Comics We’re Thankful For: Anton And ‘Hellboy’

Welcome to the table,

 

Today is Thanksgiving, and our man Tony has put out a call for comics that we are thankful for. The ask was open-ended, like it has been in years past. It could be graphic novels, single issues, full series, or even something off base, as long as it fit under the umbrella of “Comics We’re Thankful For,” it would work.

If you have been a long-time reader of this site or my work, know me in person, have met me at a convention, or speak to the frogs, cats, and bats who transport secrets for the coven of ash wood witches who slumber under the endless mountains, then you know that I am, have been, and always will be thankful for Mike Mignola‘s Hellboy, and am now going to attempt to tell you why without crying or writing 10,000 words. Let’s get into it.

My life, at least starting at my earliest memory and continuing until my late 20s, mostly revolved around a comic shop. Sure, I spent a ton of time in doctors offices, classrooms, and a slew of other places but the good memories, the ones that I randomly stumble upon when trying my best to think about something positive from my youth, are always inside the walls of a dimly lit shop full of rows of long boxes and shelves upon shelves of sequential stories nestled between brightly colored covers.

I was a weird little disabled kid. I hobbled about on crutches most of the time, was way too opinionated, asked way too many questions, and was loud. Dear god, I was loud. I did not like myself very much, and I think the majority of the brash behavior was a byproduct of trying to overcompensate for my very noticeable limitations and my deep-rooted unhappiness at home.

I wanted to be like Superman, who was the perfect physical specimen, strong, noble, and good. Supes had two parents who never made him feel awful about his differences and treated him with love and respect. The pride Pa Kent felt when his boy did something, be it save the world or get a byline on page six, was something I yearned for. I knew no one was proud of me. Nothing I did was ever enough. Not in any meaningful way. It was pretty clear I was just a monstrous burden on those who shared my blood, and that was something that was incredibly difficult to shoulder as a kid. Rather than face it, though, I ran, not literally but figuratively, from it. I did that by hiding in the pages of fantasy and science fiction novels, tabletop roleplaying games, and comic books.

I read a ton of Batman, Superman, Ghost Rider, X-Men, and various other superhero books that I came to call “cape” comics, but I never really found anything that spoke to me. Much like the other media I absorbed, there was no one like me within those pages who was not a trope or in need of saving.

When someone showed up on the page who was disabled and more than just a bit-part in a “very special issue,” it was typically something akin to the wheelchair using headmaster at the gifted school for beautiful people who just so happen to have mutations. Said headmaster, when not magically walking around thanks to “space tech”, was normally knocked from his chair and needed to be saved by one of the aforementioned beautiful ones. The same mutants who complained about being judged while blending into society far more easily than a loud-mouthed, bent-legged little weirdo with a genetic mutation like me ever could. I grew to loathe those books and root for Magneto, mostly as a byproduct of not understanding my own worth or value, young teenage angst, and a chip on my shoulder the size of Asteroid M.

I loved comics. They helped me escape, but I was looking so hard for something that made me feel like I was seen. There were some amazing stories, mind you, Ghost Rider, a vampire teen book called Crimson, Battlechasers, Else Worlds, hell Wolverine, the Hama stuff or the stuff with Cyber and Lady Deathstrike, at least verged on scratching that bubbling teenage angst and rage I was feeling, but none of it clicked for me, not completely. Parts of it worked for sure, I love them all to this day. They are my stories, but none of them really felt like they saw me, like they were truly mine.

I was this angry little teenager rushing headlong into books, comics, magazines, tabletop role-playing games, and anything else I could find, just trying to figure out where I could feel balanced. Where I could feel at home. Where I could just feel something other than tiredness and anger.

I don’t know who gave it to me. If I had to guess, it was Rich or Jim; those were the two guys who owned the comic shops I was frequenting in those days. Someone handed me a copy of Hellboy: The Wolves of Saint August, more than likely to shut me up for ten seconds so they could sell some comics and not have to answer my endless questions about whatever rock album was playing in the store or something silly like who would win in a fight, The Haunted Tank or Optimus Prime, Conan or Cthulhu, He-Man or Lion-O, and so forth.

I posted up somewhere in the shop, opened the pages, and was transfixed by what I saw. I had been a fan of Hellboy since its inception, even though I don’t know that I had owned any copies up and to that point. This, however, was the first time I think I actually saw Hellboy as something more than the rad art and frog monster punching with notes of Conan and Cthulhu mythos dropped in.

It could have been the lack of sleep, the combination of day-old pizza and soda mixing in my guts, the stars aligning just the way they needed to, whatever it was, in that moment, I was locked in on the pages before me, and they were nothing short of magical.

The art was moody and atmospheric. The protagonist was glib but smart. He was flawed, though; there was an imperfection there that felt much more developed than what was happening in other comics. It could have all been projection; it could be the words and panels were put together just right to toggle those switches in my brain, but as I read those pages, Hellboy became something more to me. He was this avatar in a lot of ways. I was a dorky teenager on crutches in a comic shop, in no way am I saying I was “like Hellboy” or “was Hellboy“- that is asinine. Even at that age, the concept of things like that felt weird, and when people did it, it freaked me out a bit. What I am saying, though, is that I saw something in those pages that softened the way I felt about the monster I thought I was. The monster I had accepted I was. The monster the world told me I was for no other reason than because I was born differently.

It was not the sparkles and shine of a Saturday morning cartoon or the heavy-handed commentary shoved in the last six panels of a comic about “teamwork,” it was an occult detective fighting a werewolf-ghost in a cursed city with a bit of junk that was lying around and looked like it would be good for werewolf fighting.

I snapped up all the issues of Hellboy I could find after that. I believe I currently own every floppy from the first issue of Seeds of Destruction to the last issue of The Fury. I, as you may expect, also own a great deal of the other spin-off books, graphic novels, and other assorted Hellboy offerings as well.

In a weird way it felt like, after reading that Hellboy comic, life grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me out of whatever teenage angst I was in. It was not mean about it, not mean like I was to myself, or others had been to me, but stern and somehow permissive of purpose.

It felt like that book, and the subsequent Hellboy books I would go back and read and then collect as they hit shelves, somehow motioned me to the mythology section of the library and the legacy of fantasy and folklore, as if to say, “The world is a weird place, man. Go find your place in it, and if there is no place for you, go forth and look under the hidden temples, behind the creepy statues, and around the strange ancient aliens slumped in hidden hallways until you find it.”

I had my place at the gaming table where the worlds I built with my players and friends came together, but I had been hiding so much inside what felt like safe methods of escapism, that breaking out of those molds and finding new and weird places to explore in the real world, be it bookshelves or haunted houses, felt like it was impossible… until it didn’t.

My perspective shifted after that book. It stayed shifted moving forward. There was something inside of me that had been forever changed by reading about this half-demon, half-human paranormal investigator who was destined to bring about the end of the world and his motley crew of troubled friends and colleagues.

I continued to be an avid comic reader well into my 20s, and then, as it happens sometimes, I hit some really hard times. Difficult surgeries, even more difficult recoveries, breakups, relationships, and a litany of other things that no one can prepare for came crashing down around me.

That lust for life that inspired vigor the Wolves of Saint August had opened the door for me to enjoy, that joy that I had in my teens was dulled to an ember at best. I was wandering through life doing my best to keep up with responsibilities and bills and all those things that matter, those things that make society happy and keep the lights on and food in the fridge.

I had gone from buying  30 comics a month, to 15, to 10, to eventually none. Months went by between visits to the comic shop. The place I had found myself in, my spiritual home, the place I worked, thrived, and survived, was too far to travel in the life that was stacking up around me.

I did not recognize myself anymore. I had changed for the better in some ways, a lot of ways, honestly.  I had found real love, my temper had dulled, I was not quick to blurt out a million facts to anyone who would listen … but even with all those improvements, I had also lost bits of myself I loved along the way. I had dulled, shifted; I did not know where I was going or what I was doing. I was just trying to survive from one moment to the next and be the best me I could, without being the me I was.

Eventually, life settled down a bit, a global plague hit, and things shifted in the workspace, allowing me to slow down some. While all that was happening, I started working at Comicon and made some really good friends here. Brendan, Erik, Tony, Scotty, Tom, Austin, who is not me, regardless of what others will try and convince you of. They all supported me while I wrote about gaming and TTRPG. Things I could dig into in the pop-culture space while watching them all share their love of comics.

Eventually, Brendan hit me with a question about something, and, as is my way from time to time, I info-dumped the lore of Hellboy in a chat that probably took the man ten to twenty page scrolls to get through. He was amused and intrigued by this clear love of Hellboy comics I had, and after some gentle prodding and putting up with me, learned that it extended to not just Hellboy, but all of the associated books in the Hellboy mythos.

He, with the aid of our EIC Erik, nudged me to start writing comic reviews. This turned into me picking up my old books again. Finding those pages that inspired and delighted me, finding those passages and panels that got me excited about the world.

I was looped in on conversations and allowed access to news and books before they hit stands. I would be privileged to see the magic before the rest of the world. To read the pages of these stories that meant so much to me in my youth and still hold titanic weight for me as an adult.

I expanded my reading list, took on more titles, and now I am reading at least a comic a day for work or relaxation, all because of this occult detective who happens to be half demon, or the mythos in the world he is written in enthralls and excites me so.

Ron Perlman once said something I had displayed on my desk at work until I no longer worked in an office, thanks to world events. It was…

“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.”

I have always felt like there are things that were monstrous about me. I hid from them for a long time before I faced them. I hid from them again when I was trying to do what I thought the world wanted me to do. However, making friends with the people here at Comicon.com and finding my way back to my Hellboy books is about as close as I can find to “understanding” and “making friends” with the things that make me who I am… and the opportunity that Hellboy, Comicon, Dark Horse, Mignola, and the various PR teams have provided to me, along with the support of my amazing partner, is something that I am thankful for this holiday, and every holiday until I, much like Hellboy did when he fought his last fight, find my way into the next place.

Until next time, and as long as I am drawing breath, there will be a next time, I am thankful for this weird little slice of the digital universe we inhabit, the people I am lucky enough to travel these strange roads with, and the mythos a guy named Mike Mignola has created for me to hold on to when things get their darkest.

I hope you have something to be thankful for today. All my best, do no harm, and have the day you deserve.