Mike Mignola's Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others is a series of short horror and suspense tales involving his Red Demon from hell that recall the spooky short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Here we have witches, werewolves, talking corpses and other undead members of the occult and what not. It's a simultaneously spooky and charming variety pack of creatures that lurk in the dark, but displayed on pages with memorable artwork in vivid and splendid colors.
The Corpse, first of the short stories, puts Hellboy on a case where he has to rescue a missing child, and the only way he can do that is to bury a talking corpse in a designated spot. It is a humorous and creepy story, but mostly charismatic, like its well known hero. Iron Shoes is such a super-short tale that it was over before I could figure out what it was actually about (no, seriously: it lasted three blinks of an eye!). In The Baba Yaga, Hellboy has to fight an old evil witch in a Russian cemetery, an incident which results in him shooting her eye out.
A Christmas Underground is another very short story, and in it we witness our favorite Red demon search for a dying woman's daughter. The Chain Coffin, however, gives us several hints into Hellboy's past, and just who his parents may be. A large demon, with ominous horns, refers to him as his "favorite son". The longest and most epic of the tales in this issue is The Wolves of Saint August. Taking place in the European Balkans, it deals with a group of villagers who were cursed by an old Saint, and as a result became werewolves. A remaining living werewolf murders Father Kelly, a friend of Hellboy's, and this forces our favorite BPRD agent to take the former on in a bloody fight. It's a creepy and effective tale, and the clear highlight of this Trade Paperback.
Hellboy is still an enigmatic comic book to me, for its interior images continue to race ahead of its dialogue, and lead to scenes that are out of sync as far as text and image are concerned. The lead character himself is still very likable: his use of humor and wisecracks, sprinkled throughout, is a refreshing touch to this otherwise action packed series that apparently relies a little too much on a one-on-one combat scenes. But then again, as long as the hero continues to use his overly large right hand to punch monstrous demons in the nose, its readers will continue to adore it. There's no need to develop it further (sadly).
C+
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