Hellboy: Weird Tales - Part 6
“Toy Soldier”
Story: CB Cebulski (as Akira Yoshida) & Kia Asamiya | Art: Kia Asamiya | Colours: Dave Stewart | Letters: Clem Robins
Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Weird Tales #8 | April 2004 & Collected in Hellboy: Weird Tales - Volume 2 | October 2004
“Downtime”
Story & Art: Bob Fingerman
Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Weird Tales #3 | June 2003 & Collected in Hellboy: Weird Tales - Volume 1 | November 2003
“Friday”
Story: Doug Petrie | Art: Gene Colan | Colours: Dave Stewart | Letters: Michael Heisler
Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Weird Tales #6 | December 2003 & Collected in Hellboy: Weird Tales - Volume 2 | October 2004
“Professional Help”
Story & Art: Evan Dorkin | Colours & Dialogue Assist: Sarah Dwyer
Originally published by Dark Horse in Hellboy: Weird Tales #8 | April 2004 & Collected in Hellboy: Weird Tales - Volume 2 | October 2004
Collected in Hellboy: Weird Tales | December 2014
Plot Summary:
“Toy Soldier” - Hellboy plays games with some child ghost spirits.
“Downtime” - Hellboy, Abe, and Roger spend some time between missions fighting with a vending machine, menacing an intern, and complaining about office equipment.
“Friday” - Liz and Abe investigate a monster at an aquarium.
“Professional Help” - Roger visits a therapist to relate the events of an investigation into a neo-Pagan cult in Norway and their giant baby.
Reading Notes:
(Note: Pagination corresponds with those found in the hardcover Hellboy: Weird Tales collection published December 2014.)
pg. 193 - Humorous opening out of context. Hellboy’s anger makes you think something horrible is going on.
Also, I love Bob Fingerman’s exaggerated style as applied to Hellboy. His normal characters always look strange in works like Minimum Wage, which is part of the charm, but here because the characters are already larger than life, it transforms the work into almost a highly stylized Saturday morning cartoon.
pg. 194 - And it just gets more funny when we find out that it’s a printer that refuses to print anything other than a secretary’s butt.
pg. 195 - Booty.
pg. 196-197 - The Hellboy fight sequence as applied to a vending machine, with Hellboy losing, is downright hilarious.
pg. 198 - I love Fingerman’s expressions.
pg. 199 - The old school feel that Gene Colan gives the office, even with contemporary computers and cordless phone, is very nice. It gives it an appearance more of the 70s or 80s, reminding me a bit of Kolchak and Colan’s work on both Tomb of Dracula and Night Force.
pg. 200 - Liz searching dating sites is kind of funny.
pg. 203 - Love the art here. Colan and Dave Stewart just make this look gorgeous.
pg. 204 - The matter-of-fact narration that Petrie provides for Liz gives the entire story not quite a noir narrative pattern, but definitely an approach at maybe a Mike Hammer or Sam Spade staccato hard-boiled feel.
pg. 205 - Nice backgrounds and bookshelves.
Also, it’s interesting to see a Roger solo story. And one that does a fairly nice job of character study.
pg. 206 - The nested narrative of Roger discussing his mission in Oslo is a nice bit of structure.
pg. 208 - The incorporation of a black metal cult is kind of funny, even though Evan Dorkin is basing it on the very real events of the Varg Vikernes murders and church fires in the 90s.
pg. 209-211 - It just gets stranger from there, with bizarre weird science experiments and a giant baby that vomits acid.
pg. 212 - And there’s the twist when we get back to the main narrative.
pg. 213 - This temhot thing is real freaky looking.
pg. 214 - This is just funny.
Final Thoughts:
This is another batch of stories with a fairly broad range of tone and style. Bob Fingerman and Evan Dorkin add different quantities of humour, zaniness, and exaggeration to their stories, with “Professional Help” probably delivering the most overall depth.
I think Doug Petrie and Gene Colan’s “Friday” is the standout for me. Largely for Colan’s legendary, beautiful artwork, but also the overall feel of just a straightforward monster case is pretty nice.
You probably noticed that I didn’t discuss “Toy Solider” above. It was written by CB Cebulski while he was lying to publishers and pretending to be a Japanese author. I don’t approve of what Cebulski did during that time and will not discuss the work in a critical capacity. I only include its details here for completion’s sake.
d. emerson eddy is on the square. Is on the level. He is ready to swear right here, right now, before the devil.
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