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Post by whitecomics on May 5, 2022 13:19:50 GMT
I'll chime in again with another vote for Mignola the cartoonist over Mignola the plot mechanic. The short stories are some of the strongest work, definitely, and HB in Hell is great because it seems like Mignola found a satisfying way to combine the self-contained storytelling with some gestures at the wider plot.
It's easy to mock the hallmarks of his cartooning tricks--an inset panel of a flower here, a wide shot of a skeleton there--but he pulls this off remarkably well, and there's a real poetry to some of those pages. I sometimes wish he'd cast aside his storytelling impulses completely and do something purely visual.
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Post by manoopuesta on May 8, 2022 22:53:26 GMT
I read the 2 following volumes (4 and 5) and I'm digging the plot more now, so I will continue. Also because I really like his artwork.
I might have to pick up soon those Hellboy in Hell, you piqued my interest.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Dec 30, 2022 0:28:36 GMT
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I was thinking about this the other day... In the nineties, Gary Groth was really anti-genre, and called Hellboy "mediocre" in an interview with Frank Miller. To me, I don't really get why anyone would object to Mignola but publish Richard Sala? By which I mean, I like them basically the same amount, and for similar reasons. Both cartoonists have a self-similarity to their work that makes me feel like I definitely don't need all of it, and can just dip in and out of it and enjoy it without really remembering any of it. (That said, you can definitely make a case that Mignola is "better.") Does anyone agree with my thinking that they're pretty similar cartoonists, or is this me being dismissive of genre stuff in my own right? (I actually love genre stuff but I think I like a bit more pretentiousness to it than these guys give.)
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Post by junkflower on Dec 30, 2022 0:59:42 GMT
This is an interesting comparison that I've never considered before! I agree that its pretty silly of Groth to make that distinction, though I believe Sala may have been managed mostly by Kim Thompson (...?)
I think Sala's "cred" is mostly derived from his more angular, new-wavey and more explicitly nightmarish early work, though all that stuff shares the same kinda noir-worship as his later material. I find his middle period- where he's working away from insane non-sequiters towards general horror-mysteries to be his least interesting. His later stuff, though I don't necessarily have any inclination to own it, interests me because he's just kinda shreddin' at his personal apex, just hewing forever closer to the barest essence of his fetish.
All that said, I'm not really super familiar with Mignola, but I tend to love dudes in that "mainstream"-adjacent spectrum like Allred, Miller, Chadwick, etc. Mignola seems to work with some powerful iconography but also I think your chances of being into him are largely derivative of whether or not your interest in comics grew from "The Game," which is to say, being a regular nerd just buying Spider-Man or whatever, and being changed by force or circumstance into the kind of person who might have opinions on Sala. You may just have to "Get It."
For some time I felt that someone into alt comics who otherwise had zero affection for or knowledge of "mainstream" (ie: superhero) comics was the rarest kind of bird, but I've encountered more and more of them as time goes on. I assume this is due to manga supplanting what I knew to be mainstream comics as the default entry point for these kinds of things. In short, I am old.
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Post by whitecomics on Jan 3, 2023 20:06:38 GMT
A roundabout response to the Sala question/comparison: I read Mignola's most recent comic, Sir Edward Grey: Acheron #1, not long ago and was surprised by the extent to which he still seems interested in dumb plot mechanics. Both Hellboy in Hell and dominocorp 's description of the comic make me think he'd (happily!) lost interest in that stuff. I also happened to pull out and reread Screw-On Head, and found it similarly underwhelming in terms of plot, even just as dumb escapism, plus almost cringey in terms of the humor. Sala's ability to construct solid, stand-alone narratives seems more impressive to me (and probably more to Groth's taste) from that perspective. But to my taste Mignola is probably better and more unique as a cartoonist.
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Post by dominocorp on Jan 3, 2023 20:32:00 GMT
Someone had a comment on the tcj message boards a longtime ago that I'll never forget, that kinda relates to this.
In a thread about if TCJ should have given Paul Chadwick the cover feature or not (Chadwick being too genre for some):
'If the comic was called Concreto by Paolo Chadwicci, you'd all be very happy that this interview happened.'
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Post by dominocorp on Jan 3, 2023 20:42:15 GMT
I prefer how Mignola draws, maybe because I see the struggle that he goes through to make everything work...it's very tortured, especially early on, but he edits it down to something that syncs up and there's a real satisfaction to it when you read it. Some of Sala's books are perfect (Delphine) and the rest are all great, but I prefer Mignola because Sala is so skillful and zips through each project (I think around Peculia he really hit a good stride) which somehow makes me read them less closely than I do with Mignola. I feel like there is so much information beneath the surface with Mignola, this kinda workmanlike desire to be Frank Frazetta that is way more creative than Frazetta ever could be.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Jul 3, 2023 0:42:15 GMT
Finally bought volume 2 of the Hellboy omnibus editions - I'd skipped straight from volume 1 to volume 3 a few years ago, due to thinking that volume 2 was probably just wheel-spinning, but it absolutely is not. I saw a few people online saying that Conqueror Worm is when his cartooning is at its peak, and that might be true. He's still writing a story that demands a lot from him, in terms of elasticity, of action cartooning, but he's still doing his little atmospheric bits, and this might be the era where that feels the most balanced and effective. Also I had never really picked up on this when the comics were coming out month to month, but collected in the omnibus order (with a lot of other material in the short stories collections) the mythology really is just continually building, telling a story that moves in a particular direction in a way that the superhero comics material I see as the book's "competition" never attempts. I'm not sure I would be able to keep track of all of it even if I read it all in order, but just the sense of purpose is enjoyable.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Jul 31, 2023 16:15:21 GMT
Something really interesting about Hellboy is that Mignola attracts really world-class talents to work with him for an issue or two, like P. Craig Russell, Kevin Nowlan, some people like Mick McMahon more than I do, and while all those people have done like, Batman comics everyone loves, somehow the visual grammar of Hellboy is so defined by Mignola that it just comes off kinda mid. The exceptions being Richard Corben and Duncan Fegredo, of course.
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Post by Scott Gerard Ruhl on Aug 22, 2023 23:27:42 GMT
Not Mignola per se, but Lee Bermejo posted some pages of a Hellboy comic he was working on circa 2005 that fell through. Pretty amazing work.... http://instagram.com/p/CwQO1NkNX_o
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