If you're reading this, you should also be checking out the podcast I co-host with the wonderful Seth McCombs where we talk about Hellboy. Check out the The BPRDCast on your podcatcher of choice.
I've been reading Hellboy for a long time. I first picked up Hellboy in anticipation of the 2004 film, the trailer of which excited me so much I bought the novelization of the movie while I was on vacation in Florida. I also bought the only Hellboy trade I could find in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire: The Right Hand of Doom. By the end of that trade, my excitement for the movie was almost completely supplanted by my excitement at the prospect of reading more Hellboy.
Now, any Hellboy fan worth their salt knows that the truly classic Hellboy stories are the short stories. Sure, there are some big, overarching stories that stand out (Wake the Devil is a masterpiece, in my opinion), but the real genius of Mike Mignola is in his short stories, his skill in spinning efficient, self-contained yarns that nevertheless feel stuffed to the brim with atmosphere and mythology.
So these stories are the creme-de-la-creme. What's the best one? What's the creme-de-la-creme of the creme-de-la-creme? Most Hellboy fans, I've found, will put The Corpse at the top of their list of best Hellboy stories. Or King Vold. Some might even put Pancakes, which is a two-page story that's better than most multi-issue arcs of other comics.
What would I put at the top? If you've read the title of this blog post (or if you've listened to The BPRDCast), you'll know my #1 Hellboy story is the oft-overlooked but masterful A Christmas Underground.
First things first, let's talk about why this story often gets overlooked. Part of it is where it happens to land in the short story collections. It's a part of The Chained Coffin and Others, a veritable goldmine of brilliant stories. It's got the aforementioned The Corpse. It's got Baba Yaga, chronologically the first story that features one of Hellboy's best villains. It's got the stunning, chilling The Chained Coffin and the wonderful action movie of a comic The Wolves of St August.
When you read through this trade and you've got this treasure trove of great comics, it's easy to overlook that weird Christmas story in the middle. I certainly did.
For years. I would reread Chained Coffin for the umpteenth time, get to A Christmas Underground, and say, "Enh, I'll skim this one. It's a Christmas story. Why am I going to read this right now? It's mid-July. I've got some real meaty fight scenes to get to." And so, A Christmas Underground would sit there in the middle of the book, not unread but never truly read.
That changed this past year, when I read it for the podcast. If you don't listen to The BPRDCast (you should), we devote each episode to a Hellboy story. This means we're doing deeper, more critical reads than we normally would when reading for fun. We have to bring stuff to the table to talk about. We'd been doing the podcast for a while, and it was time to cover A Christmas Underground. I shrugged, sat down early that morning in preparation for recording later that night. "I remember this being an okay story," I thought, "but not one worth getting that excited about."
So I read it.
Then I read it again.
And I came away gobsmacked.
A week or so later, I had to read it again.
And now it's my favorite Hellboy story ever.
If you haven't read this story, here's the gist. An old woman, Mrs. Hatch, is dying. She's lived alone in her family mansion for years, wasting away. On Christmas Eve, her priest sends for Hellboy. The woman asks Hellboy to bring her daughter, Annie, a little tin box. She's delirious, and thinks Hellboy is Father Christmas, but Hellboy, being a good dude, agrees to do this anyway.
Annie has been missing for five years, but Hellboy, following a hunch, checks the mansion's graveyard and finds a magical, underground palace of sorts. He also finds Annie, who seems to be living out a fantasy as some sort of Princess. Though her memory is off, she seems to remember that she was brought down to this palace by a dark figure, whom she married.
Long story short, everything is vampires.
The first thing that struck me about this story is that it's essentially a creepshow take on The Nutcracker: the young, imaginative woman, lured down to a magical world by a mysterious figure (also worth noting: it's a mouse with silver eyes that beckons her down into the tunnel). She's promised "everything (she) could want."
It's a dark take on a child's fairy tale; it's almost how an adult would interpret the story of The Nutcracker. There's an inherent tragedy to waking up and realizing that something you found wonderful as a child is strange and disturbing through your adult eyes. This is true of The Nutcracker. This is true of Father Christmas. And heck, this is true of Christmas.
To get somewhat personal, Christmas 2019 was an emotionally tumultuous Christmas season for me. It was the first Christmas I spent apart from my nuclear family. Now, I spent Christmas day with my wife, and it was wonderful, but for most of December I was, for the first time, feeling that sense of loneliness and loss that other people talk about feeling on Christmas. I had never felt that, not really. Sure, I'd had Christmases where I was a little down, a little "Eh, things aren't the same," but never the anxiety that something in my life had been lost, and I wasn't sure if that loss was permanent or not.
Things only got more difficult when my wife suffered a death in the family while we were in New Hampshire to visit my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law.
Now, when I read -- or even think about -- A Christmas Underground, I either tear up or full on cry. Something about this story of a young girl and her mother, separated at Christmastime by an ugly version of childhood dreams, captures the sadness of Christmas as perfectly as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The ache, the feeling that you've lost something with age but you don't know what...that's all beautifully embodied by these two characters.
To put an even more sinister spin on the theme, Annie has been joined by her other relatives as they die, one by one. They die, and they become vampires. And down in this tomb, they have a morbid, ghostly, emotionless Christmas dinner prepared.
Also, they're all vampires. Hellboy fights them.
Before he does, however, Hellboy gives Annie the gift from her mother. She opens the tin box to find a crucifix, which sets everything on fire and seemingly liberates her from her trance state.
That's right: Annie is healed by a gift from her mother, delivered by Father Christmas.
So we see this dual nature of old Christmas traditions: yes, they can be dark and sad and creepy when viewed through an adult lens, but they can also be healing; they can reunite us even as years pass and the possibility of returning to a place of childhood Christmas joy feels more and more impossible.
The panels I've put above are the ones that make me cry. Annie and Mrs. Hatch reunite, and neither of them can really be put back together again, but for a little while, they can remember who they used to be and take comfort in each other's love.
There is no animosity here. As this reunion occurs, Hellboy is battling the demon who rules the underground palace, but that's barely a footnote to the true climax of the story. The reunion we see above is the reason to read this comic. It's simple. The dialogue is almost Pinter-esque in its simplicity. But so much is conveyed, so much emotion, so much pathos. I think these might be the best four panels in Hellboy's history and there's not even a mention of Hellboy.
So why did I overlook this story before? I guess I had to really experience life as an adult. I had to feel what it's like to suddenly feel a million miles away from where you were as a child, to feel lost and confused and to feel like you've forgotten someone or something of immeasurable importance. And I've felt what it's like to feel the joy that comes from getting somewhere even close to the magic you felt as a child at Christmas.
The best superhero moments are acts of kindness. It's not punching a robot in the face. It's not closing the big, blue portal to another dimension before it destroys New York. It's things like Superman convincing a teenager not to commit suicide. Like Nightwing helping a disabled Barbara Gordon do a fun trapeze routine. Like Spider-Man helping a kid study. These are the moments in comics that resonate, and that's what this story is for Hellboy. Hellboy doesn't have a world-ending threat to take care of. There's just an old woman, alone and dying, and Hellboy asks if there's anything he can do.
This story is an act of kindness. It's the best kind of superhero comic.
And that's why it's my favorite Hellboy story.
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