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This Saturday, March 22, is Hellboy Day, with Dark Horse Comics celebrating the 20th anniversary of Mike Mignola’s surprisingly everyman demon with a number of events across the country (and, indeed, the world) and a special 20th anniversary sampler featuring new work by Mignola and other creators — and The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive preview of New Yorker cartoonist R. Sikoryak’s contribution.
Hellboy Day celebrates the character whose first mini-series (Seed of Destruction) was launched in March 1994. Since that small beginning, the character has gone on to star in two live-action movies directed by Guillermo del Toro, two animated movies, two video games and multiple comic books, becoming the anchor of Dark Horse’s “Mignolaverse,” a line that includes spinoff titles including BPRD and Lobster Johnston among many others.
STORY: Dark Horse Declares ‘Hellboy Day’
“Mike Mignola is the embodiment of all that I hoped Dark Horse could be,” said Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson. “Mike is an example of a talented creator who seized the opportunity and has become a shining light in the field of creator-owned comic books. Mike’s Hellboy stands side-by-side with Paul Chadwick‘s Concrete, Stan Sakai‘s Usagi Yojimbo, Frank Miller‘s Sin City, to name a few.”
In addition to the celebrations on March 22, Dark Horse is marking the anniversary with Hellboy: The First 20 Years, a deluxe, oversized hardcover collecting Mignola’s favorite covers and illustrations from the series, from his first drawing of the character through 20 years of publishing. Released in comic book stores on Wednesday, the hardcover will be available in bookstores on April 1.
Saturday’s events include appearances by creators of the various Hellboy and BPRD titles in comic book stores across the U.S., as well as in the U.K., Argentina and Brazil (A full list is below), as well as the Hellboy 20th Anniversary Sampler, which includes a brand-new Hellboy strip by Mignola and artists Fabio Moon and Dave Stewart.
It also includes some amazing work by R. Sikoryak, who takes his skill with comic pastiche that made his Masterpiece Comics such a joy and applies it to Hellboy and friends, re-creating the characters in the likeness of famous newspaper strips.
“Mignola’s characters have such distinct personalities, and iconic designs, they hold up through really diverse interpretations, from the films, to the cartoons, to the recent Itty Bitty Hellboy,” said Scott Allie, editor of the Hellboy series and its spinoffs. “Mike and I are big fans of Sikoryak, who’s notorious for mashing up classic or modern art styles for really counterintuitive homages — he once did Waiting for Godot for us, recast with Beavis and Butthead. So we asked him to cut loose on Mike’s characters, and what he gave us is the weirdest Sunday comics section of all time.”
You don’t have to wait until Saturday to read Sikoryak’s work — it’s right here in an exclusive preview, followed by a listing of the many Hellboy Day events happening this weekend. But you should pick up the 20th Anniversary Sampler nonetheless, if only for a chance to see “The Coffin Man,” the new Mignola/Moon/Stewart strip, for yourself.
Mike Mignola — Meltdown Comics — Los Angeles, Calif.
2 p.m.
Meltdown Comics
7522 Sunset Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 851-7223
Tyler Crook, Dave Stewart & Scott Allie — TFAW – Portland, Ore.
7 p.m.–10 p.m.
Things From Another World — Portland location
2916 NE Broadway St.
Portland, Oregon 97232
(503) 284-4693
Duncan Fregredo, Laurence Campbell, & Mick McMahon — Gosh! Comics
London, England
2 p.m.–4 p.m.
Gosh! Comics
1 Berwick Street
London W1F 0DR
Tel: 020 7636 1011
Art Baltazar — AW YEAH! Comics — Skokie, Ill.
AW YEAH COMICS!
4933 Oakton Street
Skokie, Ill. 60077
(847) 423-2916
Franco — Midtown Comics, Downtown, NYC
2 p.m.–4p.m.
Midtown Comics — Downtown location
64 Fulton St
New York, N.Y. 10038
(212) 302-8192
Sebastian & Max Fiumara – Buenos Aires, Argentina
Moebius Liceo
Av. Santa Fe 2729 local
13 P. Baja
1425 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fabio Moon — Sao Paulo, Brazil — School
Quanta Academia de Artes
Rua Dr. José de Queirós Aranha, 246
Vila Mariana
São Paulo, SP, 04106-061, Brasil
0(XX)11 3214-0553
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