I Really Should Read This 7: Hellboy Omnibus 3, by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo

Hellboy Omnibus 3, by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo

2017, reprinting work from around 2005 to 2010

I used to be a huge Mignola fan... until Hellboy. His work at Marvel and DC stuck out so much, and around 1990, I would buy comics if I saw he drew them. It was usually just the odd issue, but I liked the style so much. I was a reader of John Byrne's Next Men when Hellboy first appeared, and I was into it... Then I read Seeds of Destruction and dropped it in the middle of the second series. I can't go back in time to 1995 and see what I was thinking, but I imagine it was two things: 

1. Image Comics had killed my appetite for art-based comics. I had been so on board with Image and felt so ripped off and embarrassed for reading them that I was aggressively avoiding books with "no story".

2. I was around 20, had just moved to the city, and a lot of books just didn't feel worth my time as a young adult (I've been doing a read of a number of late '90s books that I missed out on at the time).

In a comics forum, I was told, "No, Hellboy is good!" a few times, so I decided to jump in, skipping the first two omnibuses and hopefully getting on when the story was in gear.

Mignola on the cover, Fegredo on the inside

Right up front, the verdict: It's solid. This collects three story arcs (Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, and The Storm and the Fury), though according to Wikipedia, the third of these are two separate ones. 

It's sometimes hard to start reading a book that has been praised a lot, because you're expecting it to be awesome from page one. With this collection, Darkness Calls is definitely the least of the three. The first few issues, I couldn't even understand what was going on. There are a lot of characters that look similar (grizzled is a common adjective I'd use for the cast) and a lot of portentous speech. Hellboy walks through a door that's a portal to old Russia and has to get back for three issues while fighting an undying bad guy.  Once it was set up, I could follow what was happening, but the mechanics of getting it going didn't make much sense to me.

Lots of pages like this, sometimes small bad guys, sometimes big, always monochromatic

Anyway, by the end of the first arc, I was on top of enough things to follow the second arc. It was full of portentous talk and a lot of similar characters too, but the main villain was very clear and I could follow the broad strokes, and that carried over to the final arc as well.

I certainly enjoyed this more than the series I read in the mid-90s. The story at that time (that I haven't read in 25 years, mind you) was more of a monster of the week with references to something bigger. This actually was getting to the meat of Hellboy's story and his destiny.

One of the interesting things about this book and character was that Hellboy is both a passive and active hero. He's being thrust into situations and told over and over again what he was born to be, but he also makes his own decisions and actively wrests control of his so-called destiny. That's a pretty cool character arc and not something you commonly see in a protagonist.

These two characters stood out a lot. The pig is probably the most interesting character in the book, just an angry, frustrated thing

The weak part for me is that there are a lot of characters that are there to spout exposition, and you just can't know who they are or distinguish them easily. Lots of withered witches, and I can't tell if they're good witches or bad witches or what. It's just a page of exposition. The colors are nice, but only Hellboy, Nimue (the big bad), and the red haired girl (who pops up in the second arc and is suddenly important) get standout color schemes. Everyone else is a shade of brown or gray. After a while, you just roll with it, and enjoy what is good, but it's not great design.

The art is excellent. I know Fegredo's work, but I hadn't seen any of it in a long time. It's bold and he has a real flow to his storytelling. I found it interesting just how dark images could get and still be understandable. Some pages are almost black. It's an interesting choice.

So, I ordered omnibus four. I doubt I'll feel the need to go back to one and two to read the entirety of the epic, but I enjoyed this collection, and read it about three issues at a time. That's a brisk, solid read.

One thing I want to mention is that this was such a good price. Over 500 pages on a beautiful heavy stock for about $25. In comparison, Marvel's Epic Collections are about 400 pages on cheap, thin paper for $40. Marvel made their money on their comics when they were printed and don't pay royalties on much of it (to my knowledge), while Hellboy is creator-owned, so Mignola and hopefully Fegredo are making money off these collections.  Marvel is printing cheap, selling high, and Dark Horse is printing expensive and selling low. It makes me think about what a fat company Marvel is. They definitely have higher overheads, but I can't help but think that buying a Marvel Epic Collection puts gas in the tank of an executive's Lexus, while buying a Hellboy omnibus simply puts dinner on the table for Dark Horse staff. I have no actual numbers to back that up, I just think the difference in price and print quality is ridiculous, especially considering Marvel's advantage of scale. Dark Horse should probably add $5 to the price and put it in the bank.