DIY VIRAL
Mike Mignola's influences are huge, from Henry James to Jack Kirby. In one-shot comic “Hellboy: The Midnight Circus” one of Hellboy's guardians takes the young demon to the library so he can learn to read something other than comics; it seems inspired by Mignola's own love of reading.
“Dracula” is horror novel which most inspired Mignola, and “Hellboy: Wake The Devil” he thanks “Dracula and all the other vampires I've loved.” “Hellboy: Conqueror Worm” is named after Poem by Edgar Allan Poe (with lines from this poem) and includes similar thanks to old pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow.
“The Bride of Frankenstein” is Mignola's favorite monster movie, but there's another Boris Karloff horror picture he likes even more: 1945's The Body Snatcher where Karloff plays an articulate and menacing grave robber rather than a woodland creature.
As a character and comic, Hellboy is the ultimate synthesis of everything Mignola loves. Sometimes described as a “paranormal investigator”, he has a Philip Marlowe attitude, but looks beyond the occult. He is also himself (only in the literal sense) a monster. Even though people mostly accept it, Hellboy never can completely crosses the bridge to become one of them—he closely resembles Frankenstein's monster and his quest for companionship.
Bride of Frankenstein differs from Shelley's book, but does a better job of adapting the monster's tragic side. First, it includes sections of the book where the monster tries to befriend a blind man, only to be chased away again by people who can see his appearance. The creature, of course, wants a bride because of his loneliness, and when she too recoils at the sight of him, his despair is complete.
Guillermo del Toro's “Hellboy” movies are particularly reflective of Hellboy's non-belonging. The filmmaker, a huge “Frankenstein” fan, who himself is making an adaptation of Shelley's book, clearly responded to and amplified the flashes of isolation in Mignola's Hellboy.
As played by Ron Perlman and drawn by Mignola, Hellboy has a thick jawline that rivals Karloff's square head. The difference is that Hellboy is articulate and not a killer; he smiles and gives candy to children instead of drowning them. The creature decided to attack the world that rejected him. In many “Hellboy” stories, the monsters tell Hellboy to start the apocalypse already, and he always tells them to go to him, ripping off his own horns twice to show that he is defying his fate. (Hellboy never wears his horns fully grown to look more human.)
It helps that, unlike the creature in Hell, the boy had a father who loved him: Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. In the climatic mini-series “Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury” Hellboy sees a sign that says “the end is near” and feels solemn knowing that he was brought to Earth to bring about that end. So, Hellboy remembers a moment from his childhood when Broom convinced him that he wasn't Frankenstein's monster:
The dark horse
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DIY VIRAL
