Hellboy in Mexico TPB Review: Fantastic

Hellboy has been all over the place in his life, even Hell. One of these places is Mexico, and in the TPB “Hellboy in Mexico” recounts his time spent there in 1956 being drunk is mostly a delight. This TPB collects “Hellboy Versus the Aztec Mummy,” “Hellboy Gets Married,” “The Coffin Man” “The Coffin Man 2: The Rematch” and “Hellboy: House of the Living Dead.”

“Hellboy in Mexico” serves as an introduction to the entire store. Here, Hellboy recounts to Abraham the time he met three luchador brothers who quit wrestling to fight monsters. It’s an interesting idea of how and why Hellboy was there. Richard Corben did the art for this one and, even though he didn’t have much to show off his talent, it still looks fine.

“Hellboy Versus the Aztec Mummy” is exactly what it says on the packaging. This is the weakest of all the stories since it’s just a short fight that doesn’t really go anywhere. Also, the “mummy” looks more like a regular zombie than an actual mummy. Skip this one.

The next one is “Hellboy gets Married.” The title of this one is supposed to upset fans since Hellboy is not really supposed to get married. However, if you’re familiar with horror stories that take place in Mexico and “Hellboy” that fixes everything. Even though you can see the reveal a mile away, it’s still a great story. Mick McMahon’s art brings lively color and a cartoonish look to “Hellboy.” This type of style is supposed to look out of place, but in really it’s just different and it looks great instead.

“The Coffin Man” and “The Coffin Man 2: The Rematch,” with art by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba respectively, is the second best story of the bunch. A brujo (witch) steals the body of a little girl’s uncle and Hellboy must help her. After being humiliated, Hellboy decides to take revenge of the brujo. The idea of Hellboy getting humiliated by something he fights for a living is rather funny, especially considering how he’s humiliated. Both Moon and Ba did great jobs of drawing these two comics.

The final comic is “Hellboy: House of the Living Dead” with art once again by Richard Corben and it is the best story of the lot. A mad scientist wants Hellboy to wrestle a Frankenstein-like monster in order to save a girl. Not that just sounds average, but what happens after is pure storytelling. There is a lot of emotion in this story, and it nicely closes out this Mexico story. Corben’s talent is on full blast here. His gothic/super messed up style brings out the horror of not just what’s going on in the story, but what Hellboy went through in Mexico.

“Hellboy in Mexico TPB” is a great series of stories with plenty of action, emotion and great art by various artists the one underwhelming story notwithstanding. As far as “Hellboy” stories go, this is the finest one to date.