So, I just got done with everything Mignolaverse up to Storm and Fury

So, I just got done with everything Mignolaverse up to Storm and Fury.

I really liked everything I've read so far, BUT I'm kinda bummed by how much Hellboy has turned to "traditional" english/christian folklore and mythology as opposed to weird/cosmic horror. I really love the dreamlike tone of these stories, but I miss the old stuff.

Does it ever go back to that kind of stuff, like Hell on Earth has been doing (from what I've read so far), or did Mignola just got tired of tentacles monsters and went full ELVES AND DREAMLANDS with Hellboy? It kinda feels like they decided to keep cosmic/weird stuff to the BPRD titles, and the feary stuff with Hellboy.

Also, please spoiler spoilers, I just want some vangue answers as to what I should expect, not major plot points.

>feary

I meant faerie.

Hellboy in Hell pretty much follows up with some more Christian Mythology kinda stuff (still need to read the last couple issues, but from what I've seen it doesn't get cosmic again in those 4 issues)

BPRD (not sure how far you are in that) is rather mid-apocalyptic survival horror with cosmic entities manifested on earth.

I believe Mignola is done with Hellboy, and has implied that he wants to wrap up the rest of his universe as well

I just got done with Russia. Pretty cool story.

I'm just a bit disapointed that the Hellboy stuff doesn't interact too much with the BPRD stuff that is going on, apart from a few name drops and references here and there.

>powered by GURPS
There's RPG?

I believe Mignola is Catholic, so a classical interpretation off Hell isn't t that surprising.

Yup. The Hellboy Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game.

it's pretty good, but very outdated, since it's from 2002. It uses the GURPS 3e ruleset, and the core rules are all in the book itself, so you don't need anything else to play it.

It's neat, but there are better ways to play a Hellboy game.

I kind of feel like the first movie set new fans up for failure, Seed of Destruction was an entire arc, but Hellboy is still the son of a demon. SO I liked the Lovecraftian overtones of SoD it's not very surprising that Mignola focused more on what you might consider classical mythos.

I mean he's supposed to bring about the apocalypse, but you might consider unleashing the Odru-Jahad as being a means to that end. Not the given end itself.

>but you might consider unleashing the Odru-Jahad as being a means to that end. Not the given end itself.

Yeah, makes sense.

That's the point where I started being disappointed also. Between that and BPRD's endgame, I didn't like the transition from short story Mignola to longer term story Mignola.

The people working on it seem competent over all, but my original fondness for Hellboy was how Mike handled short stories, for better or worse.

But Hellboy in Hell was kind of a return to form, leaving BPRD to tell the apocalyptic epic.

Really? I don't know, his hell didn't seem all that classical to me. I mean you've got housing and people are free to move about instead of being chained up and on fire 24/7.

>But Hellboy in Hell was kind of a return to form, leaving BPRD to tell the apocalyptic epic.

Hm, thats good to know.

That's not Christian Hell. That's Dante's Hell.

Christian Hell is a cold dark place with no peace.

Huh, more you learn. I'm little familiar with GURPS, I remember Alpha Centauri game converted to RPG.
And Transhuman Space. Man, that is neat setting.
Unrelated to RPGs, I see there are two animated movies. Are they any good?

Wait what. Why do all the church painting show burning people being poked in their privates by demons then?

Dante's Hell= Christian Hell nowadays for most people.

Oh, if you like Transhuman Space, check out Eclipse Phase user. It's one of the best RPG settings I've ever read.

>I see there are two animated movies. Are they any good?

Yeah, they're pretty fun. They're like a Cartoon Network version of hellboy, but they still manage to be pretty faithful to the source material.

Hah, I discovered Transhuman Space through Eclipse Phase.
Free Mars!
Then I know what I'll watch tonight. I wouldn't mind it being story for itself, as long as it's fun.

Have fun. The characters are much more faithful to their comic counterparts, and there are no OC agents in this.

those depictions of hell actually often derive from either classical or early abrahamic depictions of the underworld, or dante's fanfiction.

truth is a lot of christian iconography is second hand, since the bible itself is very barebones on the subject. vague descriptions of a "lake of fire" and nothing else.

dante's hell is closer to islamic Jahannam (endless layers of elaborate torture guarded by angels) than anything christian.

To be honest, all my knowledge of Hellboy comes from movies, card game and some issues of Abe Sapien so I probably wouldn't even know who agents are.
Meanwhile, I bought Witchfinder and Lobster Johnson trades without knowing what's in them.

Oh, user, you're in for a world of TWO-FISTED JUSTICE and DREADFUL MYSTERIES.

Living in the Mignolaverse is rough.

Well, also HiH is supposed to be some endpoint for Hellboy as a charaqcter as well. Like, he might come back for flashback stories, but his arc is supposed to be finished. Hell as a player in the end of the world is supposed to also be rendered irrelevant, just leaving some scattered demon remnants running about. It should leave the BPRD free to be more focused on the cosmic/hyperborean elements of the Mignolaverse cosmology.

Hell yeah. I did little exploring after reading and saw that Black Flame will appear sometime in future, after events of Lobster Johnson.
That pleased me immensely. Wish my backlog was bit shorter to make room for Hellboy.

Slightly off topic, but any other recommendations for paranormal/urban fantasy series for once I finish Mignola? The comic genre seems a bit sparse compared to how many urban fantasy book series there are.

>Hell as a player in the end of the world is supposed to also be rendered irrelevant
Oh hey, really? Huh.

My history with Hellboy goes back a long way. I used to really love it in my early teens, I had all the trades from Seed to Conqueror Worm. I used to (and still do) love Mignola's art, it's been a huge inspiration in my art studies.

But everyone in this board knows how it is; years go by, your backlog inflates to cyclopean dimensions, and the things you used to love get lost in the piles of new stuff you've been hoarding for future reading.

For some reason though, I still thought of Hellboy very fondly, and considered it one of my favorite series. So a few weeks back, talking about it with a coworker, he kinda mentioned that he wasn't a huge fan of it, but he'd read all of it.

That just made me feel really bad; this guy doesn't have half the history with the IP as I've had, yet he's read and familiarized himself with the series more than I'd ever had.

So I went home that night, deleted all of my notepad files and sticky notes with lists and lists of backlogged comics, films and vidya, and just started going through all Mignolaverse titles in publication order.

It's been one of my favorite literary experiences ever, and a huge relief.

Hellblazer is way lighter on the BOOM and SOCK WHAM, but is pretty great if you like urban mysteries involving the occult.

Dylan Dog has a very similar vibe to Hellboy, you'll dig it.

The Goon is also very cool. Less brainy, but just as crazy.

And finally, there's Atomic Robo, which is basically Science-Hellboy, although it's much more tongue-in-cheek and comedy-focused.

I'll do something similar. I have no idea why I decided to read Brubacker's female spy indie books in the first place. Bunch of Generation X, Goon and GI Joe and it's Hellboy's turn.
How much of Dylan Dog is translated to English, anyway?

Wouldn't know, I have the Portuguese trades.

I haven't read much of it, but from what I can tell Beasts of Burden has similar vibes.

Ah, Euro master race.

>How much of Dylan Dog is translated to English, anyway?

Very little. The Dark Horse thing has seven stories. And they had to change the Groucho character so that diminishes it a lot in my eyes.

Copyright's a bitch.
Groucho isn't even real Groucho!

Thanks, those all look pretty good. Just starting to seriously get into comics.

Anyone else here up to date on Hell On Earth and want to cry together

Last one I read is the russian director guy walking through hell with the little girl demon. Is that the most up to date one?

My two favorite long-running comics series are Hellboy and Cerebus. Both truly show what the medium is capable of when you have a dedicated creator at the helm, making the important artistic decisions for himself

The Abyss in Hellboy in Hell has some cosmic stuff in it

Yeah. Creator owned series, or at least author-controlled series, are really when the comics get to shine.