"Hellboy: Conqueror Worm" - Christina LeBaron

1. Analyze: Character- Primary

I felt like the story was primarily motivated by Character. I was conflicted between Character and Event and which played a larger role in pushing the story along, but I think it is clear by the way the story begins and ends that is motivated by character.

In Hellboy the Conqueror Worm the main device used to show Hellboy’s change is his conflict about killing Roger.  In the beginning he is presented with that conflict.  He shows his disgust at the beginning when he is given the means to easily kill Roger and is instruted to do so if it is necessary, but he still takes it.  As the story progresses he interacts with Roger more and more and when he is faced with the decision to kill Roger or not, he chooses not to, despite the danger.   By the end Hellboy has gone through that change and follows through with his decision and change by quitting the Hellboy “quits” near the end of the book because of how disgusted he is that he was asked to kill Roger if necessary and was given the means to easily do so.  In the story he is faced with that challenge and chooses to be better by not doing so, and then at the end he follows that through by quitting, resolved to make a new beginning for himself elsewhere.

2. Rating: PG-13 This book seems barely enough to be rated PG-13.  There a couple of pictures that shows the naked woman at the end (there aren’t page numbers), although there isn’t any detail and it doesn’t have any sexual feeling to it, she is still naked.  But I feel like the content involving the themes and some violence are PG appropriate.

3. Springboard:

            -Mignola would have had to be knowledgeable about Nazi History and World War II.  Even though most of what is going on in here, like Project Ragna Rok, is fiction, he still needed a basis to go off of in order to understand the Nazis and make it believable.  He would have also needed to know about some Norse Mythology since the name for the Project the Nazi’s were doing is named after the apocalypse in Norse Mythology, “Ragnarok”.  A particular person he would have had to be knowledgeable on his Rasputin of Russia, since his fictional character Rasputin is based off of the real man. 

            -Ragnarok from Norse Mythology is a series of future events which will result in the death of many major figures.  After a series of natural disasters and wars the world will be submerged under water.  After it resurfaces the world will be repopulated by two human survivors.