Hellboy: The Lost Army (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The Bentley was in flames as it crested the hill..." (more)
Key Phrases: cavern people, sand demon, oasis lake, Colonel Shapiro, Professor Bruttenholm, Captain Creaghan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola wanted to take his comic book creation, the world's greatest paranormal investigator, into different territory. So he hooked up with Christopher Golden, author of Of Saints and Shadows to write a prose novel featuring Hellboy. The result is this 208-page story about a team of archeologists who head toward the Great Sand Sea near Libya to exhume evidence of a missing army of 50,000 men that disappeared in 525 B.C. When the archeologists go missing, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense sends Hellboy to investigate. This edition features 68 black and white illustrations by Mignola.

Product Description

In 525 BC, a fifty-thousand strong army of Persian King Cambyses vanished without trace in a great sandstorm in the Egyptian desert. Now, in 1986, an American archaeological team has also gone missing and its the job of Hellboy, the world's finest paranormal investigator, to find them.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse Comics (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569711852
• ISBN-13: 978-1569711859
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,613,825 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Golden captures the spirit of Mignola's creation, August 10, 2004

By	A. Sandoc "sussarakhen" (San Pablo, California United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Lost Army (Hellboy) (Mass Market Paperback)

Mike Mignola's Hellboy character and the universe he inhabits is one of the most engaging and interesting comic creation. Mignola took a large helping of H.P. Lovecraft, added in a healthy dose of James Bond and finished it off with a good dash of European folklore and mythologies and he comes up with Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.

Hellboy was originally just in comics and graphic novels, but Christopher Golden was given a chance by Mike Mignola to try and come up with a novel-lenght story to give Hellboy a new medium to appear in. Golden succeeds with this first Hellboy novel titled The Lost Army. It helped that Mignola drew some illustrations for the book and these illustrations help explain some of the words Golden has wrought.

There really is no need to explain the plot since Amazon has conveniently copied the back cover summary to explain the book. The story is very Lovecraftian in its tone as most of Hellboy's comic book exploits have a tendency to be. Unlike the comics, Golden's novel allows more of Hellboy's inner personality and feelings to come through. It has only been hinted in the comics, but in Golden's story Hellboy's past history and his current unfolding situation are allowed for some romance.

The Lost Army is very much more adult than the comics, but the overall theme and story fits well with the canon that Mignola has created for Hellboy and his universe. I have to admit that the ending has abit of Deus ex Machina to it that lets off Hellboy and crew too easily, but it is really just a small quibble on the overall satisfying read The Lost Army turned out to be.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great transition from comics to prose, January 2, 1998

By	[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

More monsters than you can shake a giant stone hand at! I loved this adventure - especially the constant tension provoked by Hellboy's recurring realization that he's a monster fighting monsters. It was also a treat to discover that Hellboy has a sex life. Who woulda guessed?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Army That Marches On Its Bandages, April 4, 2005

By	Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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This review is from: The Lost Army (Hellboy) (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm going to have to read the Hellboy comics. I've seen the film and loved it, now I've a Chris Golden novel and loved it, it's really time to jump into to world of the next closest thing to Indiana Jones since, well... since Indiana Jones. Assuming the Indiana Jones had red skin, a tail, weighed a quarter ton, and shave his horns. And lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, of course. Yes, ladies and gents, this irascible romantic and charming human wannabee is the foremost occult investigator on the planet - the poster child for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development. When a team of British archeologist vanishes into the desert sands where 2500 years before Cambyses the Persian lost an army of 50,000, there's only one guy to call.

Fresh from crashing a Bentley, Hellboy is parachuted into the Egyptian desert to find himself with his old flame Anastasia Bransfield, a team of archeologists, and a hardnosed egomaniac MI5 team. In no time, the missing archeologists aren't missing any longer, they are dead, their pieces decorating trees in the oasis. And Hellboy finds himself going mano a mano with some very skilled, very dead Persian soldiers. Never has the phrase "it doesn't get any better than this," been more true. The soldiers are pushovers compared to the seam monsters, spiders, and diabolical wizards that are next on the agenda.

As you can probably tell this isn't a loving adventure story told with infinite detail and character building. Hellboy's basic strategy is to find the badness, get an arm free, and punch it into the next solar system. When you are that big and strong this works most of the time. And when it doesn't, well, that's what this story is about, because Hazred the magician has what it takes to stand off the US Army, slam Hellboy down on an altar and call Mar Ti Ku (another, even bigger, bad guy) back to life. Does our red-skinned hero find a way out? Find that out for yourselves (hint: this is a series).

I'm not going to quibble over whether this is a true presentation of the comic Hellboy. Suffice it to say that Mike Mignola, Hellboy's creator, drew some 75 illustrations for this story, so it can't be all that bad. Chris Golden certainly manages to put capture the spirit of crazy adventure and sarcastic, in your face dialog that is Hellboy's signature style. So open the book, grab some popcorn and get read to root for the hero and boo the villains. This is just plain fun.