"Jeez!"
I'm very late in reading Hellboy. I've seen all the movies of course, but the comics went right by me.
If you can imagine the old EC horror comics with a recurring red, wisecracking, demonic character that pretty much sums up Hellboy. Weird stuff happens, Hellboy shows up, Hellboy fights the monster (usually with his fists), and that's about it. This isn't to say that Mike Mignola's Hellboy is bad or even derivative, just to say that there's a very specific formula involved in most of these short stories, even if this formula is used well.
I also liked the African myth story which closes out Volume 2. Given that Hellboy is often an excuse to explore various mythologies, this story offers us a glimpse of wider possibilities, in which Hellboy is a kind of Sandman-like character, adaptable to myths and folktales from any number of cultures.
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