Hellboy pt. 2

So, I know this is going to make me seem like a total Hellboy junkie, but in reality I'm still just becoming familiar with this comic. It's just interesting to me the way in which Hellboy is so willful (maybe his strongest attribute in my mind). He refuses to be the kind of being other people (including, but not limited to demons from hell) expect or want him to be. I think it's fairly common advice to "fulfill your potential" and to do things in your life that help you to bring out your potential. But it's not that Hellboy is denying his potential, just the potential that others want him to have. There's a big difference.

Hellboy

After having been attracted to this character ever since I saw the first Hellboy movie several years ago, I finally got around to reading some Hellboy comics/graphic novels. Nothing so far, In my opinion, comes close to Maus in the graphic novel world, but Hellboy is not bad. I like the drawing style, which is not so slick as many comics seem to be. Comparatively minimalistic even. And the stories are interesting in that they are (pretty transparently, to Mike Mignola's credit) mostly mash-ups of folklore from many different times and places. I particularly like Hellboy when he doesn't do much. At the root of it all his story is not about his fighting skills so much as his displacement -- he doesn't really belong here in the world of humans. Neither do talking skeletons and fish-men and all the other monsters that populate these stories mind you, but despite all this, he's not really among his own kind. And while he does some heroic things, he's mainly just trying to get by. I think this is makes him relatable because we are all born into a world that we've had no hand in creating (unless you believe in reincarnation) and to which we are strangers. I suppose you could say this about many comic book characters, come to think of it, but something about this seems to be more at the heart of Hellboy's story.

questions and points about my work

1. What does it do to the natural world to interact with it only from
the perspective of morality and progress (capital)? What would nature be
without religion and civilization?

2. Can we act in any other way than in striving, as a species, to be
masters over all? How can we redefine success (mainstream idea of
success) when it doesn't involve the abuse of resources, both human
and environmental? Who gets to determine what's abusive and where it's
acceptable to live?

3. Much of the beauty I see in the natural world stems from its
harshness. The earth provides sustenance, in every way, for survival,
but it poses constant and relentless threats to survival as well. Does
that mean it's our enemy? Do we destroy it because it poses threats to
our existence even though we can't exist without it? We want to create
our own user-friendly world, but how far do we go?

4. The natural world is not moral. It is harsh and unforgiving, but
all life is deeply connected to it. Humans replace natural world with
civilization, which is meant to protect us from the world's savage
dangers.

a quote from Paco Underhill (interviewed by Tim Griffin, Artforum 4/08)

Paco Underhill: (...) You have to think in terms of the conscience of our culture, which is historically what the leading edge of art has been about: Where are people asking questions about what's going right and what's going wrong in the world in which we live? That role, I think, has been taken over by realms other than the art world as the world has gotten smaller--whether by the Natural Resources Defense Council or Greenpeace. So many issues that challenge us as a species now are not about politics, but rather morality. The idea that someone can be an avid ecologist and a fundamentalist Christian isn't a disconnect. Someone can be a member of both the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association. And as the edges of our culture have become murkier, the role of the avant-garde has become, in a way, less necessary.
Tim Griffin: Hence, art's situation as a kind of social site above anything else?
Paco Underhill: Correct.

from Moby-Dick

The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one single word with thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving he is deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villanies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.

mckinley and whitney

From their respective websites.

2011

I absolutely have to believe in something. I can tell you what I won't believe in...Snookie.