Hellboy

Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy was a modest financial success, but it did well enough on home video to warrant a sequel (albeit at a different studio). Unfortunately, the superior Hellboy II: The Golden Army opened the week before The Dark Knight swept the summer of 2008 off its feet and totally dominated the superhero movie conversation. The second movie adventure of Mike Mignola’s wisecracking demon-turned-superhero did okay, but a third movie never materialized a part three looks unlikely to this day. Just don’t tell that to Ron Perlman, who is dead-set on making this series a trilogy and took to social media to enlist fan support.

We've been under a deluge of comic book movies for what seems like decades. The frequency at which our favorite characters like Spider-Man, Hellboy and the Hulk are appearing on the silver screen has increased tremendously since the early aughts, and so has the desire to take a part of these movies home with us. Though the prop replica market has definitely seen a drastic increase in volume over the past few years, there's nothing quite like owning a piece of the real thing. We did some digging to see just what kind of comic book film memorabilia was currently setting the internet auction house aflame.

The comic book movie craze may have exploded in recent years, but there have been movies and TV shows based on our favorite comics for decades. For all the action we see on screen, however, we hardly ever get to see behind the curtain at how it all comes together. Fortunately, we've managed to uncover dozens of behind the scenes images from your favorite comic-inspired movies. From The Dark Knight to Dredd, and Conan to Kick-Ass, we now have a little bit of an idea of what life was like on set during the creation of these beloved adaptations.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that everyone out there is already fully aware that Mike Mignola is the stuff, especially when it comes to Hellboy. The long-running horror-adventure franchise that kicked off into its own universe in 1994 is one of those rare, amazing comics that has been published pretty consistently for over 20 years and has never been bad. Like, not once. It's pretty amazing. But if you're one of those people who knows intellectually that Hellboy and his assorted spin-offs are great but has never actually tried it, good news. Dark Horse has launched a sale on digital Mike Mignola books, dropping 'em down to a buck an issue. And should you need a little guidance on what to pick up, well, that's what I'm here for.

Hey, have you folks heard about this Hellboy character? It's okay if you haven't -- there's a big #1 on the cover of this comic I just read, so I assume he's pretty new. Trust me, though, he's a character you're going to want to watch, because despite a name that seems pretty lousy the first time you hear it, this is pretty good stuff. Seriously, though, as much as I love Hellboy and the world of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), I'll admit that I haven't been keeping up with the ongoing adventures over the past few years. I'm sure they're good -- I'm sure they're great, because it's rare that Hellboy isn't, and Hellboy In Hell is viewed very favorably here at ComicsAlliance -- but it's one of those situations where I've fallen behind and it's at the point where there's so much I've missed that it's hard to get back into it. And that's exactly why I was looking forward to Hellboy and the BPRD: 1952. On sale now, it tells the story of Hellboy's first assignment with the BPRD, which makes it the perfect jumping-on (or in my case, jumping-back-in) point, and not only is it ridiculously good, but it feels fresh and new in a way that's almost impossible for a 20 year-old franchise to pull off.

If there's one thing we've learned from our years on the Internet, it's that there's no aspect of comics that can't be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there's no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we're taking it upon ourselves to compile lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. All month long, we've been devoting our lists to spoooooky topics, from great horror stories to scary villains and the greatest stories about a certain fanged count. So today, with Halloween finally upon us, we've put them all together for your trick-or-treating enjoyment!

If there's one thing we've learned from our years on the Internet, it's that there's no aspect of comics that can't be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there's no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we're taking it upon ourselves to compile lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. This week, we're finishing off Halloween Horror Month with a list of five great spooky stories -- mostly single issues! -- that you can read to get into a scary mood!

Q: What major superhero can be most effectively dropped into a horror plot without causing it to stop being horror? -- @KaosExMachina A: Y'know, I don't wanna make any of the other 215 people who have Asked Chris feel bad or anything, but this is easily one of my favorite questions that I've ever gotten. It's probably obvious by now, but I have a lot of fun thinking about different genre conventions and how they work, and this is the sort of thing that you can play around with forever, and that you can ask your friends and get all sorts of different answers and justifications, something that I actually did while I was getting ready to write this article. But it's also a really difficult one to answer. It's like you said: When you add superheroes to horror stories, they tend to stop being horror stories.

If you were to pull a random sampling of professionals from across the comics industry and poll them on their favorite modern-day creators, Mike Mignola's name would doubtlessly rank near the top. Since he burst on the scene at Marvel in the early 1980s, pencilling an obscure limited series about a talking space raccoon, he's matured brilliantly – from his seminal work at DC Comics (pencilling books including World Of Krypton, Cosmic Odyssey, and Batman: Gotham By Gaslight), to his work at Topps, Marvel, and other companies in the early '90s (on Ironwolf, Bram Stoker's Dracula, various X-books, and many other titles), to his move into creator-owned comics with the mighty Hellboy, he's maintained a unique voice and an immediately recognizable art style, bettering himself with each successive project, evolving and refining his voice at every opportunity. Whether it's baby Hellboy eating a forbidden breakfast, a snake and a magician flying kites, or a robotic super-spy with a detachable head in the employ of President Lincoln, there's a dry-yet-absurd tone to Mignola stories that drips with the glee of innovation and possibility, yet manages to keep it all contained within straight-faced third-person storytelling. And so, today, a few days after his 54th birthday, we're excited to celebrate Mike Mignola's career with a few fellow fans (who also happen to be notable comic-makers in their own right).

Dark Horse is getting its Comic-Con 2014 announcements started with some very good news from the realm of Hellboy. The blue collar apocalypse beast's heretofore unseen first mission with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense will finally be depicted in Hellboy & The BPRD, and by none other than Alex Maleev from a story by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi.