlier, we did aliens. The cosmology of this comic is like ‘yeah, sure, why not?’

- lol:

- Sometimes the eldritch creatures have a neat Art Nouveau design influence:

- Because of how the character is drawn, for most of the comic I didn’t think the things on Hellboy’s head were sawed off horns. I just thought they were perhaps pushed-up aviator glasses? x_x

- ‘And now a brief interlude of sympathy for Rasputin, who’s talking to Baba Yaga about how his career isn’t really going anywhere.’

- I don’t know why all these supernatural forces would be in any way ‘aligned’ rather than often in competition, but maybe Baba Yaga is just talking shit there, and that’s her own POV.

- All these cool grave monuments kind of make me want to do a cemetery tour of East Europe.

- How come no one is mad at Liz for getting this a guy on her team killed via homunculus-proxy, due to her Yearning for Normalcy? His death is pretty much her fault. She should know better than to shove her power in strange eldritch devices.

- I’m surprised we did a Frankenstein arc. I’m now looking forward to a chupacabra storyline, because at this point, that’s absolutely coming down the pipe. Also, I can’t believe Frankenstein 1’s whole plan was just: Get Swole. That’s not really a plan, my creature.

- loool:


- Poor Hellboy consistently tries to spare some animal caught up in a scheme, that has no malicious intentions, and then the animal turns out to be a Nazi. Hellboy must be going, ‘ugh, seriously, every time?’

- Cheers Mike. And that’s Book 1.