Customer Reviews

Hellboy, Vol. 7: The Troll Witch and Other Stories

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The 7th installation in the Hellboy graphic novel releases is something good to acquire, BUT acquiring it depends on what you want from your Hellboy.

First and foremost, the stories herein are mostly collected tales from fragmented places. The Troll Witch, The Hydra and the Lion, Doctor Carps Experiment, and The Ghoul are pieces from the "Dark Horse Book(s) of the..." (Witchcraft, Monsters, Hauntings, and The Dead respectively). These range from five to eight pages depending, and all of them have something to offer. The best piece in the book HAS to be The Troll Witch, and I personally liked Doctor Carp as well. The Ghoul is a Shakespeare adaptation and the Hydra and the Lion is, as Mignola admits in its forward, a bit odd. If you want these and don't want to pick up all of those books, then this is a good way to do it.

Second, there is some random stuff here and some new stuff BUT some of it isn't the best stuff out there.
The Penanggalan is an older story that came out of a Wizard magazine release, and covers a beast spawned from Malaysian folklore. It is a big odd but also a bit predictable, covering ground that Hellboy covered back in 2004. The Vampire of Prague is unique to this series but isn't really one of my favorites. P. Craig Russell did the artwork and, to be frank, it looks a bit rudimentary. When reading Hellboy I guess I've been spoiled and I want Mignola to cover every aspect. The story is small, good to read but normal, and Mignola could have sealed it for me and didn't. I guess that's something that is up to individual tastes.
And the last is Makoma, the longest addition to the book by far, covering some of Hellboy's younger years when he was in Africa. I liked the story and liked the quest artwork of Richard Corben, with everything clicking in that folklore sense that Hellboy often delivers. There's a mixture of Mignola there, too, and that made it worth a read.

And the extras - little etchings of characters and rudimentary cover art - don't really make me want to invest in Graphic Novels. I DO enjoy the forwards that come before each story, telling where the ale came from and how people became involved therein. Mignola is nothing if not a storyteller and this aspect adds to the read.

All that said, I enjoyed the series and thought people would enjoy it as well depending on what they want. If you missed the Dark Horse Book of series then there's a lot of tales here that are interesting and this format is a lot cheaper to acquire. The additions are good but are not necessary in pushing out a storyline and the book, on the whole, is just fragmented tales that cover some of Hellboy's adventures.
Keep that in mind before purchasing.

I always await the new Hellboy volume with anxious anticipation, and this one was no exception. "The Troll Witch and Others" is a collection of Hellboy short tales and is generally good, but with a few disappointments; it's not the best volume in the series, to be sure.

There are a number of triumphs in this volume: the title story, "The Troll Witch," a retelling of a Norwegian folktale, is a touching as it is chilling; and the steampunk-tinged haunted house tale, "Dr. Carp's Experiment," is beautifully bizarre. And "Makoma," an African folktale retold masterfully by Mignola and drawn by both Mignola and Richard Corben, is humorous and weighty at the same time.

Others, however, don't work so well. "The Hydra and the Lion," by Mignola's own admission, is just plain bizarre, and "The Vampire of Prague," a tale written by Mignola and drawn by P. Craig Russell lacks the gravitas of the other stories. Mignola notes that he gave Russell a lot of leeway in drawing and pacing this story, and it shows: it's far too slapstick and silly to be a real, classic Hellboy yarn and Russell's artistic stylings just don't fit. Overall, however, this is a good volume of Hellboy tales, although not the best by far. Worth it for Hellboy fans.

Five of these are drawn by Mignola and two are not. The stories are all Mignola, though.

A collection of short stories, some of them not drawn by Mike Mignola, showing Hellboy on his various adventures. The Penanggalan shows him traveling to Malaysia to defeat a girl-witch, and The Hyrda and the Lion is about Hellboy's battle in Alaska against a hyrdra, and his meeting with a little girl-lion (from the notes we read that this story was inspired by his daughter's claim that she's half lion). Beautiful mystery, marvelous quirkiness. The Troll-Witch is about a pair of young sisters, one beautiful and one ugly, and the strange fate that befell them - one has her head snatched during a troll invasion, the other uses Hellboy to extract her revenge - trapping them out-of-doors after dawn so that they turn to stone. The Vampire of Prague is illustrated by P Craig Russell, who I think I've seen in Heavy Metal magazine. The tale ends in a similar way to Troll Witch, but not after plenty of myth-building about this crazy gambler vampire, and one epic battle above the rooftops of gothic Prague. Dr Tarp's Experiment is a BPRD tale that takes place in a split second in a hidden experimental chamber of a long-dead member of the Golden Lodge of the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, involving a blood extraction from Hellboy and the momentary creation of yet another homocidal ape monsters. The Ghoul is a tale of those that live among us. The long end-piece, Makoma, is a convoluted tale of the African king Makoma, who we first see as a modern-day mummy in an archaelogist's study but who was once Hellboy born in an long-lost early civilisation who battles and defeats the wilderness demons of the mountain, river, forest, water, fire and puts them in a bag, then makes deals with forest magi. Mike Mignola starts it off, but Richard Corben, the illustrator of Den and other tales, takes it over, giving it also a rather Heavy Metal feel to it. Great pencil illustrations from Mike Mignola at the back.

The stories in this collections are a bit too fragmented for my tastes. All expect the last story are short, energetic tales that end with a battle between Hellboy and some monster. I couldn't extract a feeling of sympathy from or for the characters, and so I had a hard time finding entertainment in these pages. The final story, which has a longer, more interested plot, was my favorite.

I do appreciated Mignola's forwards to the stories. It's interesting to consider the sources of his inspiration.

"Hellboy, Volume 7: The Troll Witch and Others" features a variety of tales: some short, some long, some new, some previously published, some pretty straight-forward, some open to interpretation... but all fascinating and fun. A new wrinkle this time is the use of guest artists P. Craig Russell and Richard Corben, who each draw a story. Both deliver the quirks and weirdness you expect, and both are a good fit for Hellboy. And, of course, you get lots of Mike Mignola artwork, too, and the whole book was written by Mike. All this makes Volume 7 of this series a can't-lose proposition: you get plenty of what you happily expect and plenty of little surprises, all of the latter decent and many quite a bit more than that. Hellboy fans shouldn't hesitate.

Mignola's Hellboy is one of the most
remarkable creations in recent memory.
Said that, The Troll Witch and Others
is not Hellboy at best and perhaps the
weakest graphic novel so far.
Don't get me wrong, there is
exceptionally fine material here (the
story title is one of the most beauti-
ful tales in the entire Hellboy canon
and the super fine Dr. Carp's Expe-
riment have all the elements that makes
Hellboy a modern classic) but there is
some disapointing material here too.
The Vampire of Prague (drawn by
P. Craig, Russel) is pointless and
forgettable, The Ghoul is a failed
experiment, but Makoma, drawn
by the legendary Richard Corben,
is an amusing and interesting reinter-
pretation of an african folktale.
The Troll Witch and Others is a good
graphic novel but perhaps not the best
place to start.

This is a great introduction to the Hellboy/BPRD universe. As it does collect several older shorts, fans may have seen some (most?) of these before. I'd seen about half myself.

Still, they capture the full range of Hellboy - from the very short and very simple plots to the complex weavings of Hellboy and legend, this book contains all the basic tonal elements of the short Hellboy works.

If you're curious about whether or not you'd like Hellboy, this is a great place to find out.

it's great that now we can have all the hell boy stories compiled in volumes cause I read them all in single comics so now it's easier

i've been collecting hellboy since i don't know when! and this collection strengthens my conviction in mike mignola and company! keep churning those wonderful stories and artwork!