The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch

Written by Neil Gaiman, Drawn by Michael Zulli

Comic

I like Neil Gaiman. I like the art. This was good. I have nothing more to say

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, Hellboy: Wake the Devil; Hellboy: Wolves of St. August, Hellboy: The Chained Coffin, Hellboy: Almost Colossus

Mike Mignola

Comic Mini-Series; One Shots

“Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack, ‘cause you’re a major mythological figure… but now you’ve just gone NUTS!”

Hellboy rules.

It took some time for it to get going, only really hitting its stride for me in the middle of Wake the Devil, the second major story arc presented in the hellboy Omnibi, but I am fully sold now. Goregous art from Mignola, much more Expressionisticly inspired than I expected, with bold coloring really makes the panels pop. Dialogue is placed to effortlessly flow through the panels – no “catching up” with the dialogue or art after focusing on the other necessary, sadly not a given as of late. The action in particular makes excellent usage of sound effects to indicate direction and magnitude of the movement.

Narratively the first few stories were solid even if they didn’t quite feel completely in their element yet, but even before the stride was reached the worldbuilding was great. As a known fan of various modern reinterpretations of mythology and folk tales, such as The Sandman that I really should gush about at some point, Hellboy’s interpretation felt fresh and unique in a way that many lesser attempts have failed. Instead of primarily relying on the existing fictions, with only minor deviattions, Mignola uses the cultural impressions as a loose outline to weave into his own unique interconnected fantasy.

All in all I am very excited to read more and honestly will probably be bumping this up in my very important ratings that are so important I definitely haven’t been omitting them from placement here because people would just focus on that instead of what bullshit I wrote.

That’s all for today, I meant to start “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak or something but today was weird.

More film in the coming days because I’m a fool.

Oh yeah gamedev stuff I’m still on my bullshit for rotations and I’m not sure what could change that except the unlikely scenario of me actually somehow stumbling upon a solution – will keep working though.