Hellboy Animated

    (Dark Horse, 2007)
™ and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

As Tad Stones notes in his informative introduction, this volume has an odd pedigree: It’s a comic book based on an cartoon based on a comic. Stones and Mike Mignola deliberately set Hellboy Animated in a slightly altered world; the “major beats of Hellboy’s life” are there, but “the details have mutated.”

But not much. This first taste of Hellboy Animated shows readers a protagonist that is slightly toned down but no less cynical and combative. The major supporting characters are there intact, too, including Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman, who both play key roles in “The Black Wedding,” which leads off this digest-sized volume. Rick Lacy’s appropriately cartoonish art aside, Jim Pascoe’s story could have been easily ripped from the original B.P.R.D. files, though without the graphic violence often present in those stories. Like many Hellboy tales, the story involves the agents racing to stop a supernatural summoning, arriving just in time to save the kidnapped Liz and stop the titular nuptials and the conflagration of Paris. It’s Hellboy, all right, animated or not.

The backup Hellboy Jr. tale by Stones and Laguna, “Pyramid of Death,” is hilarious and includes the welcome return of Lobster Johnson.

— Timothy J. Wood
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  NotesWriterArtist
Hellboy Animated #1

January, 2007
Cover Price: $6.95
8 copies available from $4.50 		Jim Pascoe, Tad StonesRick Lacy, Mike Mignola, Fabio Laguna
Hellboy Animated #3

November, 2007
Cover Price: $6.95
2 copies available from $6.95 		Jason Hall, Nate PiekosRick Lacy, Fabio Laguna