Results 1 to 9 of 9
  1. #1
    Amazing Member timbolton's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    96

    Default 'Hellboy's World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins' by Scott Bukatman

    Hellboy's World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins Paperback – 20 Apr 2016
    by Scott Bukatman (Author)

    Paperback: 240 pages
    Publisher: University of California Press (20 April 2016)
    Language: English
    ISBN-10: 0520288041
    ISBN-13: 978-0520288041
    Product Dimensions: 14 x 1.5 x 21 cm

    Book blurb -

    Hellboy, Mike Mignola's famed comic book demon hunter, wanders through a haunting and horrific world steeped in the history of weird fictions and wide-ranging folklores. Hellboy's World shows how our engagement with Hellboy's world is a highly aestheticized encounter with comics and their materiality. Scott Bukatman's dynamic study explores how comics produce a heightened "adventure of reading" in which syntheses of image and word, image sequences, and serial narratives create compelling worlds for the reader's imagination to inhabit. Drawing upon other media - including children's books, sculpture, pulp fiction, cinema, graphic design, painting, and illuminated manuscripts - Bukatman reveals the mechanics of creating a world on the page. He also demonstrates the pleasurable and multiple complexities of the reader's experience, invoking the riotous colors of comics that elude rationality and control and delving into shared fictional universes and occult detection, the horror genre and the evocation of the sublime, and the place of abstraction in Mignola's art. Monsters populate the world of Hellboy comics, but Bukatman argues that comics are themselves little monsters, unruly sites of sensory and cognitive pleasures that exist, happily, on the margins. The book is not only a treat for Hellboy fans, but it will entice anyone interested in the medium of comics and the art of reading.
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hellboys-Wor...ywords=hellboy

  2. #2
    Amazing Member timbolton's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    96

    Default

    *bump*

    I just picked this up from my LCS, having missed it's release, and it's looks great. Will have a read later and if there is any interest will post how it's coming across as (the first?) an academic work published about Hellboy comics

  3. #3
    Incredible Member Kees_L's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    876

    Default

    I'm interested to hear what everybody's thoughts are on it. I obtained a copy upon its release and frankly I haven't felt grasped by it all that much, but perhaps my expectations were wrong.

    The work appears to note the Mignolaverse (or comics as a medium) as being to exist, with presenting the Mignola comics as being well-wrought, but in exploring or expanding on why it could be regarded as such the book appears mostly brief to me personally.

    And when I say 'Mignolaverse': the book chooses to list a Hellboy and B.P.R.D. 'part' bibliography with listing a number of the TPBs but without listing all comics and books completely.

    The book points out the comics are there, with placing them amid a number of other works, yet the depth to which the storytelling or its visual workings are getting explored appears mainly rudimentary.
    Or at least I feel I would have liked to hear more on how an educated and well-versed person like Scott Bukatman would be enjoying Mignola's works particularly I guess.

    The book mentions that comics have panels and textboxes but hardly expands on what such can accomplish or does accomplish in case of Mignola's panelling.

    Then again it may be I'm not letting certain parts resonate with me particularly enough, plus there'll be restrictions towards how to be going in depth or become extensive with things - even in a work like this - eventhough I think I'll have been looking forward to such a little much.

    So I'll have to read the book a second time, also since I started feeling lukewarm fairly quickly into it. But as yet, I feel in retrospect I was grasped by the scope or meat and relevance to for instance (an entirely different work like) 'the Hellboy Companion' a lot more.
    Last edited by Kees_L; 06-24-2016 at 04:27 PM. Reason: syntactic strayings.
    SLINT / Mike Mignola / Walt Whitman / Arthur Lourié / Dr. Pepper

  4. #4
    Incredible Member Kees_L's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    876

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by timbolton View Post
    academic work published about Hellboy comics
    To add: a cool thing is how Google provides a number of thesises - thesi? / dissertations and such on Mignola's Hellboy et al. Such as for instance the one (from 2007) at the bottom of this list:http://completehellboy.com/downloads/, which Google links to.

    Likely there'll be other ones too. Not published as appearing in stores or full color, but still I've seen a couple seeming quite swell.
    SLINT / Mike Mignola / Walt Whitman / Arthur Lourié / Dr. Pepper

  5. #5
    Fantastic Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Posts
    264

    Default

    That 2007 dissertation absolutely agrees with me about Hellboy being on a heroes journey, and since she spent a whack of time talking to Mike directly about the character, it certainly supports the idea that Hellboy will be returning to earth.

  6. #6
    Amazing Member timbolton's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    96

    Default

    Kees, thanks for your thoughts, I'm just starting to read it now (having put aside lots of other books waiting attention lol) - in terms of this book and the mentioned "Hellboy Companion," I think we are looking entirely at two different kettle of fish. Against the dislike of Scott and Mike (as we are led to believe in replies to letters), I absolutely adored the "Hellboy Companion" - it was the perfect guide to Hellboy's world, covering all the characters, creatures, places etc - it was a guide on the series.
    From the start I knew "Hellboy's World," on the other hand, was going to be entirely different to the "Hellboy Companion" - this is an academic writing through their university press and it's going to be a thoughtful look at the medium of comics and how Mignola is based in the medium. So I don't expect what the companion already gave us. I am hoping he'll look into aspects such as how Mignola uses mythology in our world to story-tell in his created world. Let's see how I feel at the end of it.
    I'm not sure as yet how much contact he had with DHC, if any, and did he get chance to talk to the creators of all the series we love.

    Edit: I'll have a look at that 2007 essay asap. See, I love Tolkien's work and now I have "advanced" onto scholarly work about his created world, which I find fascinating so when I saw someone had started academic work on Hellboy, I was interested straight away.

  7. #7

  8. #8
    Resistance Is Fertile Junior Wormwood's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Seattle, WA
    Posts
    128

    Default

    Planning to pick this up, but after reading many preview pages on a certain "book" seller mega-site, I'm in no rush.

    I wanted to point out that years ago there was another book that looked at Hellboy from a scholarly perspective called "Right Hand of Doom: A Critical Study of Michael Mignola's Hellboy". The publisher/editor, Benjamin Szumskyj, even put a call out on this board for submissions. I believe there were only 333 or 666 copies produced, and I was glad to pick it up (an embarrassing amount of typos and grammatical errors aside).
    Last edited by Junior Wormwood; 06-25-2016 at 01:01 PM.

  9. #9
    Incredible Member Kees_L's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    876

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Junior Wormwood View Post
    Planning to pick this up, but after reading many preview pages on a certain "book" seller mega-site, I'm in no rush.

    I wanted to point out that years ago there was another book that looked at Hellboy from a scholarly perspective. The publisher/editor even put a call out on this board. I believe there were only 333 or 666 copies produced, and I was glad to pick it up (an embarrassing amount of typos and grammatical errors aside). I forget what the book was called, and need to go retrieve it from my storage unit.
    See I may have been remembering that but I never got a chance to read that for myself and since the board got wiped out well that seems basically lost to me now.

    And about the Bukatman-book, I do like it and it clearly explains itself as being (in my own words) a purely personal take without *too much* scientific or way extensive analysis.

    Still I feel I would like "art professor types" expanding on specific (visual) storytelling mechanics and such stuff. Maybe as with putting such next to what mr Mike has been or would be sharing - like in interviews or talk(y) panels - on such mechanics both as what room he granted himself to be changing or developing such as well as experimenting with it and all that (which I have heard him talk about occasionally - as much as interviews could permit such - which was but awesome if still primarily rare).
    Three hundred or either eight hundred pages worth of such (with maybe some pictures) I know I would gobble up like the fishy-est of fishy delicacies!

    EDIT: come to think of it, I'd like a book interviewing every artist/writer possible within the Mignolaverse on their favorite storytelling mechanic bit as having become part of the titles, by either mr Mike or any Hell-verse contributors. Including mr Mike himself 'though. And mr Corben and any contributor willing. And Mrs Christine, because.
    I'd even volunteer for compiling that, providing someone'd explain Skyping to me plus I'd think I'd be needing an actual editor person, if only for a short period. Also the pagecount should best become dialed back to say three to four hundred pages since I usually get too damn wordy. Just saying.
    Last edited by Kees_L; 06-25-2016 at 02:19 PM. Reason: betterment.
    SLINT / Mike Mignola / Walt Whitman / Arthur Lourié / Dr. Pepper

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •