Yeah, it is odd. Horrorfan's here too, it seems, so that's at least one more. And, since he brought up the DVDs, I'd like to comment that I just finished watching Hellboy: Blood and Iron and The Amazing Screw-On Head last night, courtesy of a month-old TIVO'ing and Netflix, respectively.
Both were great, although I loved Screw-On Head's utterly random jackassery more. Much like another favorite of mine, The Venture Brothers, Screw-On Head takes a lot of the conventions of the genres Mignola plays with most--horror, action, historical fiction--and turns them on their heads in some hilarious ways. David Hyde Pierce was phenomenal as Emperor Zombie, who's just a great character in general. One of my favorite parts of the whole thing was where Zombie actually
demotes himself from "Emperor Zombie" to "Mr. Zombie" because he "takes orders from the demigod now."
Beyond just the great acting and funny gags, Screw-On Head captures Mignola's style in animation pretty damn amazingly. It was honestly like watching a Mignola comic come to life. I give it 10 out of 10 screwable appendages.
Blood and Iron was also great. The voice cast in particular was pretty impressive. Ron Perlman's voice is always a joy to hear coming from Hellboy's mouth; it has just the right combination of grumpiness and sarcasm. Doug Jones does an admirable job aping David Hyde Pierce's movie Abe. Peri Gilpin's voice is one of my all-time favorite voices, and it works perfectly for Kate Corrigan. The only big-name star who sounded kind of sub-par was Selma Blair, who sounded like she phoned in her performance a bit.
The story was excellent. It's basically a cold case from Professor Bruttenholm's pre-Hellboy prime that comes back to haunt him, which is my favorite kind of Hellboy story, since it allows Mignola to weave historical fiction into the present-day workings in that seemingly effortless, well-researched way he does. One thing I liked about this plot in particular was the fact that Bruttenholm actually does some heavy lifting toward its resolution, rather than languishing in the background while Hellboy, Abe, and Liz handle everything. I don't want to spoil anything by going any further into it, but Bruttenholm basically emerges as the real hero of the story, giving a nice sense of closure to his era-spanning adventure.
My one disappointment in Blood and Iron, along with the previous direct-to-DVD movie Sword of Storms, is the fact that the cast is kept so small. You can do anything in animation and the plot did call for some extra BPRD members besides the main trio, so why couldn't we have gotten Ben Daimio or Johann Kraus in on the action instead of "the human metal detector"? Oh well, maybe in future DVDs. I'm hoping for a DVD that deals with the discovery of Roger the Homunculus, at the very least.
I'd give Blood and Iron a solid 8 out of 10.
