Hellboy Universe: The Secret Histories

[url]https://aiptcomics.com/2020/11/23/dark-horse-hellboy-universe-the-secret-histories-june-2021/[/url]

Man, the inclusion of the Visitor kind of ruined it for me.

There's still enough content to do at least one more secret histories volume, so I'm surprised it isn't being marketed as "Volume 1." There's still Koschei, Frankenstein Underground, Rise of the Black Flame, Crimson Lotus, am I forgetting anything?

[QUOTE=thwhtGuardian;5244666]Man, the inclusion of the Visitor kind of ruined it for me.[/QUOTE]

Not to derail the thread what's wrong with The Visitor?

Also I have been looking for these books so they can match my omnis

[QUOTE=charliehustle415;5253430]Not to derail the thread what's wrong with The Visitor?

Also I have been looking for these books so they can match my omnis[/QUOTE]

The Visitor is the only Hellboy book so bad that I dropped it half way through and have yet to feel the need to complete it. The plotting and dialogue were terrible and I just wasn't feeling Grist's art which makes its inclusion here a real poison pill for me. It's especially galling because there are other stories that haven't been collected yet that are not only much, much better comics but fit together narritively better with the other books included here.

[QUOTE=thwhtGuardian;5253493]The Visitor is the [B]only Hellboy book[/B] so bad [/QUOTE]

This isn't true. I know you weren't a fan of it, but some of the "and BPRD" **** has been abysmal.

Fight scenes with early Walking Dead levels of speech balloons. What could have been moody scenes just shattered by Ashley Strode telling herself exactly what she was looking at/on panel. It at least had good art, though. But it was still bad comics on a fundamental level. I didn't feel that way about The Visitor.

If I had a complaint about The Visitor, it was just that it felt kind of slight.

[QUOTE=Joker;5253745]This isn't true. I know you weren't a fan of it, but some of the "and BPRD" **** has been abysmal.

Fight scenes with early Walking Dead levels of speech balloons. What could have been moody scenes just shattered by Ashley Strode telling herself exactly what she was looking at/on panel. It at least had good art, though. But it was still bad comics on a fundamental level. I didn't feel that way about The Visitor.

If I had a complaint about The Visitor, it was just that it felt kind of slight.[/QUOTE]

A lot of the recent Hellboy and the BPRD books have been really weak, but none of them so bad that I dropped them completely before they finished telling their story which was the case with the Visitor. I haven't read the last two issues and someone would have to pay me to care enough to try again.

I dropped em. They got real bad. Just on a technical how-you-make-comics aspect. For me.

I don't think anyone's going to argue that, on average, the Mignola books quality has dropped since the main present day storylines ended.

[QUOTE=thwhtGuardian;5253493]The Visitor is the only Hellboy book so bad that I dropped it half way through and have yet to feel the need to complete it. The plotting and dialogue were terrible and I just wasn't feeling Grist's art which makes its inclusion here a real poison pill for me. It's especially galling because there are other stories that haven't been collected yet that are not only much, much better comics but fit together narritively better with the other books included here.[/QUOTE]

Ah, thanks for sharing; I'm a recent fan of Hellboy (because of the recent omni releases) and coming from "mainstream" comics I find it so refreshing because of the breath of stories and overall weirdness.

I always thought of what was in The Visitor was a stylistic choice.

What uncollected stuff would you recommend that I hunt down? I ripped through the Omnis (both Hellboy & BPRD) and I need more Hellboy.

[QUOTE=charliehustle415;5254394]I always thought of what was in The Visitor was a stylistic choice. [/QUOTE]

It [I]is[/I] a stylistic choice.

[QUOTE=Joker;5254402]It [I]is[/I] a stylistic choice.[/QUOTE]

Ha, okay so that's why you didn't like it?

Do you think that Mignola's recent output has suffered because the stakes are no longer there? I mean we know how it [U]all[/U] ends now.

Mignola isn't really writing the books. If you see a book written by Mignola [I]and[/I] someone else, it means the other person wrote the scripts. Mignola was involved, generally in the overall plotting and approval of the story. But he isn't writing the dialog or panel descriptions.

Chris Roberson's writing style isn't one I've enjoyed immensely. But my or thwhtGuardian's dislike for it doesn't mean it isn't stylistic choices. It just means we don't like the stylistic choices he's making.

As for why the decline? That's a longer post than I feel like writing right now.

[QUOTE=Joker;5254899]Mignola isn't really writing the books. If you see a book written by Mignola [I]and[/I] someone else, it means the other person wrote the scripts. Mignola was involved, generally in the overall plotting and approval of the story. But he isn't writing the dialog or panel descriptions.

Chris Roberson's writing style isn't one I've enjoyed immensely. But my or thwhtGuardian's dislike for it doesn't mean it isn't stylistic choices. It just means we don't like the stylistic choices he's making.

As for why the decline? That's a longer post than I feel like writing right now.[/QUOTE]

Fair enough, I do love the early Hellboy stuff and the later stuff I like simply for the lore and mythology.

I'll definitely keep an eye out for that write up :)