Comic Bento finishes off its anthology box with a hardcover Hellboy anthology from Dark Horse.
Hellboy Weird Tales is a collection of non-canonical stories set in the Hellboy universe by a wide range of comics talent.
I love me some Hellboy, and this book gave it to me. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola didn’t contribute any real artwork. He wrote the first two stories, and Hellboy himself doesn’t appear in either of them. Instead we’re treated to a wide range of story styles from the likes of some very talented people including John Cassaday, Eric Powell, P. Craig Russell, Jim Starlin, Jill Thompson, Steve Lieber, Guy Davis, and Gene Colan. There are funny stories, tragic stories, and humorously tragic tales. Outright goofy sections where Hellboy deals with a demonic intern shares space between the covers with a beautifully illustrated black-and-white story where Hellboy fights some sort of succubus demon in a Japanese hot mineral bath.
And though these stories aren’t exactly canonical, there’s some nice stuff here involving a few stories using Hellboy supporting characters, like what Abe Sapien daydreams about in the office, what Liz Sherman does on her own, and even how Roger the Homunculus gets a chance to deal with some trauma in therapy. All around this is a high quality collection for Hellboy fans. Nine out of ten Lobster Johnson newspaper tales.
NEXT BOX: That’s it for “Mixtape Vol. 2”. Next month’s box is working off the theme of “Girl Power”. Sounds good considering whose big movie came out this month.
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