Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others

Rating:
Summary: "What do little babies like? I know. Iron!"
Review: "Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others" is my favorite Hellboy compilation. As shown by HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, the short story works well for horror. This book is a collection of Hellboy short stories.

Each story has roots in traditional fairy mythology combined with Lovecraftian overtones and just a splash of Nazi occultism. Magnolia has given his character Hellboy a very dry sense of humor, which works well in contrast to the talking corpses and various devils. The art is some of the finest seen in comics.

"The Corpse" and "The Iron Shoes" is a short fairy stories. Clever and fun with a nice nod to Celtic mythology.
"Christmas Underground" highlights Magnolia's wit.
"The Chained Coffin" is one of the best in the collection, showing the folly of loving the devil. It has some of the best dialog. "God? Was not I God in ancient Babylon?"
"The Baba Yaga" Always nice to see this ancient evil. Only available in this collection.
"Wolves of Saint August" is a werewolf tale, with a twist. Very good.
"Almost Colossus" adds a new member to the Hellboy cast.

I would say, if you are curious about Hellboy, this is the collection to start with. Every one a gem.

Rating:
Summary: "What do little babies like? I know. Iron!"
Review: "Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others" is my favorite Hellboy compilation. As shown by HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, the short story works well for horror. This book is a collection of Hellboy short stories.

Each story has roots in traditional fairy mythology combined with Lovecraftian overtones and just a splash of Nazi occultism. Magnolia has given his character Hellboy a very dry sense of humor, which works well in contrast to the talking corpses and various devils. The art is some of the finest seen in comics.

"The Corpse" and "The Iron Shoes" is a short fairy stories. Clever and fun with a nice nod to Celtic mythology.
"Christmas Underground" highlights Magnolia's wit.
"The Chained Coffin" is one of the best in the collection, showing the folly of loving the devil. It has some of the best dialog. "God? Was not I God in ancient Babylon?"
"The Baba Yaga" Always nice to see this ancient evil. Only available in this collection.
"Wolves of Saint August" is a werewolf tale, with a twist. Very good.
"Almost Colossus" adds a new member to the Hellboy cast.

I would say, if you are curious about Hellboy, this is the collection to start with. Every one a gem.

Rating:
Summary: Spooky
Review: Buy this book if only for THE CORPS and THE WOLVES OF SAINT AUGUST.

THE CORPSE is just downright spooky, which isn't an easy thing to pull off in a comic book.

THE WOLVES OF SAINT AUGUST are the coolest looking werewolves you've ever seen.

All the stories are great. Hellboy should be read by everyone, particularly fans of the supernatural. If you've never read Hellboy, check out the first graphic book (compilation) entitled SEED OF DESTRUCTION.

Rating:
Summary: Spooky
Review: Buy this book if only for THE CORPS and THE WOLVES OF SAINT AUGUST.

THE CORPSE is just downright spooky, which isn't an easy thing to pull off in a comic book.

THE WOLVES OF SAINT AUGUST are the coolest looking werewolves you've ever seen.

All the stories are great. Hellboy should be read by everyone, particularly fans of the supernatural. If you've never read Hellboy, check out the first graphic book (compilation) entitled SEED OF DESTRUCTION.

Rating:
Summary: Filling in the Gaps
Review: First, I have to begin this by saying that I am a bit bias when it comes to Mike Mignola. I do enjoy his Hellboy work, and recommend it to anyone who likes Lovecraftian influences meshed with Nazi conspiracies and other, even more bizarre, tidbits of folklore.
With The Chained Coffin and Others, I had read the reviews here and had noticed the gaps left in the questioning mind. For instance, I couldn't find a complete listing of what was compiled here, nor did the reviews truly state how good some of the stories, especially the Baba Yaga only printed here, actually were. So, here's a brief listing of the stories a few notes:
1) The Corpse: A baby goes missing and a deal has to be struck to return it. And how hard is it to bury a corpse anyway?
2) The Iron Shoes: This seemed more like filler, actually, but is still not all that bad.
3) The Baba Yaga: I like this story a lot, and had to have it. Unfortunately, it was only available in this TPB. If you read Wake the Devil, you'll want this side story, because references made are gaps to be filled in order to complete the entire Hellboy picture.
4) Christmas Underground: Spirits looming, a castle under siege by some strange curse, and Hellboy Claus? Besides being creepy, it also provides a little laughter.
5) The Chained Coffin: A true gem, presenting the origins of Hellboy (not to be confused with "how Hellboy arrive on Earth") in a most interesting format. Even people who have the original presentation of this should check it out, because the first page has been revamped a bit. Beautiful.
6) Wolves of Saint August: All the pieces of this tale needed to be collected somewhere, so I'm happy for this. As the name implies, something Lupine plagues a town and Hellboy has to investigate. The backgrounding to this story is nice, in addition to the normal Mignola features.
7) Almost Colossus: Another needed piece if you want to understand the inner workings of the BPRD. Here, an addition is made to the cast, and "he" almost ends to life of two field agents right from the get-go. It is referenced to a lot, and is definitely worth checking out.
Anyway, like I said, I am biased. Still, if you like Hellboy, even a little, this is a nice collection that is extremely inclusive. The only problem is finding a copy of it.

Rating:
Summary: best short stories in comics
Review: I recently decided to review a couple of the graphic novels that I thought were the best I had read. This one popped into my head and was one of the handful that made the short list.

Mike Mignola's character, Hellboy, is a devil who works for the BPRD, an X-Files type organization dedicated to protecting the world from the paranormal. For his stories, Mignola draws deeply on mythology, the occult and folklore from around the world. Some characters are familiar, like the villain Rasputin or the mythological Baba Yaga. I had as much fun reading about the underlying myths as I did reading the actual stories.

If you have not read any Hellboy before, you may want to start with the first collection, Seed of Destruction. That being said, you really can't go wrong with this one. I think Mignola's real strength lies in his shorter stories, rather than the 4 or 5 issue ones. Here we have some of his best shorter work and I will say a bit about my two favorites. "The Iron Shoes" is a funny little story about a goblin that lives in a tower and attacks passers-by with his iron boots. Hellboy steps in to investigate. Not a long story and not much dialogue but I like its simplicity. "Almost Colossus" is another gem and tells the second part of the origin of one of Hellboy's partners at the BPRD. Great story from Norse Myths coupled with eye-popping art makes this one a winner. The remainder of the stories are equally good; these are just my personal preferences.

This collection of stories should not be missed by anyone who enjoys comics. Mignola's art is great to look at, somewhat stylized and uses heavy shadows and blacks. His dialogue is great too. Hellboy's dry, witty lines fit him like a glove. Overall a must read.

Rating:
Summary: A word of praise and envy
Review: I've heard and read reviews of this book that seemed to come from the outside. The "outside" being people who are trying too hard to legitimize something that makes no excuses for itself. Hellboy is and always has been a quirky, dark, gothic adventure that is visually stunning as well as primal and disturbing. This collection is an intriguing effort. It has no complete story to tell. Rating each story is futile since the themes vary as well as the design and purpose for each story. Some are an excuse to show Hellboy in an outlandish conflict while others have moments that touch me to the core so profound is the effect of specific sequences. There lies the surprise. No solid premise is present in these little stories. They're like a sketchbook. Some rough ideas are presented as well as finely crafted "images". Every one was written and drawn with a purpose but there's no effort to weave them together in a sequence. The tone in a story like The Chained Coffin is so different from The Corpse that, other than the main character, they share little in common. However, even as they share so little in content, they both speak of a world in the shadow of our own. The world Mike Mignola has created is as sharp as a knife blade cutting across your palm and as subtle as the wings in the night. So eclectic is this collection that it is the perfect introduction to Mignola's creation, Hellboy. Hellboy is brusque, loyal, funny, profound, conflicted and committed. He is all of these and more while uttering few words between blasts of combative, bloody, violence in a nighted world of ancient evil and devious purpose. I wish more writers could do so much with what, sometimes, appears to be so little.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven but ultimately entertaining series of short stories
Review: In my opinion, the greatest Hellboy story was, and still is, "Seed of Destruction." THe artword in that book was dark, moody, and suggestive of all sorts of lurking horrors. The worst moments, I felt, tended to be whenver Hellboy just exchanged blows with another beastie for eight pages...the story by John Byrne (and here's the rhub)slowed to a halt. This is the key when writing horror fiction; suspense must be held through whatever means, though most often it is the words which must make the difference. In "The Chained Coffin", some of the stories work. "The Corpse" is a delightfully gruesome retelling of various Irish and English myths, with some wonderful dialogue (imagine carrying around a corpse that constantly refers to you as "Granny" for an entire night). "Almost COlossus" works best as a tragic tale of estranged brothers (and the final fight does kick ass...) and "The Chained Coffin" is, simply, an essential Hellboy origin story. The other tales tend to be excuses for fantastic fight sequences ("The Wolves...has its moments, but half the story IS a fight sequence!), and perhaps could have beneffited from another scripter coming in and assiting Mignola, while Mignola focuses on what he does best: artwork we can't help but be stunned at.

Rating:
Summary: Great collection of Hellboy illustrated short stories
Review: Mike Mignola's first compilation graphic shorts is titled The Chained Coffin and Others. The stories within were compiled from sources such as the Dark Horse Presents comic issues all the way to promotional issue of the comic catalogue Diamond Comics. The one difference between those issues and this compilation was the coloring. The illustrated shorts where in black and white when they first appeared in those issues, but in this compilation book they have been retouched with bold primary colors.

Mignola wrote and drew all the shorts included in Chained Coffin and Others. The coloring he'd done for all the shorts lives up to the previous Hellboy books. There's some inconsistency to the look of each stories artwork, but that's due to some of them being drawn early in Hellboy's history. Some of these stories were done even before the Seed of Destruction story.

All the stories are well-written and they range from laugh-out funny to classically scary. Stand out entries in Chained Coffin and Others are "Christmas Underground" (Mignola's take on the vampire myth), The Wolves of St. August (a werewolf piece) and "Almost Colossus" (the introduction of recurring character Roger the Homunculus). These three takes are great examples of why the Hellboy books are a joy to read. "Christmas Underground" is my personal favorite for combining both a genuinely scary tale with some genuine humanity to turn a simple horror tale into one of redemption and forgiveness.

For readers who have seen the Hellboy feature film, they will recognize a character in the film who actually appears in this compilation: "The Corpse". In the end, I highly recommend this graphic compilation to new fans of Hellboy and for old, loyal fans to pick it up if their old copy has been dog-eared and tattered from frequent readings.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutly stunning!
Review: The art is wonderful. The coloring is stunning. The stories are highly entertaining. There is no reason for me to go on because the preceding reviews say it best - "Hellboy" is fabulous entertainment. If you have any interest in Graphic Novels or the comic medium then "Hellboy" needs to be on your bookshelf.