J.G. Keely's Reviews > Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places

What's the best way to kill off a quirky, mysterious, unsettling world? How about explaining it all in a neat, tidy manner through an extremely long and convenient bit of exposition from a previously unknown character?

Mignola's art is still great and the first story ('The Third Wish') is solid, if not as focused and uncanny as the short tales in 'The Chained Coffin and Other Stories'.

But why does Mignola suddenly feel the need to wrap up his expansive, eccentric, esoteric cosmology in one unheralded spurt of Blavatskian gnostic pap? There are a few reasons, and both Mignola and his introducer, Gary Gianni, suggest them in the TPB extras.

For Gianni, Mignola's "literary references . . . acknowledge his influences without being pedantic or ostentatious", which is usually true. However, our author must strike a careful balance between this and the fact that he "never met a Pulp idea he didn't like".

His willingness to pull in many different sources is often a strength; it gives his stories a certain learned depth that is moody and enticing. The problem is that, though he continues to draw on various sources here, he now seems infected with a desire to explain them, to connect them, and to make them sensible.

While providing the reader with a readily explicable world is often desirable, this is less useful in horror and mystery, both of which present characters out of their elements. The greatest failing of the collective authors who took up Lovecraft's mythos was that they tried to make his world comprehensible, which betrays everything that made his stories remarkable and unsettling in the first place.

More than that, these kinds of all-encompassing explanations are entirely artificial. Myths may try to explicate the world, but in the end the answers they gave are more puzzling than the original questions. In the cracks between the various espoused truths lies the incomprehensible world of the Fey, the Demons, the ancient Gods.

Likewise, every answer Science gives us opens up more unknowns, forcing us to come to terms with the fact that we weren't even asking the right questions in the first place. The universe is far too strange for a holistic view. Though many scientists have sought the 'holy grail' of a unified theory, the idea of a unified theory is itself a flawed hypothesis: if every discovery we make has caused science to diverge into yet more fields, yet more seemingly incompatible specialties, why should we assume that this trend won't simply continue, ad infinatum?

By providing not only answers but a sort of 'Grand Purpose', Mignola takes a step away from a mythological presentation of human foibles and towards an allegorical symbology of morality.

Hellboy himself seems out of place in the story. Usually, his sardonic quips make a humorous contrast to the traditional modes and palpable strangeness in the stories. In 'The Island', they just make him seem stupid.

The grand explanation he dismisses is so overpowering that he seems to be denying the story itself. Writers sometimes say that characters have a life of their own, so perhaps Hellboy was simply expressing his disgust at this grandly overwrought piece of exposition. Anyone who gives you a simple explanation is trying to sell you something, and Hellboy is too canny to fall for his author's 'big reveal'.

If the explanation were simply the half-formed obsession of a zealot, then it wouldn't be incongruous. Mignola has shown an able hand at subversion before, and myths often present these sorts of stories--these explanations of creation and purpose--but their simplicity cannot survive the world unscathed.

Unfortunately, Mignola doesn't write it as a 'puzzle piece': a possible aspect of the world. Neither Hellboy nor the world can poke a hole in it. It's not a study of myth or a satire, its just a convenient 'magic plot point'.

In the epilogue, Mignola tells us that the stories went through many drafts, and that he found himself unable to complete them satisfactorily. He was also fresh from working on the film adaptation, and it shows. This is the story that most resembles the style of the film, in that it lays down a rather simple track for a plot and then marks off the intervals with visuals that, while interesting, prove thematically irrelevant.

The starkness of 'The Island' was often surprisingly breathtaking, but conflicted with the constant barrage of dialogues, soliloquy, and flashbacks required to tell such a vast story in such a small space. This often shows in abrupt and confusing panel transitions. I've never known Mignola's stories to slip off-track like that before, but it isn't surprising that such a suddenly grand piece of exposition would trouble even his skilled draughtsmanship.

In the epilogue, Mignola tells us why he suddenly felt the need to tell this demystifying story: with the movie coming out soon, depicting a simplified world where mythical elements peppered an action plot, Mignola felt a need to explain those elements fully before they became film fodder.

He wanted to pre-empt the movie's explanation with his own, which is a natural urge for an artist who wants control of his intellectual property, but instead of maintaining a world of depth to shore up the film's brief treatment, he created a little story bible to wrap up the loose ends.

Mignola also mentions that these stories represent his return to Hellboy after a long break, which explains their tone. Mignola himself is trying to return to Hellboy's world, one he is no longer ensconced in, but is seeking to understand and inhabit again.

When returning to such a grand and complex project, it is tempting to try to encapsulate it in shorthand. Hellboy thus becomes something of a caricature of himself: his quips no longer stubborn and insightful but annoyed and contrary. The world also becomes caricatured: no longer a varied collection of stories and myths but a specific, grounded setting.

Some readers find comfort in that kind of closure. The monomyth remains a perennial favorite, but Hellboy's story had often been a refutation, a satire, and a subversion of that kind of moralizing heroism. The closer Mignola plays it, the more it simply becomes another morality play: no longer strange, no longer a mystery, no longer horrifying or unsettling. In short, it is without magic.

Mignola's world becomes more sympathetic, more of a fantasy; another comic book tale of power and the ethics of power. As the character becomes more of a symbol, he becomes less of a person, and as the world becomes a stage, the story becomes a romance. This will appeal to readers looking for something digestible, but will disenfranchise readers who enjoy the book because its winding, layered nature causes them to pause and think.

What is gained by turning an elusive, fanciful world into another power fantasy? (besides money). The opening story is perfectly good, and the collection is still strong--a good comic, the art a pleasure to behold, and mostly entertaining--but is this Hellboy?

Mignola ought to learn from the poor examples set by George Lucas or Grant Morrison: when something weird happens, don't try to explain it, let it stand on its own. When Lucas invented 'midichlorians' (tiny bacteria that lived in your cells and determined how much 'force power' you have) he was roundly ridiculed.

Likewise, no one wanted to hear when one Superman author tried to explain that the Man of Steel could pick up buildings with one hand without piercing them because he had 'tactile telekinesis'.

Grant Morrison's magnum opus 'The Invisibles' is just one long, indulgent attempt to combine and explain every myth and conspiracy theory he could lay his hands on, like 'The Illuminatus! Trilogy', but without a sense of humor.

Readers can find meanings in stories without being led by the nose; some of us even enjoy it. I'll probably finish Hellboy either way, but it will be disappointing if this thoughtful, moody book fails to recover from the retcon bombshell Mignola has dropped. If nothing else, this has given me a lasting lesson on how not to procure a satisfying ending for a story.

It's not fair to pull it all over your reader in the latter act, and even if it is neat and tidy, it will destroy the tone and thematic motifs you've spent so much time and energy developing. That's not a tradeoff I would be willing to make, though from Battlestar Galactica to Harry Potter, it's proven a popular route.

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