Mike Mignola’s influences are vast, from Henry James to Jack Kirby. In the one-shot comic “Hellboy: The Midnight Circus,” one of Hellboy’s guardians takes the young demon to a library so he can learn to read something besides comic books; this feels inspired by Mignola’s own love of reading.
“Dracula” is the horror novel that most inspired Mignola, and in “Hellboy: Wake The Devil,” he gives thanks to “Dracula and all those other vampires I’ve loved.” “Hellboy: Conqueror Worm” is titled after an Edgar Allan Poe poem (with lines from that poem included), and features a similar thank you to old pulp heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow.
“Bride of Frankenstein” is Mignola’s favorite monster movie, but there’s another Boris Karloff horror picture he likes even more: 1945’s “The Body Snatcher,” where Karloff plays an articulate and sinister grave robber instead of the lumbering Creature.
Hellboy, as a character and comic, is the ultimate synthesis of everything Mignola loves. Sometimes described as a “paranormal investigator,” he’s got the attitude of Philip Marlowe but handles cases out of the occult. He’s also (in a solely literal sense) a monster himself. Though mostly accepted by humans, Hellboy can never totally cross the bridge to become one of them — he’s a lot like Frankenstein’s Monster and his quest for companionship.
“Bride of Frankenstein” diverges from Shelley’s book but it better adapts the Monster’s tragic side. For one, it includes the sections of the book where the Monster tries to befriend a blind man only to be chased away again by people who can see his appearance. The Creature desires a Bride because of his loneliness, of course, and when she too recoils at the sight of him, his despair is complete.
Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy” movies especially play up Hellboy’s outsider-ness. The filmmaker, a huge “Frankenstein” fan who is making his own adaptation of Shelley’s book, clearly responded to the glimmers of isolation in Mignola’s Hellboy and amplified them.
As played by Ron Perlman and drawn by Mignola, Hellboy has a thick jawline that rivals Karloff’s square-headed Creature. The difference is that Hellboy is articulate and not a murderer; he gives kids smiles and lollipops instead of drowning them. The Creature decided to lash out at a world that rejected him. In numerous “Hellboy” stories, monsters tell Hellboy to start the apocalypse already, and he always tells them to go screw themselves, twice ripping off his own horns to show him refuting his destiny. (Hellboy never wears his horns fully grown to make himself look more human.)
It helps that, unlike the Creature, Hellboy had a father who loved him: Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. In the climactic mini-series, “Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury,” Hellboy glimpses a sign reading “the end is nigh,” and feels solemn, knowing he was brought to Earth to cause that end. So, Hellboy remembers a moment from his childhood when Broom reassured him he’s no Frankenstein’s Monster:
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