Hellboy, Aileen Thomas

1. Rising Action: Hellboy is faced with the cold, hard fact that the people for whom he works find that Roger, the homunculous, is expendable. He poses a dangerous threat should he decide to turn against them for, after all, he isn't human. Hellboy asks if there will be a time that they decide he too is expendable. As he faces an alien threat this theme of human vs inhuman beats heads until the point where Hellboy has to make a decision on whether or not destroy Roger.

2. Rating: PG-13 for language, dark themes and mild violence.

3. Springboard: World War II, design and poetry. People have already talked about WWII and Nazis so I'm going to talk a little about this conqueror worm from Edgar Allen Poe's poem.

There are many interpretations and analyses that people have made about this poem. The average man (at least those who post responses on the internet which may or may not be average people, perhaps less) seem to all find it as the story of how Heaven stands idly by while men are destroyed. Another popular belief is that it speaks of how our dead bodies are food for the worm.

But according to GradeSaver, ("GradeSaver(TM) ClassicNotes are the most comprehensive study guides on the market, written by Harvard students for students!" - Amazon.com) it says that people are controlled, that there are "unseen forces," such as emotion, that push and pull man. Then as man is controlled angels cannot help them as they destroy themselves. Then, as it is read in the context of the story Ligeia (for which it was originally ended) the girl who reads it interprets that man die because of their lack of will and so with her strong will she later comes back from the grave by taking over another woman's body after she leaves her own.

This plays in really well with Mignola's story in that there is an alien force without body or form that comes into the world by way of a dead host and everything it breathes on become a different creature and are then consumed.

(Go here to read The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe.)

It pays to read the entirety of something. Someone who misuses a quote can be considered a great fool. Take for instance the story of the man who when looking for inspiration opened the Bible to any page and read of the suicide of Judas. Stupidly the man takes that as a sign and goes and kills himself. When trying to find true depth and inspiration one should actually try to learn what their source is saying. Mignola obviously did an actual study of the poem from which he based Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm and was neatly inspired. Had he just read the short poem and gone off his first instincts of the meaning we may have ended up reading a story about zombies and fallen angels instead of the more clever tale of nazis, an alien race, humanity, control, the will of man and the madness of man.


4: Apply: So often I'll go onto the internet, find a little fact and go running with it. Other times I'll actually spend time studying and learn a great deal more as well as eliminate falsehoods. But never have I tried to study a poem further than reading it and talking to peers about it. Even in highschool I'd just come up with ideas, which is good, then I'd let it rest at that. Now I see that such studies can actually become the basis of great inspiration and stories. So, I'm going to just learn everything I can whenever I can and see what brilliance shines.

Hell Boy: Conqueror Worm - Paul Petty

1. Analyze: Rising Action

The big focus on Hell Boy was the rising action. It introduces the element of a bomb button on Hell Boy's friend, Roger. It's obvious the whole story is going to lead up to the need to blow Roger up, but what will happen to spark that event? Most of the story is everything leading up to the climax of when Hell Boy will have to make the decision.

2. Rating: PG-13

There's some violence with blood, zombies, and guns. There's also some vague nudity shots of Roger, but with some cover. There's also some nude shots of Hecate and another of an old nasty witch at the very end. Though in all these cases it's not super detailed nor erotic. The redeeming quality from the violence is that evil Nazis get beat up and killed.

3. Springboard:

Mignola must have a lot of notes on witchcraft. From studying Shakespeare's Scottish Play, Hecate is the moon goddess/goddess of witches. There's also a lot of religious superstition/ mythology stuff with cults and summoning unworldly demons and monsters.

I hadn't seen the second Hell Boy, so I watched that. It had a lot of cool visual effects, but the first one had more suspense in the story.

4. Apply

Mignola's composition with word bubbles and illustration leads the reader's eye. There's a great deal of clarity, and everything flows with great timing. That's something I want to include in my comic and still keep some dynamic quality like Mike Mignola does.

Hellboy: The Coqueror Worm

1. Analyze:
Milieu - Secondary
The story revolves around an old castle, where Nazi experiments took place.  Though it is a fantastic setting and is necessary to drive the plot, the setting is secondary because it only creates a mood.  You could move the setting to anywhere you wanted and the story could stay roughly the same.  But what a great place to create it.  The architecture, the high mountains and everything else created this setting of solidarity and loneliness.  A perfect place to fight and stop a world destroying monster.


2. Rating:
PG-13.  Violence and Zombification of Nazis.  And some mild language.

3. Springboard:
Obviously, Mignola is very much infatuated with Nazis.  He see's them as a source for not only ultimate immorality and evil but also a place where endless possibilities in story can be explored.  Researching it a bit, I found that Mignola uses Nazis in other stories (Baltimore) and they are always the source of evil.
I imagine he had to do a lot of research on The Third Reich as well as architecture.


4. Apply:
So far, something that I can apply from this story into my own comic is story progression.  The entire comic felt like a half hour long TV show.  Very stand alone, with hints of an overarching theme, complete with a teaser at the end.  The progression seemed to me to be quick paced, never lingering or beating a dead horse on any one idea.  I really like that seeing as how I have a tendency to want to over explain things.

Making Comics, Hellboy

One thing I really enjoyed an explanation about is using drawing style to accentuate an action within the comic.  On the panels above, you can see that Mignola uses a distant "high detail" shot to create a mood and accentuate the fall of Hellboy. 

I have seen this in many different comics that I have read as well.  There is a distinct style or change in the drawing.  MEKA uses extreme depth several times to highlight a punch, Yossel uses virtuoso drawing throughout, and Hellboy uses High Detail, low detail, as well as color variations to maintain mood and highlight intense moments in the story.

Making Comics - Hellboy: Conquerer Worm

On pg. 50 of Making Comics it talks about the need for variation. Although an artist may be tempted to take every panel of their comic to the extreme, making every single shot action packed creates uniformity. And uniformity is usually boring. Variation creates impact. On this particular page in Hellboy the very first panel does so much to help the rest of the page. The large-paneled wide shot contrasts so nicely to the tightly-framed action shots that follow. The relative stillness in the first panel creates the necessary anticipation to really make you feel like Hellboy is getting wailed on in the next three panels.

"Hellboy: Conquerer Worm" - Britta Frazier

1. Analyze: Event-Secondary - The event that gets things moving in this story is the arrival of a comet in the earth's atmosphere that is actually an old Nazis spacecraft. It has been altering it's course (proving it's not just space junk) and is aimed to land right on top of an old Nazi fortress. Coincidence? I think not. So Hellboy and a small team have to investigate it to see if its dangerous.

Obviously the event is what get the action moving, and the story concludes when the conflict created by the event is resolved. But I call it secondary because Hellboy's inner struggle about sacrifice and the possibility of having to kill his own team member makes it primarily a character story.

2. Rating: PG-13. This is a very mild PG-13 rating, for some frightening and disturbing images. On several pages there are rotting and disfigured corpses that kids would probably be frightened by. Near the end there is a naked woman, but she is drawn in such a stylized way that it makes the nudity very mild.

3. Springboard - Mignola would have to know about World War II history, primarily the Nazis. Along with this he'd have to have researched clothing and uniforms of the time to make his characters accurate. Also, some knowledge on Norse mythology would be useful since the Nazi space programs have mythological names.

I did a little research to see if the Nazis actually had a space program. They never did officially, but conspiracies abound saying that the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun (who later developed the Saturn V rocket for NASA that got man to the moon) was a central figure in the development of a secret Nazi space program.

"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.