5 out of 5

This… is perfection.  Something hilarious, something surprisingly touching, and something that even adds – non-distractingly – to the Mignolaverse sense of history.  And anything that makes Rich Corben’s art relevant to me (as I’m not usually a fan) deserves additional notice as is.

Hellboy In Mexico (fittingly subtitled ‘or, A Drunken Blur’) starts with Abe and HB dragging a box with mysterious, mumbling contents through the desert, taking haven from the sun in a rundown gas station.  Inside, Abe finds some pictures of some masked luchadores and… Hellboy.  Without looking up, HB begins to relate the tale.

Which is perfect in and of itself: three brothres / wrestlers who’ve taken up the holy quest to hunt monsters enlist HB (who’d been left behind on an investigation by some unnamed B.P.R.D.ers) to assist, and the trio + demon go on nightly hunts followed by drinking binges.  Corben has tons of fun here – brightly colored by Dave Stewart – contorting the luchadores around snarling vampire types for bloody and fun fisticuffs, then on to the revelry.

But Mignola steps things up a note by having one of the brothers fall during a fight, changing the dynamic and leading up to an emotional and climactic – and then outside of context, hilarious – wrestling match between HB and a beastie known as Camazotz.

Corben stays on point the entire time (he normally has one or two panels or pages where it feels like he couldn’t get something to look right but then just left it), and Mignola wraps up the tale with an epilogue that combines the silly and sad sensibilities excellently.

Stunning work, in the guise of something goofy.