I have a tendency to be impatient with gothic and Victorian subcultures. As a child I loved monster movies, loved Dracula, loved the idea of demons and haunted houses. But as I got older and watched these mythological and very old stories become subsumed into the world of role-playing games and bad rock and roll, I became bored, critical and a real scoffer. I hate to scoff, especially at things that used to interest me, even if it is only in the form of Hammer films and Warren's Creepy and Eerie magazines from the '70s. But as I continue to scoff anyway, I realize the thing that irks me most about sub-pop culture's take on gothic horror is the lack of irony.
Some relief is available in Mike Mignola's comic Hellboy published by Dark Horse Comics. The newest series, a quick two issue ditty, Box Full of Evil, is really one of his best to date. While the story line is a pretty well developed trope in everything from Goethe's Faust to Hellblazer (bored rich folk have dealings with infernal forces they cannot contain which eventually destroy them), Mignola's art and writing are so polished, one is almost left unsatisfied with the speed at which the story is worked out.
Mignola certainly borrows heavily, but he does so with a real bow to his sources. In one panel there is an almost perfect recreation of the scene in James Whale's Frankenstein when Fritz is torturing the monster with a torch, except in Mignola's version it is a monkey with a red-hot coal pincer. There are classic images from the annals of gothic horror stories, mounted animal heads with glowing eyes, gold hidden behind walls, and ancient demons direct from Lovecraft. But there is, like most of Mignola's work, humor and the most devious cleverness.
Hellboy is gothic. It is so gothic, every time I pick up the first issue of a new story line I wince a little bit. The covers of the Box Full of Evil books are typical Mignola, a bunch of characters from the series in collage. But as soon as you look inside, what you get but gothic English Mansions, candles made from a human hand and strange little boxes with sigils drawn on them. Might as well be getting ready for a nice game of vampire role-playing. But after two or three panels I am relieved and remember that I feel this way every time I read Mignola's work.
Hellboy talks like a no nonsense cop who has been around and his partner Abe checks out things in the background, the quiet but alert partner. Because his art is so Kirby-laden, no matter how deep and two tone his inks are, the square edges keep it all balanced. Demon headed door-knockers, creaking doors and the lowest circle of hell are rendered in such simple, almost cubist forms, whatever is gothic is only what the story lines have in common with the real tradition of storytelling, from James to Poe. Anne Rice would not feel at home here. There is one other thing that separates Hellboy from neo-vampire lore culture. The character of Hellboy, while possibly the closest thing to the antichrist on earth himself, is a cynic and a fighter. He hates magic, hates idiocy more, but more importantly he doesn't brood, doesn't reflect.
Mignola writes Hellboy with such genuine matter-of-factness, the lack of pathos is actually refreshing. Hellboy is working class, and Box Full of Evil continues the development of this in a terrific manner. As I said, the tale is short, two issues wrap up a neat little, well, box, and while there is not much dialogue and the plot is pretty tried, it is so compact and cleanly executed, it is like reading a short work of detective fiction. The ending is something right out of Hammett, Sam Spade giving up the glory for power for what he really knows how to do and do well, solve a crime here and there and carry on as if the temptation for the greater reward is not always lurking around the corner. The demons and wealthy magis are as much a part of Box Full of Evil as they are coincidental. Mignola loves his scenery and he loves drawing Hellboy's huge fist punch a monster. And monster is the key word here, because Mignola really owes more to Hammer and Universal than to Stoker and Shelley.
