Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Hellboy In Mexico
Dark Horse Comics
Mignola & Corben
Some of the very best Hellboy stories are one-shots, such as the Corpse (forgetting the two page installments from Advance Comics). Naturally, when I see a Hellboy one-shot on the schedule I set my expectations ridiculously high. This issue delivers on those expectations and turns in one of my favorite comic books in months. This story taps into many of the parts of Hellboy that I enjoy most. The story has some humor, sadness, fighting, good supporting characters and some creative monsters. The only piece that you could say it is missing is a heavy supernatural, folklore laced plot. That withstanding I still loved the issue and feel it is destined to be a classic.
The story is a past story of Hellboy and Abe teaming up in Mexico in 1982, when Hellboy was still with BPRD. Hellboy relays a flashback to the mid 1950s when he was in Mexico investigating a case of vampires and witches. Things don’t go as planned and Hellboy ends up teaming up with three lucha libres, masks and all.
The bulk of the comic puts on display how the four of them managed to move through the landscape ridding the land of the evils while putting themselves into a drunken stupor afterwards. The story relies on the art to tell much of the details in the action. The wrestlers have panels of applying painful holds on downed vampires while Hellboy switches between brute force and joining in on the holds. Equal to the task are the panels that show the quartet partying with the locals. It’s a terrific sequence that captures a lot of what Hellboy is about.
Eventually, things go very badly and Hellboy finds himself in the ring with a demon that used to be someone he knew and liked very much. The comic could have drifted into the absurd as Hellboy was forced to do some ring wrestling, but it kept true to a Hellboy style of fighting leaving the ending all the more painful to observe. It doesn’t end with a fall and pin, that’s for sure. However, the final panel does manage to bring a smile to the face bringing the story out of the darkness for the ending.
I realize that many readers hold non-Mignola drawn Hellboy to a different standard and that’s fine. However, I found this comic book’s artwork to be tremendous. I loved the silent aspects of the story and found the wrestling and the wrestlers to appear as if they had jumped out of the television. I loved the story told here artistically.
Long time fans will appreciate this comic book and, more importantly, a new reader could pick this up and run with it. This is a terrific one-shot that captures much of what the greater Hellboy persona is all about. Vampires, wrestlers, fighting, wrestling, some gut-wrenching twists and a couple of laughs. What’s not to like?
5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
