I'm going to go ahead and assume that at this point, pretty much all of you know who/what Hellboy is, and pretty much none of you know anything about Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden. I really can't recommend reading Beasts of Burden for yourself enough, it's absolutely wonderful, but the short version is, Beasts of Burden are a group of cats and dogs who belong to the Wise Dog Society, sworn to protect the small town of Burden Hill and it's human inhabitants from paranormal threats. It may sound childish and not all that exciting, but believe me when I tell you that there are a LOT of comics that I would stop reading long before I would this one.
The thing that makes Beasts of Burden so great is that it would make a great children's book if it weren't so damn creepy. The writing is absolutely brilliant, somehow managing to have a light tone to it even when dealing with such dark and disturbing subject matter. The same can be said for Jill Thompson's beautiful painted artwork. The beasts themselves all have their own personalities and mannerisms, and it comes across flawlessly in her art, the colors are bright and cheerful and at the same time filled with blood, creatures, and all sorts of creepy imagery.
My love affair with all things Hellboy is well documented here in the Batcave, so I'm not going to bore you yet again by gushing about how much I love Mike Mignola's little hellraiser. I will say that Sacrifice did the character plenty of justice, but that was to be expected being that Mike co-wrote the book. In fact this team-up comic managed to do what few can, it felt like both a Hellboy comic and a Beasts of Burden comic.
3 comments:
Damn. The Beasts of Burden HC won't ship from Amazon for like 5 months. I'll have to try and find it somewhere else. No comic shops near me, unfortunately. If only I knew someone who worked at one who would move here and start one with me. Hmmm, who could that be? ;)
I'll ask around for ya, B. Surely somebody knows a guy like that.
Beasts or Burden is fucking awsome!
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