Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places [Paperback]

Mike Mignola (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2006

Mike Mignola returns with his first new Hellboy collection since 2002's Conqueror Worm. After leaving the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Hellboy's travels take him briefly to Africa, then for a two-year stint at the bottom of the ocean. An ancient witch doctor, a giant fish woman and keeper of the secret history of the universe force Hellboy to either accept his role in the coming apocalypse, or have that role stolen from him. Weird undersea creatures and talking lions populate this turning-point adventure, which reveals secrets buried since Hellboy's very creation. This volume collects Harvey-and-Eisner-award winner Mike Mignola's Hellboy series The Third Wish and The Island with over a dozen unused pages and a new epilogue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mignola's first collection in his popular Hellboy series (since the 2004 film based on it) features two odd, bleak fables. The first and more successful is "The Third Wish," in which the demonic hero has an enchanted nail driven into his skull and encounters an enormous talking fish who grants her own granddaughters' wishes with fatal consequences. In the process, Hellboy learns that he may be fated to bring about the end of the world. The ending is unremittingly dark, with all the surviving characters trapped by prophecies that have the crushing power of myth. Mignola admits in his notes that he struggled with "The Island," which has to do with "the entire secret history of the world," a dragon, some centuries-dead Crusaders and a bunch of Lovecraftian monsters, and ultimately it doesn't make a lot of sense. Fortunately, Mignola's moody, jagged, chiaroscuro-crazed artwork makes everything look lushly sinister and engaging, even when the story threatens to collapse into action scenes. Hellboy himself is a terrific contrast to his grim surroundings: a hard-boiled demon who shrugs off death itself with a "yeah, yeah" and is convinced, against all the evidence, that he's one of the good guys. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the first collection since his hit (or not, depending who you ask) movie, good-guy demon Hellboy tussles with a fish-witch (not at all like Mickey D's) and a revenant sorcerer in two chronologically successive long stories that Mignola says inaugurate a string of Hellboy jaunts to strange places. The fun begins with the Bog Roosh (i.e., the fish-witch) promising three mermaids that she'll grant the greatest wish of each if they'll pound a nail into Hellboy's noggin. Meanwhile, Hellboy keeps an appointment with a 200-years-dead African witch doctor, who gives him a bell and sees him off into the ocean to encounter the Bog Roosh. After lotsa underwater spookery, H-b washes up on an island to face the revenant, who claims to know the prehistory of God, which entails a crew of malevolent great spirits. Mignola's potent mixture of dynamic though gloomy narrow-palette artwork and dialogue in which wisecracking Hellboy deflates the supernatural villains' windy portentousness makes both stories simultaneously scary and funny. Good to the last panel for horror fans. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse; 1st edition (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593074751
• ISBN-13: 978-1593074753
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike Mignola is best known as the multiple award-winning creator, writer, and artist of "B.P.R.D." and "Hellboy", but has fostered several other projects like "The Amazing Screw-On Head" and "Baltimore" with Christopher Golden. Although he began working as a professional cartoonist in the early 1980s, drawing 'a little bit of everything for just about everybody' - including characters like Batman and Wolverine - he was also a production designer on the Disney film "Atlantis: The Lost Empire". Mignola also acted as a visual consultant to Guillermo del Toro on "Blade 2" and the film versions of Hellboy, which were broadly adapted by del Toro from the original comic series. Mike Mignola currently lives in southern California with his wife, daughter, and cat.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All roads lead to strange places., April 22, 2006

By 

P. Vankirk (Geneva, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places (Paperback)

Mike Mignola is taking a breaking from drawing Hellboy, and as the last pure Mignola Hellboy book we're going to be seeing for a while, this is a real treat. Collecting the two issue mini-series "The Third Wish" and the two part "The Island" along with a new epilogue for "The Island" and bonus material, this is the thickest Hellboy yet. "The Third Wish", which takes place directly after the last Hellboy story, Conqueror Worm, takes place almost entirely underwater and is a great read. It gives perspective on how other supernatural beings view Hellboy and his place in the world. However, "The Island" is where this book really picks up. After spending a good chunk of time underwater, Hellboy washes up on a mysterious island and is soon caught up in the long dead struggle between a priest, a heretic, and something much, much worse. The Island also gives insight to Hellboy's right hand, and even the creation of the Ogdru Jahad. With this addition of an epilogue and additional sketches, this book is a great buy for any Hellboy fan, and I recommend it fully.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange is right!! But still a work of genius!!!, April 28, 2006

By 

E. Palladino "epalladino" (Bronx, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places (Paperback)

This is definitely vintage Mignola. Poor Hellboy is still trying to run from his destiny, but the further he runs the closer that dreaded destiny becomes.

There is much about the story in "The Third Wish" that is quite sweet despite its dark underwater character. But when Hellboy finally washes up to shore after having been down below for two years, the story in "The Island" becomes much darker and even more apocalyptic than the series had already been tending.

As always, I'm mesmerized by Mignola's art work and hope that any subsequent "Hellboy" offerings drawn by others will have this same power. But in the long run, I'm the most fascinated by the character of Hellboy himself. Fate versus free will--it wasn't until "Hellboy" that I realized such deep, essential concepts could be more than adequately dealt with in a comic book or graphic novel.

I came to the original "Hellboy" comics via the 2004 motion picture of the same name. In my opinion, the film is a masterpiece in its own right. But the character of Hellboy in Mignola's original comics is much, much deeper and more iconic. If it wasn't for Mike Mignola's genius in creating such a complex, complicated, and conflicted character there would have been no film for me to fall in love with.

The priority of genius must go to Mignola and "Strange Places" is a prime example of that genius. Highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anung Un Rama - The Key and the Crown, July 23, 2007

By 

TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Hellboy, Vol. 6: Strange Places (Paperback)

Anyone familiar with Hellboy knows he has been fighting Nazis and demons and other, more bizarre, beasts since his inception back in WW II. The problem with all those battles is that they really had no personal meaning because, in the end, they never really addressed the truth that Hellboy fought inside. He has collided with Rasputin and stopped what Rasputin thought was the end-all, sure, and he has turned aside the temptation to take the world and pave the sky with blood. Still, there are the inner demons within the demon that even he does not understand; the hand and the key, Anung Un Rama/ Sancti Abjura - the true name he wears, Ogdru Eb Jurhad - the seven crawling in their abyssal skyline, and all the fights he has fought do not address the fact that demons keep talking about his future and that he was made - not born. In this lifetime he has been walking in a man's world, too, doing a man's deeds and hoping this was enough to redeem the humankind. He has even been filing his horns and courting the dominion of love, hoping beyond hope that these things could be his. Still, he is no man no matter what he wants and the other books have explained that as they have battled little evils and bigger demons while expunging answers in the aftermaths. Now, it has come to see the broader strokes and this book starts setting up that sight.

The Third Wish
In The Third Wish, Hellboy find himself in Africa seeking answers as to why he exists. He seeks council from a holyman, and in the process he finds himself ensnared in another battled that seeks to claim his soul and, respectively, his hand. This leads him into the depths with three Merfolk, all wanting a wish from a seahag called the Bog Roosh, and it is here, in the cave of the Bog Roosh, that Hellboy finds out how the things he has seen and the other things, Hecate and Baba Yaga amongst those, play out as pieces in a game that can undo the world - and more.

In The Island even more is uncovered, explaining everything that Hellboy is and even more in an attempt to bring fans up to the place they need to be so they can see the coming tide. This is possibly the one story that covers every angle that could be covered with Hellboy, telling of the dragon and the hand and the things that came before. While I cannot say much on the subject without giving something beautifully-conceived away, I can say that this is one of the most important stories made that covers what Hellboy is and what the prophecy is all about.
It also shows that Mignola wants to make things move; he has made things and he has contorted reality and now he is taking the three major stories he has produced and begin the motion of a clock he has always meant to tick.

For anyone that notices something different about this book, it is because there is something starkly different. This book isn't the same "Nazi-fighting" that Hellboy normally finds himself in but is instead the beginning of something new, heralding "the something" coming. While it didn't seem like it at the time, a new series has appeared to continue this, Darkness Calls, and shows that Mignola isn't becoming tired of Hellboy or that he wants to try something different that involves a new character. Mignola has simply been doing other things and has, for some time now, been trying to build Hellboy up to where an audience understands his plight and how much he has at risk. Without his strides into the realm of mortality we wouldn't know about his friendship with Abe or his kinship with other people in the B.P.R.D., or the fact that he really does love Liz Sherman. That took a lot of Nazi-bashing and a lot of demons mentioning who he was to get through to us all, droning at the fact that Hellboy is meant for something bigger.
And now something bigger is at the door, knocking.

For fans of Mignola, you know what you want and you know how Mignola tells a story. He builds pieces upon pieces, hiding things in the open as he layers around them, and he likes to use fairytales to make things seem timeless and beautiful. That was what the Bog Roosh was, and that was something of what The Island reflected. Moreso, however, it was all build, wanting to see how things are set into motion.
For anyone keeping score, Mignola doesn't disappoint and this comes HIGHLY recommended because it really does serve a purpose aside from the stories themselves.