HERO OF THE WEEK: HELLBOY (Dark Horse)Real Name: Anung un Rama
First Appearance: San Diego Comic Con Comics #2 (August, 1993)
Fight Club Ranking: #221
Featured Fights:
- vs GROM: Hellboy: The Corpse and the Iron Shoes (Jan 1996)
There was a bittersweet sense of excitement when a new Hellboy movie was announced to the world earlier this year. The obvious downside was a confirmed closing of the door to the live-action series begun by Guillermo del Toro in 2004.
Star Ron Perlman had done a good job of waving the flag for a trilogy finale, but for one reason or another -- probably budget -- the movie proved a tough sell. Enter Stranger Things hot commodity David Harbour and promotional posters by Mike Mignola for what was then being called Rise of the Blood Queen.
It seemed like a particularly exciting first step for fans who found del Toro's vision typically lacking in the atmospheric, shadow-laden quiet created by Mignola's comics. A commitment to the comic book page is exactly what would get me excited about a new film version. Until last week, when the first look at Harbour as Hellboy threw a right hand of doom at those hopeful expectations.
The prosthetic suit is quite clearly a continuation of what was established by del Toro and Ron Perlman. If you didn't know better, you may actually mistake it for a promotional image of Perlman suiting up for a sequel to The Golden Army.
Distributor Lionsgate may very well be counting on the conceivable confusion, preying on what ever built-in audience remains, despite the film's status as a confirmed hard "reboot".
There's still plenty of time for the movie to reveal hidden strengths, but short of getting it completely wrong, this was one of the most unflattering first impression they could've made.
Big screen monster fights are a standard of Hellboy comics, but the thing that could get me most excited about a new film is the quiet, damp world that exists in parallel to our own.
Del Toro favoured a Hollywood-friendly adaptation that created fairytale romantic sub-plots between main characters, and contrived a public face for the secretive Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). The comics I've enjoyed never really showed any concern for the outside world. These were strange characters involving themselves in strange goings on. Any human characters encountered were already initiated in the strange, and often isolated by their supernatural experience.
The world of Hellboy and the BPRD stands tall as one of the great independent dynasties in comic book history, and one of the finest contributions to come from the 1990s. I'm always going to be interested in a movie adaptation and that's enough to make a Hero of the Week. I just hope there'll be a movie worth watching when it finally arrives in theatres.
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