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.