It was a struggle to get this week's piece together (slightly late: sorry, Ed), as my last few weeks have been jam-packed with all kinds of film-making intrigue on Gary Kurtz and myself's movie, "Panzer 88".
But, without any further ado, we head off into...
THE FUNNY PAPERS!
I'm going to break with convention this time: not only am I starting with my Comic Reviews, but I'm headed off over to the Minors, as there's an auspicious date I need to tackle more than anything. Yes: over at Dark Horse, Mike Mignola finishes off Hellboy's story, with "Hellboy in Hell #3 & 4".
I'll be frank: because of my involvement with the movie, Hellboy is one of the big pushpins in my career, and I've been dreading reading these issues (and honestly stalling getting to them) as I love the Big Guy so much.
Way back in 1996, I flew over from England to meet Mike in Portland, Oregon.
Hellboy as a comic book was in its infancy back then, and I had reams of questions to ask Mike as I began adapting the film, and Mike was both forthcoming and candid with his answers.
One of my notes was: "So, where are you ultimately going with this character?"
Even back then, unlike George Lucas, Mike had a very clear idea of where the character came from, and where it was headed. He told me about Hellboy leaving the B.P.R.D.; and being the King of England; and all these crazy things I'd keep mum about for 20 years.
And also, back on that breezy, bright afternoon in 1996, Mike told me basically what I would wait to read in Issue 3 of this story: the ultimate confrontation of Hellboy finally confronting his "brothers", the other Princes Of Hell. I was surprised reading it that this portion of the story was over so fast, as I'd always imagined (probably building it up out of all proportion in my imagination) this would be a major "Lord Of The Rings"-like battle campaign, although Mike never specifically said it'd be portrayed that way. Maybe Mike just wanted to get this thing that was on his back for 20 years, over and done with? I dunno.
The final issue, #4, here is nearly all exposition, with Edward Grey (now deceased Victorian paranormal investigator) "filling in the blanks" to Hellboy. And so, the story ends.
Or does it?
See, back in '96…one of my burning questions to Mike was: "What exactly IS Hellboy's Giant Stone Hand?" And it's a question that Hellboy himself comes within a gnat's breath of discovering in Issue #3 of "Hellboy In Hell". Except…Mike holds back here from actually telling the reader!
Which I found really, really interesting.
Mostly, as Mike confided in me what Hellboy's Hand REALLY was back in 1996, and I think my surprised response then was: "Oh!" But if Mike ain't saying', I ain't tellin'. He's obviously left it as his get-out clause. And, quite right too. Your secret's safe with me, Mike.
Just as a fun trivia note, I'd like to humbly mention it was I who came up with Hellboy's actual name: "Anung Un Rama." As I spoke about with Josh Zyber in an interview for the DVD Talk website nearly a decade ago, on that fateful day I met Mike, I'd done a lot of prep from the few "Helboy" comics that existed. I’d assumed that, like Tolkein, Mike had created his own flowery language with phrases like "Obdith Sancti, Yug Jahood". Because of this, I'd spent a goodly amount of time reverse-engineering his comic book and cross-referencing the esoteric phrases to see how and where they cropped up, and this one thing, "Anung un Rama," kept popping out at me a couple of times.
Rationalizing the phrase in the story's context, it almost seemed it specifically referred to Hellboy himself. Knowing from folklore, if you knew a demon's name you wielded power over it, and that this was something I specifically wanted to do in my plot (as you saw in the final film), I'd resolved to give this to Rasputin as his way of bending Hellboy to his will.
Anyway, I thought I was pretty smart about figuring Mike's language out, and pointedly asked Mike about "Anung Un Rama".
Mike peered at me like I was nuts, then basically told me NONE of the comic book language meant anything, and he made it all up in the shower! So, we had a laugh about that, I used the phrase in the script as Hellboy's name, and – which is the cool thing, that I feel pretty good about – Mike then went back into the later comic books and then specifically also employed that random phrase he came up with as Hellboy's name himself.
But not for the reason of his coloring.
Nope, that was the little private joke homage I made to Howard Hawks movies, as Hawks would always call his girls "Red", and I thought it was amusing. Go figure.)
Enough reminiscing.
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