I love a good Hellboy story. I forgot to write a little review of the latest BPRD graphic novel I read. B.P.R.D. The Universal Machine. It (the graphic novel, i'm acitvely digressing here) was great. I'm still amazed by how good the series is. Starting with the core Hellboy stories. And at the end of that story arch the B.P.R.D story arch picks up - without Hellboy. And you'd think that a Hellboy series without the cuddly red guy himself would be doomed to fail. But they've kept the story going strong. Liz and Abe become strong foreground characters with developed stories. And the new characters brought are are made both endearing and interesting. (here we go, I'm coming around). But you feel the absence of Hellboy. You miss him a bit. As much as you like the big lump of clay we call Roger, you miss Hellboy.
You See him in flashbacks, and a couple side projects, but he is noticeably absent from the story itself.
Worse, he feels absent from the novels as well. The las couple I've read have Hellboy in them, but they don't have the Hellboy we love. This one especially. There were a few little trademark comments and couple little bits thrown on so that you'd know you are reading about the same big red demon with the right hand of doom that you've read about in the past. But he feels thin. He feels like a cardboard cut out of himself.
I'm starting to think that Christopher Golden was the only guy who could capture Hellboy in novel form.
The other authors have managed to capture the world of Hellboy, just not that one central figure (i've gotta admit, On Earth as It Is in Hell by Brian Hodge, was the best Liz story I've read including the graphic novels).
