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A review by crookedtreehouse
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1954 by Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson
3.0
One of the frustrating things about reading Hellboy is that most of the main collections are not organized chronologically or thematically. It's just that the writers decided to tell a particular story or set of stories, and in order to release them to the trade paperback/hardcover market, they package them as the five or six issues that came out around the same time, whether or not they make sense as a single story.
With the Hellboy & The BPRD stuff, everything is arranged chronologically, even giving the year the stories took place on the cover, which is a nice change of pace.
Because I didn't invest myself in the Hellboy universe when it started, and I read more traditionally narrative comic series, I'm not used to the "Now we're over here! Now we're over here!" nature of some of these collections. I tend to find some of the short stories paced strangely. And that's very true for this volume. Until I got to the main story, I thought this was going to be a two star review. [a:Ben Stenbeck|385052|Ben Stenbeck|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], and [a:Paolo Rivera|6518797|Paolo Rivera|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s art is top of the line Hellboy, and Michael Walsh's art is less detailed than I enjoy but not distractingly so, but I just wasn't invested in any of the first five stories.
The sixth story, "Beyond The Fences" brings it up to three stars by having the story take a little more time to breathe, and tying it into BPRD 1948. It also has some fun misdirects.
I would recommend this to Hellboy enthusiasts, Mike Mignola fanboys, people who enjoy incredibly short stories about haunted dismembered limbs, people who never trusted Mr. Ed, people who think Bojack Horseman should commit more murder, and people who like snappy action movie patter to go with their demon hunting.
With the Hellboy & The BPRD stuff, everything is arranged chronologically, even giving the year the stories took place on the cover, which is a nice change of pace.
Because I didn't invest myself in the Hellboy universe when it started, and I read more traditionally narrative comic series, I'm not used to the "Now we're over here! Now we're over here!" nature of some of these collections. I tend to find some of the short stories paced strangely. And that's very true for this volume. Until I got to the main story, I thought this was going to be a two star review. [a:Ben Stenbeck|385052|Ben Stenbeck|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], and [a:Paolo Rivera|6518797|Paolo Rivera|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s art is top of the line Hellboy, and Michael Walsh's art is less detailed than I enjoy but not distractingly so, but I just wasn't invested in any of the first five stories.
The sixth story, "Beyond The Fences" brings it up to three stars by having the story take a little more time to breathe, and tying it into BPRD 1948. It also has some fun misdirects.
I would recommend this to Hellboy enthusiasts, Mike Mignola fanboys, people who enjoy incredibly short stories about haunted dismembered limbs, people who never trusted Mr. Ed, people who think Bojack Horseman should commit more murder, and people who like snappy action movie patter to go with their demon hunting.