Hellboy Volume 3: The Chained Coffin and Other [Awesome] Stories
It was just recently that I opened my first Hellboy book. I wanted to try something different from what I usually read and I just had a gut feeling about Hellboy. So I picked up the first volume. I can't describe how glad I am that I did, because Mike Mignola's Hellboy has filled a comic book void that I didn't know existed - it's gothic and macabre; it's wonderfully dark mythology-building of the highest order; it's historical fiction; it's good and evil; it's a damn good time! And it just keeps getting better with every story.
After picking up the first two trades in paperback, I decided to go (via Amazon) the more fancy, yet still more economical route and get the Library Edition for the next pair of volumes. If anyone is new to Hellboy like me, or is interested in how best to get started, look no further than these Library Editions which collect 2 volumes (rather than the standard 1) in a nice over-sized hardcover with a felt outer, sturdy gloss pages and a sewn binding. Fans of high quality hardcovers will relish in what Dark Horse has done here. Also, these Library Editions are larger than the paperbacks because they feature the original size of Mignola's art! So the image isn't blown up or shrunk down, you get the best possible and desired look for Mignola's work. They are going for around 35 bucks a piece on Amazon, which ends up being equal to buying the full price of the two respective paperbacks for each volume. It's a no brainer! Plus, it will look great on a bookshelf, especially when collected altogether.
As for the contents of the book - the story itself that is - I still plan to review each single volume.
Volume 3 of Hellboy tries a different format from the past two volumes. It's titled The Chained Coffin and Other Stories, which should leave little doubt as to the short story approach here. It's in the same vein as those old horror collections of short stories. I find Hellboy works great like this, plunging us into different investigative stories from Big Red's past and immersing us even further into Mignola's wonderful mythology that he's created. Some of the stories are just a couple of pages, some are much longer, but they are all of a piece. And they all work so well together, revealing bits and pieces, here and there, as to the mystery behind Hellboy himself and how he came to be. Some of them are just for fun, and hey, those are great too!
Some personal favorites from this collection are Pancakes, Nature of the Beast, The Corpse and A Christmas Underground. Instead of discussing every story from this collection, I plan to focus on these.
In Pancakes we have a young Hellboy being introduced to, guess what, pancakes for the first time! A very cute short tale by Mignola to kick things off. In Nature of the Beast, Big Red is sent to slay a dragon they call the St. Leonard Worm. A fun gothic story where we learn why wherever Hellboy's blood falls, lilies grow. The Corpse has Hellboy lugging around an undead corpse trying to find him a proper burial. There's some great banter between the two, even a moment where the corpse points out gold treasure and Hellboy asks him, given his present condition, what the hell he would need gold for?! It's comical horror at it's best! Finally, we have A Christmas Underground, which is quite possibly my favorite Hellboy story yet! It tells the story of a dying old woman in a doomed house whose daughter disappeared some years ago. Since then things haven't been the same. She enlists the aid of Hellboy. He does what he does best and goes looking for her, in the last place she was seen, in the cemetery outside. This story I rather enjoyed because of the paranormal mystery of it but also there is a very touching moment in particular that jumps out from the page. It's those little subtleties, like that moment, by Mignola that demonstrate the genius of Hellboy and everything he's crafted with it.
Hellboy Volume 3: The Chained Coffin and Other Stories is a wonderful read. One that I would recommend to any fan of comics, horror or short stories. 5/5 skulls (seems more fitting than stars). Read it, love it, own it and share it with anyone and everyone!