Rounds of the Night Table

I’ve pared down my pull list at the comics shop yet again, both to help offset some
new monthly expenses and because most single issues simply cost too much for too little reward anymore.

But there are still can’t-miss gems released in what’s now pejoratively called the “pamphlet” format of traditional American comics, such as the timely treat that awaited me this week: Hellboy / Beasts of Burden, a one-shot uniting the World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator with a group of relative upstarts in the pantheon of occult adventurers published by Dark Horse. The regular Burden team of writer Evan Dorkin and illustrator Jill Thompson crafted the story with input from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

Hellboy took part in more crossovers in his early days. It’s not that Mignola was necessarily less judicious back then; rather, the exposure was simply good for HB in addition to being fun and there was less of an intricate mythology to ignore — although Mignola and his collaborators are currently doing a fine job of juggling Hellboy’s core series of miniseries with one-shots set earlier in the character’s history that may inform but don’t interfere with the current saga, alongside the series of miniseries focusing on the past and present exploits of Hellboy’s former compatriots at the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense and other members of Mignola’s expanding tapestry.
A pair of those early crossovers, Ghost / Hellboy and the DC co-publication Batman / Hellboy / Starman, were just collected in the trade paperback Masks and Monsters.

Dark Horse also released an omnibus of all four of Thompson’s delightful Scary Godmother storybooks this month, and the early Beasts of Burden tales were collected together with last year’s miniseries in a recent hardcover that I hope to review soon.



Cover to Hellboy / Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice © 2010 Mike Mignola. Pencils,
Inks: Mignola. Colors: Dave Stewart. Design: Tina Alessi, Amy Arendts.

Cover to Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites © 2010 Jill
Thompson. Art: Thompson. Design: Tina Alessi.

Cover to Hellboy: Masks and Monsters © 2010 Mike Mignola. Pencils, Inks: Mignola.
Colors: Dave Stewart. Design: Mignola, Cary Grazzini, Amy Arendts.


Related: A Body Eclectic • Scary Good • Unread by Me • Rounds of the Night
Table [2015] • The Uncredeemibles • Hounds and Fury • Give Me Hellboy