West to the comic store for the first time in a while (visiting the comic store has become depressing for at least three or four completely separate reasons, but that's another story entirely).
Some new stuff, most interestingly Larry Gonick finally released the last volume in his
Cartoon History of the Universe series, which was about equal in pacing and coverage to the previous volume.
Also, picked up the latest Hellboy volume, The Wild Hunt. Now, I can maybe someday forgive Mignola for giving up drawing his series (that happened a few volumes ago), since Duncan Fegredo is excellent and his drawing style is well-suited to Hellboy. But wow did Mignola's writing ever take a turn for the worse in this volume. considering his past high standards,
that was definitely new.
It seemed good at first, but it dawned on me an hour or two afterwards that just about every single plot element in that volume has been recycled. [spoiler]Hellboy hanging out in the house of folks who've died long ago, shoehorning in an older short story as a key plot point (Alice was was kind of superfluous, other than her Dr. Watson-esque role as the story's human point of contact), the interestingly neutral cabal guys turning out to be yet another boring evil bunch who want to use Hellboy for their own purposes, the seemingly friendly guide spirit leading Hellboy to a trap, Hellboy growing his horns again and breaking them off again - I guess that's going to be routine now? Plus many minor recycled bits.[/spoiler]
But the worst of those was when [spoiler]he re-used the And the "The last half of the book all took place in Hellboy's head - it was only a dream!",
again. Now that was a total cop-out.[/spoiler] also instead of using mythological figures judiciously, he now seems to just be grabbing them by the fistful and chucking them willy-nilly into the story like it's some kind of "how many references can I make?" game. This goes double for linking said mythologies together in awkward ways, just so we can have a SURPRISE CONNECTION.
The instances where things are just forced for no really good reason didn't help either. [spoiler]When Alice says "The little people did me some good as a justification for her abnormal youth, it was like a record needle screetch in my head[/spoiler]. Writers using paper-thin justifications to allow them to draw attractive women is something I normally expect from a
much lesser artist.
But the most painful part was when he decided that this volume's BIG REVEAL would be the fact that [spoiler]Hellboy's human half was descended from King Arthur[/spoiler]. Ugh? Really? That was the most forced thing of all. I think it was much better when [spoiler]Hellboy's mother was just a random witch.[/spoiler] That actually made him
more human, not less.
Don't get me wrong, there were still a few nice moments [spoiler]The 'slug house' gag, the art-deco demon, and especially when they pointed out all the prophecies of doom have come from people who had a vested interest in lying to Hellboy.[/spoiler] With that last bit being the only really meaningful growth Hellboy experiences in the whole volume.
I guess I always thought that there was an overall plan and that the story might come to an end someday, after a long and overarching tale. This volume makes me think that perhaps there is no plan at all and we're just wandering aimlessly while a burnt-out artist drags his finest creation down with himself.
