[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 10)

HELLBOY (1994-)

You'll remember I mentioned that the manager of the awesome local comic shop (Abstract Sprocket) was great at recommending new comics to me that would quickly become favourites? Well, here's another one of those great recommendations. I was a huge fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula movie when it came out, and there was a comics adaptation of it that was in such a unique and brilliant style, it was etched onto my memory.

Of course, that comics adaptation (that has recently been rereleased) was by Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. I remember having issue 1 of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction waved at me at the comic shop saying "You'll like this! It's also got a talking monkey in it." (Referring to the rather excellent support strip at the back of the issue featuring Art Adams' Monkeyman & O'Brien).

You probably know the basic story of Hellboy from the awesome Guillermo del Toro movie with Ron Perlman - Hellboy is a demon summoned during the last days of WWII by Nazi occultists. When he arrives, he is just a baby and is taken in by the US military and raised by Professor Bruttenholm as the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is being formed (the BPRD).

As an adult, working for the BPRD alongside other persons of unique abilities, Hellboy basically goes around with his big, stone hand and punches evil supernatural creatures back to the hellscapes they came from. It's great, funny, action-packed, pulp adventure.

But that artwork. Man, that artwork is amazing. Such a unique and vivid style, with amazing high-contrast shadows. It's just something else. Absolutely love it.

We faithfully bought all the individual issues, and then when Dark Horse produced the Hellboy Library editions, we bought them all again collected in gorgeous clothbound hardcovers. Ooooh yes.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 8)

SIN CITY (1991-2000)

Frank Miller's extreme noir was a bit of a departure from my normal comics, and I came to it a little late - I completely missed the original Sin City before the trade paperback collection came out. But when I did finally check it out, I was blown away. It was super minimal in its art, with pure black and white - with sometimes a hint of a single colour if necessary.

The first volume was a tale of a very heavy handed thug called Marv, who goes on a violent spree to track down the killer of his "girlfriend" Goldie. He whittles his way through various criminal lowlifes before finally uncovering a serial killer. It was cool, but when the second storyline started, A Dame To Kill For, I was particularly taken by the way it weaved into the timeline of the original story.

A Dame to Kill For is a typical tale of a beautiful woman tricking a gullible guy into killing her allegedly abusive husband, and the guy finding out he was fooled and looking for justice.

By the time the third storyline, The Big Fat Kill, started I was in my second year of my university degree specialising in animation and storyboarding. I decided to increase the weighting of the theory on my grade, and increased the size of my dissertation opting to compare comics narrative language - how the reader interprets the story progression from panel to panel, and comprehends what's going on by framing - with film language. I picked Sin City as the comic I'd look at as it is particularly filmic, and compared it to 1940's film noir - focusing on Double Indemnity. Double Indemnity is an excellent movie, about a beautiful woman tricking a gullible guy into killer her allegedly abusive husband... you know the rest.

If only I'd gone to university about ten years later I could have incorporated the Sin City movie into my dissertation.

Anyway, I loved the style, and the really cool art. Sin City opened my eyes to some of the cooler black and white comics that would come to heavily influence my own art for years to come.