EPISODE 12: HELLBOY PART 1

Welcome back to Morgan Talks Comics, a podcast that looks at comics old and new.

This week, we're looking at one of MIKE MIGNOLA'S early HELLBOY comics from DARK HORSE COMICS. Mignola is probably the biggest influence on my comics writing, and is without doubt, one of my favourite cartoonists. I've been a fan of his work for a LONG time...

Grab a cuppa and enjoy this episode, the first time we're looking at Mignola's work and Hellboy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Morgan Talks Comics, a look at comics from the past and present. This week we're looking at uh an early issue of Hellboy by Mike McNola. Joining me this week, as ever, is Eliza Mariah Chamberlain, and I hope you enjoy the show. Okay, um welcome back to Morgan Talks Comics. This week we're looking at probably my favourite comic of all time, Hellboy. Uh by certainly my favourite artist and writer of all time, Mike McNola. Uh joining me again this week is Eliza Mariah Chamberlain. Hello.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Um yeah, so we are looking this week at one I think this is the first solo issue after the first after the original series, um, which is called Seed of Destruction, which came out in 1992, I want to say, uh, which set the ball rolling. Big Nolan pretty much put the whole thing together himself, but he had uh another artist help him with the story because he just started writing his own material. Uh uh, an artist called John Byrne, who's well known for doing Superman and lots of superhero comics. Um, yeah, so we are looking at The Corpse and the Iron Shoes, which is a it's it's a one-shot comic from Dark Horse Comics. This has the old legend imprint, which was an imprint that uh Mignola, Frank Miller, and I think Jeff Darrow were involved in, but it was kind of it was for people that were well regarded within within comics.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

An imprint, is it like a little badge that says I'm good?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Um why has he got a beehive next to him?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

A beehive?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Yeah, that's a modern beehive, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

That's not a beehive, that's his that's his right hand. He's got a right stone hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Oh, I was talking about this bee, see.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

No, this so Hellboy has Hellboy is uh uh a demon from hell. Um he has this what that's what is known as the right hand of doom, which is this big stone hand, um which which can be seen when you know when you look at it when you look at the the artwork.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

It looks right now, but I thought that was a beehive sitting on a rock. No, and I didn't know why what beehives had to do with these.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

It's a big rock hand. Right interesting because we've got on the cover here, we've got some some little sort of nymph-like characters that which look like sort of insects flying around. But they're just coincidence because yeah, they don't come from his inbuilt beehive then. No, absolutely not. Um, so this issue was a standalone issue um before Mignola poured into his next longer series. The Hellboy had uh longer stories which ran for five or six issues, um, allowing the story to unfold. These are two short stories that Mignola based on, I believe, Irish myths. He uses a lot of like real kind of mythology and fairy tales and stuff like that in the stories.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Is this supposed to be a mausoleum or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, like a gravestone, and then you've got like standing stones in the background.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So what amazed me when we when when we went into this was the fact that this comic is now 30 years old. Like I'm I'm amazed that it's 30 years old. It was actually published originally published in 1996, which is doesn't seem like 30 years ago, does it? No, it doesn't seem like 30 years ago, and it just makes me realise how long I've been. I mean, I've got a lot of Mignola's work before he started Hellboy. Hellboy is his own character that he he created. And he to start off with, he we he had some help writing to start off with, but then he as he hit his stride with becoming a writer as well as an artist, he's he writes and draws his own material.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Yeah, I was just wondering if anybody can tell us whether you're younger than the comic. Like were you born after was it 1993?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

You said anyone listening or watching, are you younger than the comic?

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Sadly, I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah. So they kind of fitted in together. There was the original story which is called Seed of Destruction, which was a six-issue series collected into a really nice book afterwards, and then I believe after Seed of Destruction, there was the Wolves of St. August, which was a one-off um 48-page story about werewolves.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Oh, were wolves.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So um Mignola, big influence on my work as a as a writer and a and a and an artist, is very well known now for using very what we use using heavy blacks. So when we're looking at the first page here, the first panel is actually just picked out with characters in silhouette, so you don't see any detail to it. It's just trees are good.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

I always notice good trees.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Migdola does nice trees, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Yes, he does.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Right. It's also I noticed, I don't think this is probably paper.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

No, so because this is an older comic, this is printed, this is on more what we would call newsprint paper. Yes. It's not on the nice sort of more satin paper that the modern comics are on now. Yeah, I mean, and I'd forgotten that it was that uh it was as old as it is. Yeah. So, you know, my copy here is it's not uh the collectors out there will gasp, but it's not bagged and boarded and all the rest of it. Why not? I just never got around to it. Well, it's it's not doing too badly, is it? It's doing alright considering, yeah, I bought this when it came out, so oh you're showing your age. I am showing my age now. Yes. But a a nice little device here on the on the first panel. We've got a bit large panel of this of some kind of creature with trees insul in shadow behind him. But then we've got a little bit of poetry from William Allingham. Um who's that? I think he's an old English poet. Mignola is very keen on on English uh mythology and folklore. Is he British or wild? Mignola. Yeah. So mgno it's weird. M'gno Mike Magnola is usually referred to by his last name, which is a weird thing with artists, but Mike he's uh he's a an American writer writing artist. Sorry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

Sorry. He's a nice name, that's why he reminds you of magnolia and flowers and things. Yeah. But they his artwork doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, so um, but quite often, uh a device that Mignola used in his storytelling is he he would do sometimes quotes from old books or poems and stuff like that that were linked into like mythology and folklore. So he says, Up the Erie Mountain, down the Russian Glen, we don't go a hunting for fear of little men. So they're talking about fairies and pixies and that sort of thing. So the the the this is divided into two stories the corpse, which is a longer story, which as as from what I understand is based, I think, around an old Irish fight Irish myth. I don't know, French Irish myths. And so we're going to we're actually going into the story proper now, and and colour. Yeah. Not a lot, not a lot of colour, again, because Mignola works very heavily with black, but it's we've got a dateline here. So we've got Ireland 1959. So when the first series came out, it was set in current times. But what Mignola has done is he's exploring the character and learning more about Hellboy himself, he's actually going back and talking about earlier cases and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

Yeah, does he um suffer from depression?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Who?

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Mike Mignola.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

I don't know. I I know he gets like a lot of artists, he gets quite frustrated when pages don't turn out right. I've seen, I've got because I'm a big fan, I've got a lot of books of his actual art and it shows a lot of his thinking process and stuff before we see the finished work, and I know that he's got frustrated with pages before, and he's like you can literally see he's scribbled out, and sometimes the drawing is so scribbly because he's trying to figure things out.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

Um I the reason I ask is this thing about black that often indicates difficulties, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, yeah, but it could just be because he likes black, and uh um Mignola is a big fan, uh big fan of Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby was one of the the creators of the Marvel universe, so Fantastic Four, uh Hulk, Thor, loads of titles, and Migno and Mignola recognises Kirby's work. Kirby used quite a lot of heavy blacks as well, so he uses this, he's sort of taken it to a further degree. Is this ink, do you think? Yeah, um, sorry. So Mignola typically draws with like a uh a fine fine liner pen and then uses a brush and ink for all the heavy blacks, so it's actually it's actually filled in. I've like I say, I've got books that show his artwork as it's as you would see it before it's like reproduced.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Right, right, that'd be interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, it's I think we're gonna end up doing quite a lot about Bignola because he is such a big influence on my work, and I've got a lot of his stuff.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Um and that book you're talking about, perhaps we could look at that because it sounds interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, so maybe in an in a further episode, I'm kind of calling this Bignola episode one because again, he's he's a big inf he's the biggest influence on my work. Uh it might not look like it with the way I draw now, but with my storytelling, it's it's very much he's he's the big influence for me as a storyteller.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

I keep talking over you. Um when you're going to go and do the other Mignolia things, we needn't do it like next week and the next week. We could do other things in the week. Absolutely, yeah because anybody who doesn't like Magnolia stuff will think. What's his name?

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Mike Mignola.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Okay, I'm sorry, Mike, if I've got your name. No, but I am sorry, I don't like getting people's names on.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

So interestingly, at the begin towards the beginning of of Hellboy, Mignola was doing everything, was writing and drawing. Now uh there's sort of an expanded universe and the characters. So to give a bit of background, Hellboy is a demon who comes up from hell and he gets um discovered by the American army in World War II. Um and he gets adopted by Trevor Broom, who's the who's a research agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Defence, Paranormal Research and Defence, BPRD.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

It's amazing how many sort of FBI things have got these paranormal far more than we've got over here. Yeah. That is quite remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Yeah, it is. So but so Hellboy becomes an agent for the BPRD. So he's a goodie. He's a goodie. Uh even though he looks, you know, as he's a demon. He's a demon, he's a demon from hell, yeah. Uh I believe they say so going back into his origin story, um, his mother was a nun, and his father was a demon. Oh half a demon, half a nun. Half a demon, half a null nun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

Oh my word. Right, well. Yeah, so he must have had his mother's influence here. Yeah. Um can't stop looking at this poor baby with his head.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

So, okay, so let's let's let's get into the story now. So we have an opening scene of a little cottage, island 1959, and we've got a mother standing in front of a cop with a child with a small baby in, and she's saying, Please don't hurt her, just bring her back to me. And then the the fat the husband's come in and he says, Margaret, I found someone who can help us, and he's going, ma'am, and it it's Hellboy comes into it. Oh, he's polite, is he? Oh, yeah, he's got really, really good manners. Yeah. I like being called ma'am. Yeah. Considering that Hellboy stands at about seven foot tall, he's a he's a big, big guy. Sounding better. With cloth with cloven hooves and a big and a big long slinky tail.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Sorry, come on.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So the mother is concerned that uh the baby is not her baby, that it's been like possessed or something. I think it has. Yeah. So Hellboy in the Hellboy goes over to the the baby in the crib in the cot.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

And he says, You look pretty good to me. Yes, you do. Is your mean old mother crazy? I think she is. And then he says, I've got something for you. He says, What do babies like? And then he says, Babies like iron, and he holds up a horseshoe. Oh. And the bay the baby suddenly turns around and goes, Yay, I'm found out. So in old fairy tales, um sort of evil bad creatures didn't like iron. Iron is fairies and fay.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

The fae, yeah, fee, yeah. But they weren't necessarily bad, fay. Oh no, they're not real. We mustn't talk about them if they're real.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Absolutely. Um but yeah, so iron is is like um it's a good way of it damaging them. It's like it's like um holding up a silver cross and running for a vampire. It's that sort of thing. They're not real either.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

I know. And krypton for Superman.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And kryptonite for Superman, yeah, absolutely. It's iron iron is iron is the kryptonite of the fairy world. Yeah, but none of those are real. We just have to keep that in mind. So Hellboy grabs uh a pair of uh tongs from the fireplace and uh and holds the baby up, or what they thought was the baby, up with these iron tongs. Oh and you can see in the in the bottom panel, we can see the baby transforming into some kind of goblin-like creature, and it's going, stop, stop, it burns. Oh, you're killing me. And Hellboy's asking where the baby is, and he says, Oh, take that iron off me, and he'd say, Tell me where it is. So eventually, um what he does to the this sort of goblin fairy type creature. This creature um it gives it gives Hellboy some instructions to uh go to get go to crossroads by the stroke of midnight under the corpse tree, which I think is where a gallows would have been.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Right, yes. I used to live near gallows corner many years ago. Um that's so that's just telling you what the type that is coming up to the middle.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah, on the following page there's a there's a little insect panel. We can see Hellboy doing it. You can see a gallows appearing. The uh the little goblin creature goes, he's he throws the goblin creature into the fire and then it escapes through the chimney laughing. Oh and then he's talking to Alice's parents and says, Don't worry, I'll find her. Um and it they're they're warning him don't go to the crossroads after dark. People don't like to go there after dark. Yeah, but he's a big big lump of rock, isn't he? He is, he's got this, yeah. So the next panel, the next page, what another watch. Another watch. Yeah, so we see Hellboy in silhouette standing underneath a gallows, which is next to the the tree there, and it's just the way Mignola allows stories to build up, it it quite often does more visual storytelling than letting the Yes Yeah yes I'd be in trouble with one. As as he as we get another insert of his watch here and it ticks over to midnight, and as it ticks over to midnight, a corpse appears on the gallows. Yeah, yeah, and points in a in a direction for Hellboy to follow.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Right so just one thing, if there's a corpse on there, then it's probably a bad somebody who lies and cheats. I didn't know it's pointing in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Absolutely, yeah. So it just takes the chance anyway.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

So and then at the bottom of the page we see uh three characters dragging up what looks like another corpse. Yes, and it turns out that these three characters are fairy folk, and they're they're carrying they're carrying this corpse. Hellboy says, Hello, I'm looking for a baby, and then they said, Would that be little Alice Mongan? And um the they strike a deal that if Hellboy takes the corpse to be buried, they'll he'll get the baby back.

SPEAKER_03 17:41

Right. I can't read that very tiggly writing there.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah, the the text in in a lot of the earlier ones is quite small, but it also they use smaller text to emphasise that he's kind of talking quietly, right? So there's a lot of space in the balloon. So he says not so tight. They get him, they get him to pick up this corpse, this corpse Tam O'Clanny from Killani. Weirdly, I went to Killani when I was in Ireland, and I was like, ugh, this is where the corpse happened, it was brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

And did you see it?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

No, I didn't see it, it's not real, not real, no, but there's a lot of folklore in Ireland, anyway. Um so the the the fair fairy folk get uh make a deal with Hellboy that if he takes Tam off to get buried, then they'll return the baby to him. Yes, and as as Hellboy picks up Tam's corpse, the corpse wraps himself round really tightly. This is why he goes, Hey, not so tight. Right, let's see what happens. So they start taking him off, they they take him off and they say, Quick, you've got to you've gotta bury him before dawn breaks. So he's got like I don't know, six hours or something to fail in this, and the child is lost, they say.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

But he hasn't even got a shovel, I see.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

No.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So the interesting bit here, just as a little side note, so Hellboy has been in has been made into four films now, I believe. I don't know. In the original one, which starred Ron Ron Perlman as as uh Hellboy, they use this scene with the corpse on it. Um is actually seen, so they reference the comics very strongly in visually as well.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Right, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

Sticking to the club.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

You said in the first one, which suggests that in the later ones that they didn't use a well.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

There's there's a little bit of um disagreement within the within the fandom of of Hellboy, but uh the whether the the first two films are are very highly regarded, um, and they are brilliant and they're very visually like Mignola's comics. It's almost like they've taken the comics and put it directly onto the screen. But with all this darkness, that's not necessarily nice to look at the whole film. But weirdly, the films are actually quite they they're quite bright and quite colourful. Well, that doesn't quite be it it's it's it's got a dark tone, but the it's actually quite the characters I mean Hellboy's bright red, so he stack he sticks out.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Yeah, you know. Um does they bury him? Does he bury him?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

So the first place he goes off to bury them, um the the fairies tell him three places to try and bury him. So he goes off to this church, which is the first place, and um Hellboy uh gets up to this church and he goes and he's like knocking on the on the front door and he says locked off, never broken into a church, and then the corpse says, check the stone over the door. Right and he finds the key to the church and it walks, walks into the church, and Kirch? Kirch! Church! Walks into this church, which is empty because obviously it's probably now by now about one o'clock in the morning, and there's no room in this curve. Yeah, so he lifts lifts up a one of the flagstones in the in the centre of the church in the centre aisle, and this kind of what looks like a uh crusader with the with the old sort of Mormon like Maltese cross on. This big thing thing, this creature that looks a bit like a knight uh with a big shield and sword and everything comes up and says no room, and then it just keeps saying no room, no room.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

That suggests there's no moon.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

So no moon. And there's lots of shouts of no room, and then we see more skeletons and stuff jump up. So Hellboy goes, Oh so it's quite clear that Hellboy's not going to be able to bar bury Tam at the church. So where did he go next?

SPEAKER_03 21:58

This looks like A bird cage.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

It does look like a birdcage, but it's actually it's actually as we go through, it goes to what's clearly a graveyard. Oh another one. So he's gone from a church, but then he goes to a graveyard. So through originally he was going to inter him in the stones of the church, but now he's going to a graveyard to actually put him in a grave.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Yes, I'll well I that would have been my first choice personally.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

I'm not Hellboy. So Hellboy says, hmm, seems okay, what do you think? And he goes, Oh, hang on. And the next thing you see, there is a fi there's a flaming skeleton come appears out of the ground. Because he had no room. And again, the the they all of the corpses and the stones cut start cry calling out, no room, and there's fire all over the place.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Well on time's marching on. It is doesn't have the clocks there, the watch there, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

No, they're not using the clock at the watch as a device through. They're just allowing the storage to happen.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Still looks like it's somebody's in a birdcage there.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

It does. It does look like a birdcage.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

Is it actually supposed to be crazy?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

No, it's the it's the gates to the to the graveyard.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Right, I've never seen gates to the graveyard like that, have you?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Uh no, they're usually a lot smaller. Yeah. The Hellboy now realises he's had two, he's had he says strike two, so he's clearly he's um I'm starting to detect some a sort of grim pattern here, and you you're not smelling any better.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

No, I thought that said trump.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

It doesn't say trump. What what's happened is is there's a a standing stone which is kind of levitating above the ground and it's thumping into the ground. So it it doesn't say trump, it says thump in a in a large lettering.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

It the the stone makes a hole in the ground and uh underneath it there's uh a gold, a horde of of buried gold. Yes, and the corpse is saying, get down there quick and get it for me. He says, You're big, but you're fast, and he and he says, Given your present condition, what the hell do you need gold for? He's going, go back, go back. I'm I was better off with the little fellas. So does he leave him now? No, he he this is he's going to the the third place that the the fairies have suggested.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

And hopefully he'll go back and get the gold. Which is go and give it to the baby.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, which is like a kind of a um a cairn, like an old yeah, I know, like standing stone type thing.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Well, often they're just um stacks of stone things, aren't they? Just stacks of stones. Yeah. Because people other people might not know where a cairn is. We do get them over here sometimes, don't we? Yeah, absolutely. But I think there's a lot more in other countries.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah. Definitely. So um Hellboy's saying I get the impression we were looking for a Christial burial ground, not here, not this place. It's clearly like a pagan and much older um place than a than a church or a graveyard.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Presumably these are the fairies, are they?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah, so is he he doesn't manage to bury him at at this place because there's some kind of force field around it which knocks him out.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Yes, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

And then they says, screw it, let's go to Kilbridge, which I think is the last place hit that's suggested to him. And then we see the the fairy king talking with some of some of his subjects.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

The fairy king?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, so the larger character in the background here.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Well, right, how does he come into the issue?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Well, there's there's usually a kick that like if you go to Shakespeare, um if you look at like in Midsummer Night Dream, there's the King and the King and the Queen of the Fairies, Oberon, Titania.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Of course they're real, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Yeah, okay, there is a key, and he's just appeared.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Just appeared. But it's basically said that Hellboy has survived all of the all of the other places and has enough time to do his work before the morning. So the king says, Bring out the baby, we will honour him. Um but the last panel of that page is we see this little goblin character who is the who was the baby at the beginning. The original baby, yes. And he says, The king is a fool, this hellboy mocks me, he has burned me with iron, and I will have vengeance. Oh, have naughty. So this character, Grugrak, he's called. He goes running off repeat the name, please. Grugrak.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Grugrak.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Grugrak. G R G-R-U-A-G-A-C-Hrugrak.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

I think if I I was Irish, I'd say it differently.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Probably.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

Yeah. In that case, we need people to say.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Anyway, he runs off and he is you can see him run off with a large key and he goes down to so it goes past a waterfall to a to a lake. Looks like a graveyard, okay. It does. Well, I think this is a big sort of mausoleum type thing under the under the water. But um he goes down and he gives the key to Jenny Greenteet, who's this sort of swamp creature, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Who unlocks this big tomb that's under the water.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Um, and then we so we just see her unlocking the thing, and then we swap back, we cut back to Hellboy with Tam on his back, and they come to Kill Breger, which I think is it the last place says this is it, this or nothing, so it's this no matter what. No fooling around. And he starts crossing a bridge to get to the um chapel or whatever it is that's there. And as he crosses the bridge, a giant pig creature comes out. Pig?

SPEAKER_03 28:04

Yeah, it's like a he's like a pig, he's got a snout and tr and that was that was that was Breeze the dog making a pig noise. And she's looking at us to say, What? Right, back back on track. Was that what Breeze said?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So little Grugrak is in the background going, Ha, where's your hit where's your iron now, hell boy? And um he's like sort of really shouting the odds thing, ha I've got you now, Grom war champ war monster and all this is gonna get you, and then he gets the the pig creature grabs Grograk by his in her hand and actually squashes him.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Where's that happening?

SPEAKER_00 28:48

He grabs him in his hand and then it goes just goes crunch and he gets squashed. And Hellboy says, So much for that little guy. So then there's a there's basically a uh the the Grom, the big pig creature, uh beats Hellboy and he sends him flying with a big oh so he is on the goodie on the other side, and then Hellboy says says, Hey, I just thought of something, where is it? I saw it the other day, and he says he finds a a charm against demonic animals, it's sort of on loan from the Vatican Library.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

In other words, he's stolen it.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

So he wraps yeah, so he wraps up the the this charm in his hand, and he's right this right hand, which is this big stone hand he has, um and he hits hits Grom, the the pig creature, and obviously because it's got a charm in it, he it beats him, and then we see Grom actually starts turning into a little monster, and then you see him all running off because he's been beaten.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

Right, not seven bells out of him, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

But while this has happened, Tam has fallen off his back and he says, Come on, you almost there, we've got to go. And Tam says, I've lost my arm. And he says, I've lost my arm, and he says, I'm really sorry, but do you really need it? I mean, you're already dead, and we've gotta go. And he says, I do I need it, it's my arm. So Hellboy jumps into the water and he sees Jenny Green Tooth who's actually starting to eat Tam's arm.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Well, that's disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yep. Hellboy swipes and grabs the arm back. Um, and he says, Sun's coming up, no time. And he says, That's handy, and there's already been a grave dug. So there's a uh a grave in the ground with a big pile of earth and a shovel in it.

SPEAKER_04 30:39

Well, who dug that?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Probably the fairies. So he says, End of the road, pal, can't say I'm gonna miss you too much. And he throws throws Tam into the hole, and Tam goes, Thank you, Granny.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Um why granny?

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Because he said he in earlier in the story he says, You smell like my grandmother.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Oh I I thought it was Hellboy saying he smelled, but it was the other way around. It was the other way round, yeah. Oh, I got confused.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

So Hellboy fills in the grave and then she puts the shovel into the ground and says, Done. And then the fairy folk come back up and he says, Well done and done, and uh he says, 'Guess you owe me a baby'.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

Um there it is, the baby.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

But they're talking about the history of they're talking about sorry? I said, and there's the baby. And there's the baby rights at the end.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Oh, was I a bit ahead of myself?

SPEAKER_00 31:30

A little bit, yeah. What were you saying about the history? So the fairies are talking about the fact that because it's more contemporary times, that there's less belief in them, so they've got less power because people don't believe in them and stuff like that. Yeah, and that's why they've taken the baby because they were going to bring up the baby as one of their own, so they'd have somebody who could like look after them. So the uh Hellboy is just discussing this with the with the fairy, and then he taps the berry the the baby on the top of its head with the horseshoe, and he goes, You're okay. Because obviously he's not on.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

It's not on it. It just goes tap tap tap, it's nothing.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

And then we've got a nice big panel of Hellboy in the background, the baby, and we see all the little fairy folk flying off. What's this? Oh tree. No, I mean that's just shadow in the background, and Mignola was very keen on using like ivy, you know, like old buildings get covered in ivy. Oh, he's so these are like ivy leaves in the background. It was a device he used a lot in his earlier work.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Device meaning what?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Device meaning something that's he that's become part of his style.

SPEAKER_03 32:41

So it's oh just um a quirk, yeah, what you really mean. I understand by device as something that means something else.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Yeah, got you. And then the very last panel we have here is a uh Hellboy carrying the baby off, and he says, I think somebody's gonna be happy to see you.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

And then we've got another in in this one, we've got another short story called The Iron Shoes. Well, but you could have done with those well it links it links in because it's oh it does, is it more it's more Hellboy, so it's another Hellboy story. This is again set in Ireland, but it's but it's now moved on to 1961. But what we've got at the beginning here is we've got a um a picture of a folklorist who I b think is protect probably a real person.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

What's a folklorist?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Somebody as an experiment float float float laws.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Folklore, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Folklores. Folklore, yeah. So these Mignola uh certainly earlier when when he started working on Hellboy, he wanted to tap into it uh sort of the the reality of the stories behind what he was telling.

SPEAKER_04 33:53

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Um here comes Breeze the dog.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Coming for a cattle.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

So we've got an opening scene where we have this character, Edwin DeWolf, telling about um about iron repelling fairies and stuff like that, and he's talking about different spirits.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Thank you, Breeze class.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah, uh, and then he says, and most horrible of them all, the thing known only as the iron shoes, because some of them you're saying some of the fairies are actually they actually like iron, they're not you know right.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Well you get these these seedly and this unsealy business, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Yeah, absolutely. So we come to an opening panel, and there's like a large tower, and you can see Hellboy standing at the bottom of it. Go on to the following page and he steps steps into the the entrance to this tower and he says, Hello in there, anyone home?

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Um he finds a skull.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

Let's see.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

So he finds a skull there.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Oh yes. What's this tail?

SPEAKER_00 35:06

That's Hellboy's tail. So he's got a large large tail as well. It's got a monkey tail, yeah. He does get called a monkey in one of the stories.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

Does he?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

And what's this blue thing?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

So he's carrying a gun. He's got a large gun in a holster on his belt.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Oh, and that's the that's the what's the pokey bit of the gun? The barrel? That's the word I wanted. That's the barrel of the gun, is there? And then he's doing his cooking.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

So now so then a load of spears come down, I come down and pin him to the ground. One of them goes through his leg, so he pulls it out of his leg, and it and then you can hear this sort of eerie laughing, and it goes, Come closer, and Hellboy starts going up the staircase, and it says live, and then he hears live or die, win or lose, best beware, my iron shoes. And you see this big creature with these iron shoes. Um, going back to the wok, why's it got wok written there? It's a sound effect. So it's a sound effect of a of a rot large rock hitting the rock the wood the rock steps. Oh, not an iron pen. No, not an iron pan. That's what that means to me. But the iron shoes comes jumping down to jump onto Hellboy and actually manages to and misses him and jumps out of a window.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

And then Hellboy grabs a piece, grabs some rope and grabs him, grabs the iron shoes on and gets pulled out, but he manages to tie up the creature with the iron shoes. And he drags him off to a chat off to a church where he goes he come comes to a priest.

SPEAKER_03 36:45

And I expect churches aren't his thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

No, he says, Yeah, it says special delivery, Father Mike. He's an ugly one. And the iron shoes shouts out help, and as he goes into the as he's actually thrown into the church, is now on like sort of sacred territory, and he kind of disintegrates, so all that is left is the shoes.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

And the father says, sorry, uh Hellboy says, sorry about the mess, and Mike said, Father Mike says, That's alright. Will you be wanting these big shoes? And he says, No, thanks, Father. I'm travelling light this year. Why don't you hang on for hang on to them for me? And he goes, lovely. For another time. And then that's the end of that. It's just a short little story.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Right, going back to a page and we went to the wok, yes. Yeah. Now, how do you or anybody else know the wok is what it is? Now, twang is an actual word I'd find in a dictionary. Yeah. Would I find wok meaning more than just I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

I mean, it's it's interesting how sound effects are used in comics. Um there are words that sound like things, like twang is a sound word.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

It's it's also a common enough word that people it's a real one that people would know. But wok, I've apart from the pain for cooking, yeah, I haven't encountered that as meaning anything.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Now, how do you know I guess because I'm used to visual storytelling and reading comics, I know what what sound effects are, so you'd hear you'd hear things like wham or blam or stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Yes, but we all know those things because um they're all around us, so as little children we learn it all. Yeah, but you don't get wok. No, it's like how do you know? How did you ever know to begin with? Or have you is it so far in your past you've forgotten?

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Probably so far in my past I've forgotten.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Is it common in other places? Um yeah, probably. Yeah, I'm gonna look out for woks then. Because I haven't noticed it in any of the comics we've looked at or anywhere else. Can I give my my uh finished?

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Not quite finished. We've got um so it the inside back cover, so we have a like a kind of a letter column type thing here with a checklist of other comics that are coming out from Dark Horse that that that time.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Well, that's nice that they're writing it like that instead of putting advertisements out for Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Uh Dark Horse earlier tried to keep all their advertising to the end of the comic. Quite a cut quite often. If you look at older, especially Marvel and DC comics, the adverts would be in the middle of the story, so you'd have to turn over pages to carry all the mate because I'm not that keen on that. But here we've just got the inside back cover, and it says coming this summer, and it's Hellboy Wake the Devil, which is the next big it's the big series that Mignola's gonna do. It's a five-issue series.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

Oh, I've then I just realized though they have done an advertisement, even though they've done a list. Yeah. But it's not over the sometimes it's just annoying at the end of the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

What's oh is that um letters and responses or this is just this is like a little column that one of the editors has written, and he's talking about um coming to work at Dark Horse. So you're saying there's a boy he'd uh he he knew wanted to work into comics and then eventually became an editor at Dark Horse.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

I see.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

So yeah, so Mignola here is is uh there's an advert for Wake the Devil, which was the next big series to come up. Mignola tended to do one big story every year. No telling, but this this would be going into contemporary times it with in Hellboy's history.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Is um Mike Mignola is he still alive?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, very much so.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

Um how old is he? Is he I mean, was that his really early thing that made him make him something like 40 or something?

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Uh Mignola, I think, is in his mid-60s, I think. Oh, right. Um a baby.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yeah, uh I mean uh again, he's he's he's probably you know uh the one of the biggest influences, if not the biggest influence on my storytelling, on my comic book stuff.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

What does he look like? Is there any photographs in that book?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Uh no, he's he's got he's pretty much gone bold and he has a beard and he wears round glasses.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Oh no, that's the wrong picture. I've gone back to my magnolia.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

No, it's mignola, not magnolia.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Mignola, yes. That one, you know, it had this newsprint. Let's open this again.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

So we've got the newsprint paper that the actual comic itself is printed on.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

I am touching it now. But it's not too bad, is it? It's not would that be the best sort of newsprint you could get? Probably, yeah. Yes, so I I don't mind that much, but all this darkness makes me not want to bother. Even though I liked the story when you went it you forced me to go through it. But but you I do that darkness does put me off.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

For me, I absolutely I mean I absolutely love McNola's style. Um, and I because I I enjoy horror films a lot, so they are obviously usually quite dark and set at night and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

I don't like things either where they're all in the dark all the time, yeah, or ones where they go on the snow, and all you see snow like those stories, even though there's one of my favourite films was one of those, so there are exceptions. It was um an Alistair Thingamy one, and it was Ice um sp Ice station zebra. Oh, Ice Station Zebra! That's right. Yeah, I mean I'm going back a long, long time before Yeah, Alistair McLean. Thank you, that's that's who it was. And I at that time I'd read a lot of his books, but um, so I put up with that because it was a good story. If it's a good enough story, it'll get you. But this is probably too visual for me. I'd get stuck on the walk if I was reading it, but I did like the story, yeah. But uh you know what I'm going to say about the Yeah, so the speech bubbles again all in uppercase. Yes, I'm try hard, I'm not going to say anything more about that. But if you want to know my why I don't like uppercase on it, listen to one of the last ones, any one of the last ones, because I've bang on about it. Is that good if I just not mentioned it pro Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, just mentioned it.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

We talked about it quite a lot in the print in the last episode, actually.

SPEAKER_03 43:56

Yes. So that that brings that comes down I think it loses about three points for being black all the time. And another point for having um uh uppercase at all times. But the story's good, so that's it.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Yeah, McNove's a really good storyteller. He's he's quite it's quite simplistic in a way, and then he what he does is he comes up with a fairly simple plot and then he he'll weave in all this sort of this folklore from other countries and and history and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 44:29

But it is a even though I agree it's a simple plot with the lots of other things happening. What it bit makes do you mind?

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Breeze is is determined to get involved in this episode.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

Wants a fuss. Anyway, even though it is a simple story, it's a good story, not like the one we did last week that was a bit disappointing. It was much ado about nothing, as far as I thought.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah, we were looking at like a slice of life comic, so it's just talking about ordinary everyday life. Whereas obviously here we know it's fantasy because there's well how mean hellboy's a demon.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Well, some people would say they existed.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

Yes, but I remind you it's not real, don't I? You remind me it's not real. No, so that that that does. I think oh dear, I'm trying to think. I think it might get seven. We won't let the paper let it down if it's was it as it was at that time. Yeah, not pretending to be something it's not like one of the others.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Absolutely. I mean, interesting when Dark Horse started, I think Dark Horse has been in existence for about 40 years now. Um, when they started, they were lit they were just printing in black and white, they weren't doing any colour comics at all.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

Which is why they were called Dark Horse, presumably.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Yeah, um, and then I think McNola's the um Oh Blimey. Seed of Destruction, the first story, I think was one of the early Dark Horse comics that was actually in full colour. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

Yeah. Oh that's good. Now there is one thing we've forgotten because last week's episode it was delayed by about 24 hours, wasn't it? Because of a technical issue. Yep. And oh, you ought to have seen the fuss here, honestly. But it was finally put up 24 hours late, and we're looking for a contingency plan so that never happens again, and we apologise again. I think you you did apologise at the beginning when you put it up. I did, yeah. Just in case we can try really hard not to do that.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Yeah, when I recorded the intro for last week's episode, I actually explained that we were we were uh uh 24 hours behind schedule. We nearly we obviously we usually try to make sure our our pod our episodes go out on a Wednesday. Uh Wednesday, I think partly because Wednesday has now become new comic book day, as we've mentioned in the past. So it's the it's the day of the week when all the new comics come out.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

So nobody's got time to listen to this, they're reading their comics.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

They'll be reading their comics, yes.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

But that's uh really as long if we've got a time, we should consistently do it at that day. Yeah. So that's what went wrong. And um, well, let's hope we didn't lose anybody because of that. But we'll never know. We'll never know. But so it'd be nice to get some feedback, not about that, we know that was a problem, but some feedback about the comics and things. And what would be good is if anybody uh suggested something that we could look at.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

Um well anything really. Any any any comics of any era, we're happy to look at all kinds of stuff. We have done a little bit on British comics. Uh say we're gonna go back and and do some more, probably some more Hellboy stuff, and maybe some other some of Mignola's other stuff, because it's just amazing storytelling. Yes, but we're not going to do the Hellboy next week.

SPEAKER_03 48:07

We'll do we did do different ones every week, even if we do return to things.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Yeah, so keeps you guessing, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Yeah, but please, yeah, get in touch, let us know what you think of the show, any comments, criticisms if there are criticisms.

SPEAKER_03 48:24

Um they're not criticism, we are perfect apart from the timing.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

And what what comics would you like us to look at? You know, are there comics that you really enjoy that we've not looked at yet? You know, we're this is the twelfth episode we've done, so we've been going for a couple of months now, but there's a lot of comics out there that we've we've not looked at. We've mentioned quite a few uh in other episodes. But yeah, let us know what you'd like us to look at next.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

And where you are, and if you make comics or you read comics and all about yourselves.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Yeah, we'd like to like to know what people are are about, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:08

Well, I think have we wrapped it up now?

SPEAKER_00 49:10

I think we've pretty much wrapped up for this week, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

Okay. Well, I'll get in first now. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Bye.