Books & Comics
INTERVIEW: Sitting Down with Abigail Waldron, Author of “Queer Screams”
August was a very exciting month for Horror Press’s Abigail Waldron because her book finally hit the shelves after years of research, writing, and peer review! I got a sneak peek of Abigail’s book, Queer Screams: A History of LGBTQ+ Survival Through the Lens of American Horror Cinema, and got to talk to her upon the book’s release.
Horror Press: Tell me a little bit about your book and the research that you did.
Abigail Waldron: I started working on the book back in 2018. It was part of my Master’s thesis, but I started expanding it to be a full manuscript after some encouragement from my advisors. It focuses on the relationship between social attitudes toward queer people throughout the 20th century, and queer representations in horror films in their corresponding eras and decades. I’ve always thought that horror films were mirrors – reflections of what we fear most in society at a certain time – and for a lot of America during the rise of cinema, it was the fear of the queer. For example, the connection between the dozens of vampire films in the 1980s and the AIDS crisis. You have blood, contagion, and sexuality. Vampires seduce regardless of gender, so they’re very queer-coded. We can understand queer horror better if we know the history of the American queer experience. While there have always been negative portrayals of queer people in horror, a lot of positives can be found in the genre, and better yet reclaimed. Once we think critically about these films, we as queer people can find moments of catharsis.
HP: How did you originally get into horror?
AW: Good parenting! Although my parents were cautious when I was a kid, I was always into the creepy and the weird, and they were very open to that. My sister and I watched scary movies, even the rated R ones, which my parents allowed. They explained some things or asked us to cover our ears, but overall they were very open about it. Blockbuster trips always consisted of a new release and a horror movie. I also was both excited and terrified by horror. I was extremely afraid of the dark, and I always imagined the little girl from The Ring in the corner of my room. I had to sleep with a nightlight, yet I was always interested in horror. These little things just added up, and in grad school, I knew I wanted to do something I was passionate about. And I knew I was passionate about film, horror, and queer history, so I combined all those into one, so very much of myself is in this book. It wouldn’t be possible if I weren’t a horror-obsessed queer kid.
HP: Why do you think queer people are so drawn to horror?
AW: Historically, horror cinema focuses on the outcasts of society: the weirdos, the misfits. As a queer person, I’ve always felt like a misfit or an other, and I know many other queer people have felt like that. We have been categorized as others and weirdos for centuries, so in that respect we can find ourselves in the horror among the misunderstood monsters, the oppressed final girls that get their revenge at the end, and the queer-coded anti-heroes like Carrie. Yes, she kills a lot of people, but she was bullied. As someone who was bullied as a kid, especially for my sexuality (I didn’t even know I was queer at the time and was called a dyke), I loved those stories. No, I wouldn’t murder people, but it feels nice to see this oppressed queer-coded person have their revenge. It’s pretty cathartic to see these oppressed people victorious on screen. I think queer people are drawn to horror because 1. They see themselves, and 2. They see themselves victorious a lot of the time. When you look at universal horror, you remember the monsters, and they’re very queer-coded.
HP: What’s your favorite horror movie?
AW: So I used to say Jaws. I used to watch it every year on the 4th of July. It’s sort of my patriotism, if you will. The one gripe I have with Jaws is that while it does pass the Bechdel Test, it’s hetero, white, and male-centric. While I return to Jaws every 4th of July, I find myself more in the mood to watch Rosemary’s Baby, The Blair Witch Project, and Freaks. Those are the ones that I’ve been gravitating towards lately. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite horror film, but those are definitely at the top.
HP: When I was reading your excerpt, I was struck by what you said about viewers perceiving fictional characters the way they do real people. Can you talk to me a little about that?
AW: Many people still have yet to meet an openly queer or trans person, whether they know it or not. Many of these people haven’t met a queer person because maybe they’re not the most friendly to come out to, or people are afraid to say anything around them. So for them, the only exposure they get to queer people is on screen. These people can take in the negative representations of queer people and grow to harbor discriminatory beliefs, or they’re even emboldened in their discriminatory beliefs. For example, in the documentary Disclosure, there’s a trans woman who came out to a coworker, and the coworker immediately responded, “Oh, like Buffalo Bill.” Buffalo Bill was an extremely problematic antagonist in Silence of the Lambs, and these portrayals are evocative, and so many people saw that movie, so they assume this is what a trans person is. This is what media tells them trans people are: violent and confused. These portrayals stick with people and paint trans people as mentally ill, unstable, and violent, and the fact is trans people have faced violence for decades. The issue is not trans people being violent, it’s violence towards trans people because of the equation of violence with being transgender. Look at the bathroom bills, and all these legislative battles, and abuse and stereotypes, and a lot of it stems from portrayals like Buffalo Bill. It’s sad because I love that movie, and so do so many other people. It’s unfortunate because for many people, it could be their only interaction with what they see as a trans person.
HP: Your book is incredibly relevant right now with all of the anti-trans legislature that is trying to be passed.
AW: I used the study from Haley E. Solomon and Beth Kurtz-Costes, where they looked at audiences who watched evocative portrayals of trans narratives or imageries of violence. The study showed that audiences take in these images, especially if it’s their only interaction with a trans person. It causes a lot of damage to both transgender and cisgender people because it’s effectively brainwashing these people. I know, for example, Angela Baker from Sleepaway Camp has a narrative in later movies that allows her to be reclaimed – she targets bigots and racists – but I don’t think anyone is going to reclaim Buffalo Bill.
HP: As much as I love that movie, I don’t think we want him.
HP: Do you have a favorite genre of horror films?
AW: I keep going back to bad movies. Is bad horror a genre? I was going through my Letterboxd, thinking, “You know what, I would love to watch some 80s trash”. So I went through the lowest-rated horror movies from the 80s because they’re just fun, and you can watch them with people who don’t even like horror. You can laugh at them, they facilitate conversation, and they’re usually a treat visually with practical effects or even really shitty CGI. So I think trash horror is my favorite subgenre.
HP: When we critique horror films, it can make other fans see us as killjoys, but we still love those movies. What can you say to that?
AW: I think I’m biased because I’m a historian. For me, critique is fun. I love diving into something. It gives you an opportunity for introspection. Because you think, “Why do I like this piece of media? What does this tell me about myself? What does that tell me about the world?” For me, that’s fun, asking those questions. While watching a film for pure enjoyment is an experience, when we critique – at least for me – I feel more connected to the world around me and the history of the world around me. Yeah, we can be killjoys, but if that’s the way you feel, don’t read critique – watch the movies and enjoy them because that’s great too. Once I was done with the book, I realized I could just watch movies and not have to keep an ear out for any gay slurs or keep my eye out for queer signifiers. Now I can just watch them. For me, at least as a historian, critique is fun. I don’t know if that makes me a killjoy or not, but it definitely makes me lame.
HP: In your book, you mention Transgender History by Susan Stryker. What did you think of that book, and do you have any other queer book recommendations?
AW: That was a great resource because within queer studies for the past 50 years, there’s been a focus on discussions of drag and queer sexuality but not gender. So I liked that book for its historical analysis of trans experiences in certain time periods. The other book I would recommend is Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Carol J. Clover, the author, basically states that final girls, in their essence, are very nonbinary. They go against the mold of cookie-cutter female protagonists during that time. For example, Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street is very much a girl next door and very sweet, but because she’s a final girl, she’s not focused on having sex. She spurns her boyfriend’s advances all the time. She’s concerned with her friends and this man who haunts her dreams. She has no time for sex. Carol J. Clover dives into the idea of the final girl transcending the binary in that she is very androgynous in her actions. They’re not passive, which goes against the traditional gender idea of women as passive and emotional. And that’s not the case for final girls: they’re going to fuck you up! I think eventually, the term final girl is going to become an umbrella term. Jesse from A Nightmare on Elm Street II is a final boy who became a scream queen. That’s what they called him back in the day, and Mark Patton, the actor, has taken on that label as a symbol of pride in being the final boy, and being an inspiration for many gay kids. I think many queer people can see themselves as the final girl because she is so androgynous and breaks these traditional roles.
The other texts I would look into are The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, which was a huge resource for me in writing this book, and Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff. The Celluloid Closet isn’t as focused on horror, but Russo does discuss some horror movies. Monsters in the Closet dives into the history of horror movies.
The roots of horror are very queer because a lot of those vaudeville actors, who dressed in drag, and performed gender-bending on stage, went into horror. Case and point, James Whale, the director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and his friend Ernest Thesiger, who was in Bride of Frankenstein, both originally came from vaudeville. Vaudeville is incredibly queer, so you have these queer roots of horror. Unfortunately, when the Hays Code kicked in, the party was over for a while, but until it did, there was a lot of that vaudeville influence.
HP: That’s an interesting connection, and certainly when I think of vaudeville, I think of camp.
AW: Right, it’s very campy. The Bride of Frankenstein is very campy, and it’s supposed to be! It’s an ode to that vaudeville mentality, and they were able to slip it in before the Hays Code. The Bride of Frankenstein was kind of the last hurrah.
HP: Can you tell me a little more about the Hays Code and how it affected the history of queer horror cinema?
AW: Before the Hays Code, the world of Vaudeville and theater was incredibly queer and seeped its way into motion pictures of this time. Because of the gender-bending that they were putting on screen, it scared the establishment and conservative audiences who detested “perversion” and saw it as a threat to traditional American values. The Hays Code, which was the production code, was established in March of 1930 by Will H. Hays and demanded that “all films should not imply that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.” They thought that if you show these things on screen that kids would think it was normal, which it should have been. When the code talks about “low forms of sex relationships,” it implied adultery, premarital sex, and explicitly said “sexual perversion” was to be forbidden. The Catholic church was brought in to help set these guidelines for film. It insinuated that homosexuality was sin, and it was a big issue to be monitored closely. As people will see in my book, there’s an extensive list of 1930s queer-coded horror movies, but once you get into the 40s, 50s, and even 60s, there aren’t many. Because of the Hays Code, writers and artists in film had to get more creative. They had to figure out ways to display queers on screen without being explicit. Luckily for us, we were very crafty, and were able to sneak in a bunch of stuff. Vito Russo called it gay sensibility. If you had gay sensibility, you’d be able to spot these ques.
HP: Do you think that has continued into current times?
AW: To an extent. I think it’s definitely gotten way more open. I think of the movie They/Them; regardless of what you think of the film, it’s a huge step considering that in the mid-2000s, films were still pretty coded, or gay was used as a slur. But to have a movie like They/Them exist from a major studio is huge. I think some television shows and movies still skirt around queerness, and they don’t say it outright. We saw that in our faces in Stranger Things. It was extremely coded, and I just wanted them to say it. I get it: the show is set in the 80s, and Will’s character was probably scared, but if you’re telling these stories, and you want to make queer viewers, especially young queer fans, comfortable, just say it!
HP: Can you tell me a little about what queer representation looks like in movies today?
AW: Horror scholarship, while it’s fabulous, and I can’t thank Harry Benshoff enough for writing Monsters in the Closet, that was in 1997. So we have all this other scholarship from the past two decades. It’s moving towards, how I phrase it, revenge through representation. Movies are reacting to the Trump era. You have films like the Fear Street trilogy, and The Perfection. In these movies, you have openly queer protagonists battling homophobes, pedophiles, racists, and sexists. They’re fighting all these groups that were emboldened and fueled by the far right and the Trump administration. The horror genre these days is very angry. It has a very fuck you attitude that I’m very pleased about.
Queer Screams is available now on McFarland Books and Amazon.
Books & Comics
Hellboy Comics 101: A Guide to Mike Mignola’s Horror Universe
If you’ve been paying attention to my articles, you know I’m a big fan of horror comics, and weird superhero stuff. And when it comes to perfect horror comics, no one even holds a candle in terms of success to Hellboy and the Mignolaverse. Created by writer, artist, and all-around media luminary Mike Mignola, the character of Hellboy has become a household name. A half-devil who fights against demonic forces and makes friends with monsters and misfits across the globe, most people know who he is without even picking up a single issue thanks to Guillermo Del Toro’s whimsical and action-packed movies Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. But I think that’s a shame, because every horror fan should try to read at least one Hellboy comic. I think a good chunk of you will find you don’t just like Hellboy in passing, you love the character. He’s charming, fun, tragic, deeply human in a way that is hard not to sympathize with, and philosophically fascinating. So today, intrepid Horror Press Reader, here is a crash course on getting into Hellboy comics. Beginning with some of the lore to pull you in and then handing you a reading order so you can start your Hellboy journey. So, let’s dive through the Abyss, into the depths of Pandemonium, to ask where it all starts.
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
When editor James Michael said we had free reign here at Horror Press this month, I knew that an article idea I’ve had on the back burner since my very first days writing here had to finally be realized. And thanks to Hellboy: The Crooked Man getting a widespread streaming release on Hulu, there’s no better time to talk about him.
If you’ve been paying attention to my articles, you know I’m a big fan of horror comics, and weird superhero stuff. And when it comes to perfect horror comics, no one even holds a candle in terms of success to Hellboy and the Mignolaverse. Created by writer, artist, and all-around media luminary Mike Mignola, the character of Hellboy has become a household name. A half-devil who fights against demonic forces and makes friends with monsters and misfits across the globe, most people know who he is without even picking up a single issue thanks to Guillermo Del Toro’s whimsical and action-packed movies Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
But I think that’s a shame, because every horror fan should try to read at least one Hellboy comic. I think a good chunk of you will find you don’t just like Hellboy in passing, you love the character. He’s charming, fun, tragic, deeply human in a way that is hard not to sympathize with, and philosophically fascinating. So today, intrepid Horror Press Reader, here is a crash course on getting into Hellboy comics. Beginning with some of the lore to pull you in and then handing you a reading order so you can start your Hellboy journey.
So, let’s dive through the Abyss, into the depths of Pandemonium, to ask where it all starts.
Spoilers ahead for Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, Hellboy in Hell, and plenty of other series.
WHAT ARE THE OGDRU JAHAD?
Like all good stories, it all really begins with a severed hand. And that iconic, rocky red fist of Hellboy’s is the Right Hand of Doom. To get into what it is, we have to go back to the origin of all things.
Watcher spirits were among the first beings on Earth, primordial titans sent to shepherd the planet by God. But one of them, Anum, attempted in his folly to give life to a creature of his own design using power he stole from his maker. What resulted was a great seven-headed dragon known as the Ogdru Jahad; seven chaos gods in one, the beasts were filled with darkness itself.
It began to populate the Earth with its offspring by the night it brought with it, flooding Earth with titanic eldritch horrors known as the Ogdru Hem. Not only were the Ogdru Hem prolific, many of them began creating their own offspring; the most common of which were “The Frogs”, amphibian monsters that spread by infecting living beings.
WHAT IS THE RIGHT HAND OF DOOM?
The horrified Watchers tried to kill and imprison as many Ogdru Hem as they could, while Anum sealed away the Ogdru Jahad. In the ensuing battle between the Watchers and Anum, Anum’s arm was severed, and he was killed. An angered God then sent the Watchers who made the monsters and killed Anum into the abyss; The Ogdru Jahad were trapped in a massive crystalline prison in outer space, while the Ogdru Hem were stripped of physical form or imprisoned under the earth. God’s remaining loyal Watchers became the first humans, the Hyperboreans.
As for Anum’s arm…that became the Right Hand of Doom. Because it was Anum’s hand that made the Ogdru Jahad, they could only be freed by that same hand. The limb calcified into its large, rocky shape, and soon stood as an artifact heralding a time when the Ogdru Jahad would escape.
WHO IS HELLBOY?
After the Watchers who killed Anum were sent into the abyss, more Watchers were made to serve Hyperborean humans as their guardians and servants—angels. These angels fell, and in a very Paradise Lost way, were reunited with their brothers in an actual physical realm within the Abyss, which came to be Hell.
Not just an infinite, purely metaphysical hell, but a sprawling domain out of time with defined boundaries and territories; its borders are impassable mountains and infinitely tall forests. These territories were divided up by the watchers turned demons into sorts of feudal kingdoms, resulting in the royal system of Dukes, Marquis, Princes, and Kings of Hell who oversaw armies hoping to one day escape and reign on Earth again.
Rewinding to the severed limb of Anum, it found its way into the possession of a demon named Azzael, a duke of Hell. Azzael, understanding how immensely powerful a hand that created chaos gods was, decided he would use the limb to shatter the boundary between Earth and Hell, allowing him to take control of both realms. But to do so, he had to graft it onto his favorite child: Anung Un Rama, the half-demon half-human we know as Hellboy.
When the other lords of Hell realized Azzael’s victory was at hand (pun very intended), they brought the hammer down on him and attempted to kill both him and Hellboy. Azzael cut off Hellboy’s arm, replaced it with the Right Hand of Doom, and banished Hellboy, hoping he’d return one day to free his father and conquer Earth and Hell.
WHY IS GREGORI RASPUTIN IN THE HELLBOY COMICS?
As Azzael created his minion in Hellboy, the Ogdru Jahad then made their own disciple to achieve their goals. They chose to empower the sorcerer and actual Russian historical figure Gregori Rasputin.
In the Hellboy universe, Rasputin wasn’t just an everyday mystic who kept getting up after failed murders; he had made a deal with the mythological Baba Yaga to grant him a measure of immortality. Touched by death and darkness, the Jahad gave him a new mission: retrieve the Right Hand of Doom to unlock his dark gods’ prison and bring about the apocalypse.
Rasputin, now truly undying and twice as nasty, allied himself with a contingent of occultist Nazis to gain the resources and manpower to summon Hellboy. Thrown through time and space by his father and pulled to Earth by Rasputin’s Project Ragna Rok machines, Hellboy landed on an island in Scotland in December of 1944 in a fiery explosion.
WHAT IS THE B.P.R.D.?
He was rescued from the clutches of Rasputin by his adoptive father, Trevor Bruttenholm, a paranormal investigator hired by President Roosevelt to stop the Nazis from acquiring occult artifacts and taking over the world. After this incident, Bruttenholm, now acutely aware of Hellboy’s summoning and the danger his power posed, formed the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development.
The B.P.R.D. entered a decades-long war against the fascist monsters who were now trying to use literal monsters to take over. This meant stopping vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, and homunculi (and of course, punching lots of Nazis, which is a thing the Hellboy comics love to do and something you love to see).
Soon after, the B.P.R.D. began training Hellboy to fight the supernatural battles normal field agents couldn’t, arming him with occult knowledge and pairing him with other “monstrous” assets like Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien. All the while, Hellboy is haunted by a myriad of dark visions and darker portents: of an apocalypse yet to come, where he embraces his demonic half fully, and razes the world in fire and blood. Can he fight against the inexorable path of prophecy, or will he become the monster everyone wants him to be?
And more importantly, will he ever get that paprika chicken he wanted so badly?
WHO ARE THE HEROES OF THE HELLBOY COMICS?
Of course, we have our more well-known supporting cast that have made cinematic appearances. At the front of the roster are Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, best friends in the B.P.R.D. brought together by traumatic pasts and their own inconvenient supernatural abilities. And who could forget the lovable Johann Kraus, with his ectoplasm form bound to a mechanical suit from Hellboy II: The Golden Army?
(And if you watched the really terrible Hellboy (2019), you know about Alice and Benjamin Daimio! You remember him right? The werejaguar? I promise he’s cooler in the comics.)
Whereas the origins of their powers are handwaved in the movies, the comics do a lot to develop the mysterious source of many of these characters’ abilities. Eventually, we learn Liz’s pyrokinesis comes from channeling a primal force of energy— Vril, the energy of creation, older than fire itself, and what Anum used to make the Ogdru Jahad. Abe, on the other hand, is an amphibious member of the species icthyo sapien, whose origins are tied to a bizarre cult called the Oannes Society, preparing humanity for the apocalypse through the use of super science.
But there’s also a host of other lovable characters roaming the B.P.R.D. that never made it to the films. Roger the Homunculus, one of Hellboy’s earliest allies, was originally an enemy woken from his slumber when Liz’s powers accidentally went into him and woke him up. Occult scholar Kate Corrigan gives the brunt of the exposition in the comics on the monster of the week Hellboy is fighting but also has a pretty fun rapport with Horn-Head himself.
Maybe the two most underrated protagonists of the comics, however, are my personal favorites: Panya, a still living mummy whose sweet old lady persona covers the fact she has more esoteric knowledge than she’s letting on, and Agent Ted Howards, a standard B.P.R.D. field agent who picks up an ancient Hyperborean sword which grants him the memories and powers of a prehistoric king (in a very blatant nod to Conan the Barbarian and his author, Robert E. Howard).
WHO ARE THE VILLAINS OF THE HELLBOY COMICS?
Of course, there’s the big dog of the Hellboy universe, Hellboy’s conjurer and archrival Rasputin. The mad sorcerer and most powerful scion of the Ogdru Jahad, as seen in the first Hellboy movie, is a pivotal character throughout the comics from beginning to end. But did you know his cohorts are much different in the comics? Ruprecht Kroenen, for instance, is not a mute clockwork ninja assassin who dies in combat, but rather an undead foppish SS officer whose commitment to Rasputin fluctuates throughout the series.
He’s also got a bromance going on with a man named Herman von Klempt, a disembodied head in a jar who uses cyborg gorillas as his servants.
As a matter of fact, Ilsa, Kroenen, and most of Rasputin’s cohorts are taken out of a cryogenic freeze by a group absent in the films, The Zinco Corporation. The CEO of Zinco, Landis Pope, is eventually rewarded for his cooperation with Rasputin by being transformed into a living being of shadow and fire known as The Black Flame. Though Rasputin is touched by the power of Ogdru Jahad and serves them, Pope was bathed in it completely; exposure to the totality of their power doesn’t just make him incredibly strong, it changes his mind irrevocably.
I should also mention my two favorite villains here as I did with my favorite heroes: Hecate, and Koshchei the Deathless. Hecate, the goddess of witches, is maybe the most mysterious antagonist of all the comics, and the payoff for her encounters with Hellboy throughout the series is perfect. Koshchei is a villain who was only barely teased at the ending of the abysmal 2019 Hellboy reboot film, but in the comics serves as a recurring antagonist and is incredibly hype even as a minor player.
He even got his own Koshchei in Hell miniseries, which is a follow-up to Hellboy in Hell! It slaps!
HOW DO I START READING HELLBOY COMICS?
Okay, now that I’ve got you hooked on all these awesome characters and lore, you might want to know how to start reading these comics. Is it easy?
Easier than you’d think, but harder than you’d hope. And that’s okay.
If you want the whole story of Hellboy, the B.P.R.D., and the apocalyptic finale all of those ominous visions the comics give us, you have to read a LOT of non-Hellboy titles. The grand overarching story of Hellboy is contained principally in 7 different series. And as much as I love the Hellboy comics, reading them blind is like traversing an Overlook-sized hedge maze. They jump around in characters and time often. Sometimes, minor characters from short stories or side series cause significant reverberations through the main Hellboy comics.
But the thing is, the struggle is worth it. And thanks to the thousands of dedicated Hellboy fans who congregate to dissect, discuss, and reminisce on the comics regularly, the path through has been made easier. So, this is my best attempt at making it even more digestible for you! Please note that the following is a heavily chopped and reordered version of the best reading order around, the 2023 Mignolaversity reading order written by the incomparable Mark Tweedale. He’s a prominent figure in the Hellboy fan community who illuminates the weaving and wacky timeline of the comics, and I’m endlessly grateful to him for doing so. This edited version is just the order I find the most approachable.
So, consider this the Official Horror Press Hellboy Reading Order!
We’re approaching this in trade paperback format, which means collections of issues reprinted and bound in big books, no single issue hunting out here. Omnibus Volumes are the key to not going crazy.
First, you’re going to read Hellboy Omnibus Volumes 1 & 2, and then Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Volumes 1 & 2. After this, read B.P.R.D. Omnibus Volumes 1 through 4. This is the beginning of everything, the quintessential Hellboy, and it contains the entire Plague of Frogs story cycle, which is the beginning of the end as everything gets progressively worse and froggier for our intrepid heroes.
Then, read Hellboy Omnibus Volumes 3 & 4. With Volume 4 comes the end of Hellboy-specific comics for a while as Big Red takes a backseat, with much of the focus shifting to the supporting cast dealing with an unfolding apocalypse on Earth (hence, B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth). Fans of Liz Sherman and Johann Kraus from the movies are going to have an amazing time reading all of the BPRD stuff!
And then will probably cry really hard!
As an intermission of sorts, read B.P.R.D.: Being Human. It develops a lot of the characters in flashbacks, and after Hellboy in Hell will probably comfort you, given Being Human is one of the last times we see the whole B.P.R.D. crew not completely suffering.
Next you’ll read, in this exact order:
Abe Sapien: The Drowning and Other Stories
B.P.R.D. Omnibus Volumes 5, 6, & 7
Abe Sapien: Dark and Terrible Volume 1
B.P.R.D: Omnibus Volume 8
Abe Sapien: Dark and Terrible Volume 2
and B.P.R.D.: Omnibus Volume 9.
I know the above seems needlessly complicated at a glance, but I was genuinely lost the first time reading the final issues of B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know because I had skipped out on all of the Abe Sapien content, making the very final pages of the entire series very confusing!
Speaking of which, finally, watch all of these series come together and meet their grisly, fiery, explosive end times finale with B.P.R.D. Omnibus Volume 10, which collects B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know, the final Hellboy and B.P.R.D. series.
Then, optionally, as an epilogue to the entire series, you can read the following three in order: reread Hellboy in Mexico from The Complete Short Stories, then read Frankenstein: Underground and Frankenstein: New World. Once all of this is done…you’re free! You can read any and all of the remaining short stories and miniseries. Hellboy: Weird Tales, Young Hellboy, Giant Robot Hellboy, Sir Edward Grey Witchfinder, Sledgehammer 44, Lobster Johnson, the world is your oyster!
I highly recommend you check out Hellboy in Love, it’s a sweet miniseries for that big red gorilla. And if you like Panya, be sure to check out Panya: The Mummy’s Curse!
WHAT? THAT’S LIKE A MILLION COMICS, I CAN’T AFFORD THAT!
Look, Hellboy comics aren’t free, and if you were to collect all of them at once, it would be very expensive. But the series has so much content you can be reading it for years. You don’t have to purchase it all at once, and because of how popular these comics are, chances of it going out of print are incredibly low.
On top of that, physical copies often go on sale for as low as half off—at the time of writing this, Hellboy Omnibus Edition Volumes 1-4 are on sale in a box set for 55 dollars on Amazon. That’s about a dollar an issue. It’s a steal. This is of course ignoring digital copies, which are even cheaper most of the time, but I’m a physical comics purist so I have to tell you about the cold, hard trade paperbacks.
That being said, if you still just want the essence of Hellboy, the core heart of those comics, you can stick to reading Hellboy Omnibus Edition Volumes 1-4, and The Complete Short Stories collections. It has a bit of a happier ending if you close out with Hellboy in Hell, but I think you’ll be doing yourself a major disservice by not reading through the True Ending route.
And if you just want to read one comic, Seed of Destruction is great. There’s a reason it made so many fans: it’s a solid piece of art, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find better stories.
Whatever path you take in your Hellboy comics journey, I wish you good luck. Happy reading, horror fans!
Books & Comics
[REVIEW] ‘Episode Thirteen’ Is The Best Found Footage Novel
Episode Thirteen follows Fade to Black, a ghost hunting show run by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin. Matt is the typical Jason Hawes type. He’s a believer and wants to do anything in his power to prove they are real, though he’s nowhere near as over the top as Zak Bagans. Claire is a scientist and her role in the show is to debunk the experiences they have. Fade to Black is set to film their next episode, their 13th episode, at the Foundation House. In the 70s, the Foundation House was home to researchers and flower children, called the Paranormal Research Foundation. Along with their team members Jessica Valenza, Kevin Linscott, and their cameraman Jake Wolfson, they embark on this soon-to-be-torn-down large house to find the secrets lurking within the halls.
There’s no other way to put it than the title: Episode Thirteen is the best found-footage novel. Growing up, I didn’t like reading. I would phone in my English classes. SparkNote the books we were supposed to read. And I never did extracurricular reading (except for House of Leaves during my senior year of high school and falling in love with it). That was until I had daily transits into Manhattan for work. After reading David Sodergren’s The Forgotten Island, I had the reading bug. One of the next books I picked up after David’s, besides his second book Night Shoot, was Craig DiLouie’s Episode Thirteen.
Episode Thirteen follows Fade to Black, a ghost hunting show run by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin. Matt is the typical Jason Hawes type. He’s a believer and wants to do anything in his power to prove they are real, though he’s nowhere near as over the top as Zak Bagans. Claire is a scientist and her role in the show is to debunk the experiences they have. Fade to Black is set to film their next episode, their 13th episode, at the Foundation House. In the 70s, the Foundation House was home to researchers and flower children, called the Paranormal Research Foundation. Along with their team members Jessica Valenza, Kevin Linscott, and their cameraman Jake Wolfson, they embark on this soon-to-be-torn-down large house to find the secrets lurking within the halls.
Little do they know, they might just end up patients of the now-deceased doctors.
As someone who is a very slow reader, epistolary novels piqued my interest. Rather than having to read 20 pages to get through a single chapter, it was refreshing to read two to five pages and quickly be met with a new chapter, which made it easier, and more fun, to read. I might not have been making progress faster than reading a non-epistolary novel, but it was the perception that helped.
Episode Thirteen melds the ideas of multiple different films to create a fascinating, and scary story, while still finding a way to feel unique and original. The novel is told through character journals, transcriptions of videos, emails and texts, and files Claire found from the Paranormal Research Foundation. There is no doubt that Episode Thirteen is one of the most unique novels ever written. Splashes of Session 9, Grave Encounters, Ghost Hunters, and Paranormal Activity shine through in appealing ways, but it’s when DiLouie lets the horrors of the Paranormal Research Foundation shine that the originality harshly breaks through.
One of the most appealing aspects of this novel is the tug-of-war between Claire and Matt. It’s made clear early on that Claire is tired of always being the butt of the story, the stick in the mud who says, “A happened because of B, which is what allowed C to happen.” She loves her husband, but is ready for “real science.” It’s not until everything starts to GO DOWN that Claire has a change of heart (this all winds up to one of the most terrifying sets of pages toward the latter end of the book). When it’s revealed, early-ish on, that this location is actually haunted, DiLouie throws off the gloves and takes no prisoners.
I appreciate how this film broaches the topic of apophenia. As someone who believes in ghosts, the supernatural, and non-human intelligence, I am well aware that, more often than not, what I see is either faked or a series of different scientific properties melding to create what looks, or seems, supernatural. DiLouie brings this topic up in a way that feels natural and doesn’t feel offensive to believers.
Craig DiLouie’s prose is beautiful, and the way he handles this story is worthy of his Bram Stoker Award nominations. The video transcriptions are all revealed to us in the same way, but it’s when we get the character journals that DiLouie gets to flex his character muscles. Throughout the journals, we get deep insights into each character. It’s impressive how he finds each character’s specific voice and caries it through each of their journal entries while still keeping the overall flow of the novel within its overall voice.
The attention to detail and creation of the Paranormal Research Foundation is fascinating. This group of maniacal doctors doped up on drugs and in search of a greater truth, is mainly told through EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon) and files found by Claire, slowly unravels their story into a twisted tale of experimentation and abuse. They’re almost trying to manufacture their own MK-Ultra with the goal of finding a God.
If you’ve never read a found footage (found fiction) novel, I can’t think of a better one to start with than Episode Thirteen. It’s a triumphant tale of love, loss, and the afterlife—those souls who are trapped here from fear, and the ones trapped here from anger. Craig DiLouie is a powerhouse of a horror writer who excels in scaring the shit out of you. If you like ghost stories, original horror, some fun references, and a heaping load of 60s flower power music, then Episode Thirteen is the novel for you.
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