Hanging Out With Old Friends — Reviewing ‘Hellboy 1957: Fearful Symmetry’

Welcome to the table,

Ron Perlman once said

I’ve always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it, and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and define you and motivate you. You can either overwhelm or overcompensate for them — but they truly define you as a human being…So that life became a question of either dealing with this monstrousness in one way or another…One finds a way to understand and make friends with that monster and understand that that’s the very thing that makes you who you are. That’s your emotional and spiritual fingerprint.

Sometimes we have to become friends with the parts of ourselves we find monstrous. I’m not saying that in a way that speaks to some badly written action movie scene, where some dude goes all gun-fu on a bunch of cyber ninjas or something, I’m speaking from the experience of a person who grew up with a noticeable disability that caused my legs to bend, akin to the legs of say a goat or bipedal red skinned paranormal investigator, and was often reminded by family, peers, and even myself that I had a monstrous appearance.

At some point, I realized that monsters were one of the least scary things the world had to offer up, and more often than not, they tended to look out for weird little outcasts.

I came to look at monsters like misunderstood friends. When Mike Mignola gave the world Hellboy, it felt like a comic with a custom-made friend, just for me. Anung Un Rama’s story is seemingly over, as he died and went to hell, but these flashback offerings from Dark Horse, Mignola, and a collection of widely talented artists at least give us some untold stories of my favorite broken horned hero doing what he does best. Smashing evil and hanging out with people who seem to need a friend.

In Hellboy 1957 Fearful Symmetry, Hellboy is called to India to investigate a rash of mysterious animal attacks. While he is there, he is reunited with Virginia “Ginny” Payne, an old friend of Hellboy’s who he had spent a summer with chasing ghosts and hunting for strange creatures.

The pair have been tasked with searching for a strange entity with mythological ties that has been terrorizing a small village.

Fearful Symmetry is written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, and features art by Alison Sampson, colors by the amazing Dave Stewart, and letters by Clem Robins.

One of the things I love most about this story is how mellow it is. You never feel like the risk is high or the stakes are big. The monster is easily bested by Hellboy, and you know that fairly early on. That is where Hellboy stories really shine. You don’t always need to have these over-the-top moments of combat and chaos to sell a book. The world is so rich with lore and the characters are so multidimensional that you can enjoy the mystery of the unknown and the conversations had between old friends and still come away enjoying the experience of reading the book.

Hellboy 1957 Fearful Symmetry is a cozy and quiet creature-of-the-week story with some really great pulp moments, beautiful set pieces, and dialog that draws the reader into the conversation. Literature lovers of the classic pulp stories and long-time fans of the Hellboy universe will both delight in this offering from Dark Horse comics.

Until next time, Ron Perlman is a hero of mine and that quote sat on my desk for over a decade when I was still working in an office that was not in my home.