Devil May Care About Hellboy II
Big Red returns in a mindless, revved-up sequel
By Chuck Wilson
Hollywood’s Endless Superhero Summer rolls on with the arrival of Hellboy II: The Golden Army from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, but before this review goes any further, I must confess—head hanging low in shame—that I haven’t read a comic book since I was 12 years old. That means I’ve never read a Hellboycomic, the first of which appeared in 1993 (when I was well past 12). In fact, I’m not so sure I’d even heard of the big red lug until 2004, when del Toro made the firstHellboy movie, although I bet at the time I pretended that I knew all about him. These days, not reading comics and graphic novels marks one as a pop-culture loser, which goes to show you how topsy-turvy the world is—in my day, comic-book kids got beat up.
A primer then, for the secretly uninitiated: Hellboy, or “Red,” as his friends call him (played by Ron Perlman in the films), is a demon from Hell (literally) who entered this earthly realm when Hitler’s minions opened a portal to you-know-where while attempting to form an alliance with the Big Guy down below. Rescued by the Allies and raised by a gentle British professor (John Hurt), Hellboy has burnt-red skin, a long tail, thick horns on his forehead (filed down to stubs), and a massive right arm made of stone—the “Right Hand of Doom” in creator Mike Mignola’s comic. Red packs a mean right punch, but luckily, raised on Howdy Doody and Santa Claus, he’s fighting on the side of man, not with the evildoers who keep coming up from Hell to slay us all. Score one for nurture versus nature.