Saga versus Hellboy, review

"Saga" and "Hellboy" are totally unrelated. Maybe you could crudely lump them into the superhero genre, but other than that they are as distant as "Voices From a Distant Star," and "Yotsuba."

I checked from the local library branch six of each title, just because the branch had them. They were among the best offerings this library branch held. On a tangent:

This branch of the Milwaukee Public Library is right in the hood, next door to the police station where I went to pay a parking ticket. Tangent to the tangent:
I was late paying this parking ticket. As you know the fine increases every time the violator fails to pay by a certain calenderical check point. I had missed two of these, and I didn't want to pay the increased fine, so I mailed a check for the original fine; 20 bucks. A week later I got a notice in the mail saying I owed 28 bucks. I went to the cop shop next to the hood-branch of MPL, stepped up to the robot kiosk, and punched in my ticket number. No record. I punched in my licence plate. No record. I went to the desk and they punched in the numbers. No record. "Yeah," the cops said, "It's been released," that is, struck from the record. The lesson here is that fines are fluid if you game the system. It's too much hastle to do the math and send me a bill for the remaining amount, so they cashed my check and called it even. The note I received by mail had passed my check in transit.

Anti-tangent: walking in to the library next door the establishment greeted me with 90's prefab revisionism over 70's sensibilities.b Then it opened its bread basket to me revealing shelf after shelf of books with "black" or "MLK" in the title. How condensing, I thought, or worse, controlling. What better way to keep a people group down than to remind them everyday by telling them that their interests must only be related to their skin colour and the victimisation resulting from that. What better way to keep a people down than to remove from them discovery all other ideas. It's one of the results of victimhood. Definitely celebrate our heroes, but there are other heros, hundreds to the power of ten.

Next to "Black Panther," "Black Lightning," "Black Like Me" sat a large collection of "Saga" and "Hellboy." I got them all.

Anti tangent:
"Saga" has a handful of strengths; the epic of the principle family captivates. The book's artist captures facial expressions perfectly. I recommend reading it just on that level, because it works. I treated up many times, and I laughed a couple times, and I enjoyed the ride. But "Saga" has too many flaws for me to even consider it representative of comics. Comics to "Saga," are irrelevant, except for those exquisite facial expressions, but then you could just clip out each one with scissors and paste them into the script and voila, you have an illustrated text.

This is one of my favourite pages. Fiona Staples captured a great moment in that second panel and Terror Grandma expresses it perfectly. Terror Grandma is the best character. This scene takes place an issue after she gets her ear bit off by a sentient skull. Later we find her covered in prison tattoos.

"Saga" performs many of the actions that make my blood boil and my eyes cry a river of tears at the fallen hero, Comics Trismagistus. I will list them now and give them clever names that I can just refer to like place holders later.

Background degradation. The worst cartoonists neglect their backgrounds leaving their characters floating in a void, or a line art sketch.

Pages of useless panels filled with prolix verbosity and redundant chatter. Show, don't tell. Why are these characters talking about their feelings all the time? All this chatter is clumsy next to the elegance of their faces and body language.

Preachy moralising and beta-males. Thete's a strong overtone of our contemporary attitudes toward the sexes. Men are wimpified and women are brutified. This is done to create strong female characters, but really it's just a gender mask and misses women's true strengths.

Idiotic narration and colloquial speech. The narrator butts in all the time adding nothing to the story, or pace, or tone. She actually disrupts all of this and inserts formulaic jokey yuks.

Computer colouring replacing more skilled drawing.

Read it though, it's worth your time.

"Hellboy" is a tremendous work. Mike Mignola created a genuine myth with this title. All the terror and majesty of fairyland, the gods, and magic burn in the veins of this story, and it's beating heart is the imagination we lost entering adulthood and hope to find again in heaven.

Mignola understands myth and magic and how they operate in culture and on the individual. He writes, explores, from this foundation. The story repeatedly announces how the story must end, Hellboy accepts his destiny and destroys the earth. As it progresses, and the reader sees the corner approach as Mignola paints his way into it. We realize that we must enter that corner and stagnate or embrace some hackneyed resolution. Just as we begin to accept this, Mignola opens a trap door and we plunge down it sliding on our asses, down corkscrew, and onto a trampoline that snaps us up into space.

How does our hero escape this fate?

With this quiet moment and the most important sword in Britton? Maybe...

Mignola renders the drawings in stark high contrast inks with low contrast colour, horror on film noir. There is no dead exposition and no long pages of talking heads discussing their feelings. During moments of exposition Mignola breaks up the page with delightful panels showing close-up shots of statuary and other artifacts. It's a brilliant and interesting technique that breaks up the page and adds mood to the atmosphere and dimension to the world. And, one of my favourite things in comics, Hellboy enjoys fully realized backgrounds!

I highly recommend "Hellboy." It's required reading for comics lovers. It reminds us of everything we left behind.