Results tagged “Hellboy” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

BRITISH comic publishers and creators will be showing the public what the indigenous industry has to offer at the Think Tank in Birmingham next weekend.

As well as well known overseas guests like Howard Chaykin and Pasqual Ferry visitors to the show will be able to meet some of the top British creators working in comics today.

Those such as DC and Marvel Writer Andy Diggle, Hellboy artist Duncan Fegredo, the legendary Bryan Talbot, and a whole host of Independent creators and publishers at the cutting edge of UK Comics will be at hand to meet the fans and talk about new work in the pipeline.

New additions to the guest list include 2000ad superstar artist Clint Langley who will be signing copies of his acclaimed graphic novels "Volgan War" and "Slaine: Book Of Invasion" at the 2000ad booth.

Titan Books will also be appearing at the show to find new talent, and Editors will be conducting portfolio reviews on the Saturday joining DC Comics editor Michael Wright as they give up and coming artists the chance to receive feedback on the work and possibly a chance to land their first professional assignment in the industry.

"Many people out there think that British Comics are a thing of the past, but at BICS readers will discover, that it is anything but the truth, with publishers like Com.X, Markosia, and Insomnia innovating with fresh talent and ground breaking stories, expanding the medium in new directions and taking risks creatively," said show co- organiser Shane Chebsey

To find out more about BICS visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

MIKE MIGNOLA is the creator of Hellboy, the star of two hit live-action movies and animation features, plus of course a plethora of great comic books.

Ironically, Mignola began his career drawing adaptations of British sci-fi and fantasy author Michael Moorcock's Prince Corum books for First Comics.

He subsequently worked for the two major US companies, Marvel and DC Comics.

Among the books he pencilled for Marvel were the Canadian superhero group series Alpha Flight and, for its Epic imprint, Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery novel favourites Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser (a collection now back in print from Dark Horse).

Work for DC included an eerie mini-series featuring The Phantom Stranger and Batman: Gotham by Gaslight the company's debut Elseworlds Prestige book.

In 1993 things began to hot up for Mignola when he created Hellboy for Dark Horse's creator-owned Legend imprint. A devil of a character, Hellboy has been described as the "world's greatest paranormal investigator".

Enthusing B-movie aplomb, pulp pastiche and a dash of American comic book icon Jack Kirby's visual dynamics to Mignola's own unique stylised approach, together with the spirit of adventure he imbued in the series, proved to be a strong sales incentive and swiftly found favour with fans and critics alike.

Mini-series have been collected into popular trade paperbacks, and a regular line of spin-off mini-series and their subsequent collections under the BPRD title heading come about, all before Hollywood came a calling wanting to turn Hellboy into movie magic.

Directed by Guillermo del Tora the 2004 Hellboy feature film proved a box office success and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army hit the silver screen in 2008. Keeping the franchise alive in between were the animated films Sword of Storms and Blood and Iron, available on DVD.

Mike Mignola himself has also produced design, illustration and storyboard work for animation and live-action films.

These include Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (subsequently drawing the comic series for Topps), an adaptation of his own comic The Amazing Screw-On Head for the Sci-Fi channel, Blade II, Batman: the Animated Series and Batman Beyond and has been heavily involved himself with the production of the actual Hellboy movies.

The Hellboy related comic book series remain in constant demand by fans. John Byrne dialogued the very first Hellboy mini-series and with Mignola's time at a premium these days he has branched out, allowing more co-creators to share in and empower his vision further, with Britain's own Duncan Fegredo as regular artist of recent series for the character.

Mike Mignola was a star guest at the UK's Birmingham International Comic Show in 2007 with fans coming from far and wide to see him.

The photo to the left is from that show and features Mike Mignola on the left, with Comics International publisher Mike Conroy holding Hellboy art. The photo, along with others from that year's show that you can still find featured on Speech Balloons were taken and (c) Jordan X.

Additional Information:

To order advance BICS 2009 tickets visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

For more information on Hellboy visit: www.Hellboy.com

DUNCAN FEGREDO was born in Leicester, in the East Midlands of England. He is currently entertaining readers as the artist on the best-selling Hellboy comics.

Hellboy appeals to comic book fans, movie buffs, horror aficionados, and followers of fantasy. What is more, thanks to its silver screen successes, Hellboy is well known to the mainstream public so therefore just as accessible as a comic book to the bloke on the street

"It's a good time to be a Hellboy fan - Mike Mignola is shepherding an array of new Hellboy related titles onto comic book shelves across the land." Duncan previously commented to me. However, while the accolades reaped over the years are a testament to the work that creator American Mike Mignola has achieved, it cannot be denied that the British comic purchasing public voted Hellboy: Darkness Calls its 2007 Favourite Colour Comic book - American Eagle Award to both Mignola and Fegredo as the creative team.

After completing art studies and briefly contributing to the independent comic Blaam! Duncan broke into British mainstream comics by becoming a regular contributor to Fleetway, initially within its Crisis anthology and then for 2000AD.

One of the original cache of artists chosen to represent the Vertigo imprint, with Enigma, for DC Comics in America, he has also worked for them on books such as Face, Kid Eternity, and as cover artist for Lucifer and Shade, The Changing Man.

Elsewhere, he has contributed interior work to Marvel books, included Spider-Man: Tangled Web, for Oni Press he illustrated film director Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob and Clerks, plus produced cover art on Star Wars and Grendel interiors for Dark Horse, who are the publishers for whom Fegredo is now illustrating Hellboy.

With Helllboy: Darkness Calls having proved a success, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army having played out across the world's cinemas, Mignola and his British artist are now giving us Hellboy: The Wild Hunt.

It's a tale of treacherous huntsmen, mystic visions, newly awakened bands of vicious giants, and a talking bird as Hellboy continues his journey across the rolling hills of England, even as his enemies attempt to resurrect the Queen of Blood.

Duncan spoke enthusiastically of his creative relationship with Hellboy's creator.

"As both a fan of Mike's work and a professional artist I couldn't be happier. I hesitate to gush overly as it'd embarrass Mike! I get to play in Hellboy's rich and textured world and even to expand it to areas we haven't visited yet, meet old friends and enemies, and make new ones too. As a fan that's exciting, as a pro it's enriching.

"Whilst Mike has a very definite idea of his creation and how he wishes the tale to be told he is open to anything I can bring to it, which is great. What is even better is that should Mike want something handling differently he only has to ask and I'll do my utmost to achieve his vision. These aren't abstract editorial changes that have no real bearing on events but actual meaningful changes that affect the emotion and atmosphere of the way the story is told.

"I really feel my work is evolving on Hellboy and that is incredibly satisfying. I think it's down to the deceptively simple manifesto of 'living up to Hellboy', I want Mike to be happy with the book.

"I figure if Mike is happy then the fans will be happy."

And they certainly appear to be. Meanwhile, those looking for more work from Duncan wouldn't go far wrong than to check out both Intersections and Stuff.

"Intersections is my arty book with Sean Phillips. You can order it from Amazon.

"If that whets your whistle for more you could do worse than to check out my book Stuff, literally stuffed full of drawings culled from years of sketchbooks. You can see a sampling at my website, or if you are the impulsive sort buy, buy, buy!"

Amusingly, the artist has no need to go for the hard sell, as he happily let slip, and thus announced, his own plans for the foreseeable future, saying: "I aim to be working with Mike on Hellboy for more series. I think that'll keep me going for some time yet."

For more information on Duncan Fegredo visit: www.fegredo.com and www.cafepress.com/fegredo

To purchase original art by Duncan Fegredo visit: www.splashpageart.com

For more information on Hellboy visit: www.Hellboy.com

MORE GRAPHIC novels reviewed, many collections of popular series.

Fables Vol 5: The Mean Seasons by Bill Willingham & Various (Vertigo/DC/Titan)

Fabletown, where the folk of fairy stories go to live in an all too real world. Politics, sexual drama and the odd bit of hokum. Always loved Willingham's superior soap opera way with words even if it falls to Vertigo to ghettoize him. Appealing Mark Buckingham work. The plot: who will become new mayor of Fabletown and is there a serial killer loose in town?

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others
By Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Comics)

One does tend to wonder at times if all Hellboy needs to do is go in swinging his fists Thing style to solve any problem that come his way when dealing through this collection, but Mignola marries atmospheric scene setting with matter of fact storytelling to deliver contemporary pulp fiction that's engrossing and wholesomely satisfying.

The Spider: Scavenger of the Slaughtered Sacrifices
By Don McGregor & Gene Colan (Vanguard)

It's a little unclear who actually commissioned this book, and one expects only dedicated fans and the downright curious will actually pick it up.

The Spider is a classic pulp character, and the masked crime-fighter featured in this contemporary tale has him attempting to stop heinous murders and the like that are the copycat crimes of a TV show - thus we have metaphors with the pulps, comics and everything else that has been cool for kids at one time or another. These themes take up an awful lot of the story time and because it's McGregor most often by narrative caption, this is indeed something worthy of the title of being a book.

The actual fight that begins at the outset lasts some 50 pages before we change location and during that time the caption boxes hypothesize and pontificate with great gusto. It's eccentrically paced to say the least, and we're not even talking about the abrupt conclusion.

This aside it's a heartfelt story, but Colan's art - reproduced from his pencils - while nice and occasionally exquisite, even obscurely painterly, tends to visualise the most basic interpretation of the what's happening as indicated in the words, thus illustrating rather than illuminating and not moving the story along as it should within the comic medium.

McGregor fans will forgive this, fans of the Spider may to, I myself and pleased I actually sat down and read it, but I wouldn't hold it up as an interesting experiment rather than anything like the best of either of the creators' work.

Ex Machina: The First Hundred Day
By Brian K Vaughn & Tony Harris (WildStorm/DC/Titan)

Michael Hundred is the mayor of New York City. He used to a superhero. If you like The West Wing but want thrills with your drama this is your book. It also pre-dates Heroes. Excellently well told, and written with unobtrusive style. Flashbacks add intrigue rather than being an outdated dramatic device. There's a subplot or two and a satisfactory conclusion to the collection. It's fully rounded with a supporting cast you want, need, to know more about. The art may too photo referenced at times but that can be forgiven. Superb stuff.

Swamp Thing: Bad Seed by Andy Diggle & Enrque Breccia (Vertgo/DC/Titan)

The Swamp Thing tends to be all the more exciting when that Hellblazer John Constantine makes a guest appearance. It's always a case of pouring oil on burning water too.

The Swamp Thing now controls the ancient Greek element of fire, water, air and naturally earth - but he's got Sargon the Sorcerer giving his elemental daughter Tefe the Chinese whispers about how daddy's going to tip the natural world off balance and between a parent-child grudge and heroine heroics she gets lead down the proverbial garden path.

It's all rather interestingly put together because when it comes to it and all the sections can get broken down and the themes it tries to put across are also the type seen in a standard TV soap opera. However, when Breccia's art lets rip with the horror elements the standard goes up several sharp notches.

Tales of the Vampires
By Joss Whedon & Various (Dark Horse/Titan)

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator gathers his TV scripting crew to create short comic strips about vampires. It uses a framing sequences of children learning how to be slayers at the feet of a shackled vampire so they can learn about their enemies first hand, and there's a suitable twist in the tale to that.

The short stories are generally decently entertaining. It's more for the vampire fan than the Buffy completist I'd have thought unless characters within get expanded at a latter date.