B.P.R.D: 1946
September 16th 2009 02:11
Category: Graphic Novels/Comics
Created by Mike Mignola
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Production Team: Mike Mignola – story/cover art, Joshua Dysart – story, Paul Azaceta – art, Nick Filardi – colours, Clem Robbins – letters & Dave Stewart – cover art
Cost: AU$28.14/US$17.95
The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, an organisation headed up by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and founded at the behest of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the occult forces and menaces that the Third Reich were attempting to unleash against the Allies during the Second World War. If you have seen the original Hellboy movie then you’ll realise that in 1944 the Reich under the auspices of Grigori Rasputin, the infamous mad monk of Tsarist Russia, attempted to unleash the Ogdru Jahad against the world. This was just one of many such schemes as in that same year another scheme was hatched by the Nazi’s one that would have unforeseen consequences when two years later the armed forces of the Reich have surrendered and the once mighty capital of Berlin is a rubble strewn wreck occupied by the victorious forces of the Allies.
At a glance the Hellboy universe seems to be one that relies heavy on the whole concept that the actions of the past can have severe implications for the future. Look at the two recent films that have been released they all have this motif running through their plots, an element of something that occurred in the past being of major significance for events that unfold in the contemporaneous era. In this case the consequences involved the immediate past, 1944 and their consequences for the world of two years later on down the track. The other motif that seems to drive along Mike Mignola’s storytelling is the seeming obsession of leaders to delve into the dark arts or forbidden knowledge in order to bring their various agendas to fruition, in particular this is focused on Hitler and his desire to employ whatever means necessary to win the war and ensure his Reich’s continued rule.
Of course when science is added in the mix of occult schemes and machinations then things become even more nightmarish than one could possibly imagine, unless of course you happen to be either Mike Mignola or Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Let’s face it science has brought many useful conveniences into the world, this website on which you reading my ponderings is a product of scientific ingenuity but then again so are nuclear warheads and biochemical weapons and regardless how you may feel they are not useful to the general public in their everyday fairly normal lives. Technology and science can be twisted and perverted and in this particular graphic novel we are witness to just what grisly ends they can be devoted when combined with occult lore.
Two years after the incident which saw Hellboy enter into the world of man Professor Trevor Bruttenholm has made his way into the veritable dark heart of the Third Reich. And let’s not forget that even though this is 1946, two years after the war has finished the Reich is not completely vanquished, its armies, navies and air forces may have given up and surrendered but there are other weapons, other sources of potential chaos and carnage that lie amidst the rubble and ruins of the once great city of Berlin. Just as even today in our current era unexploded ordinance of all sorts can be found across the length and breadth of the European continental landmass so to in the shadows of pre Cold War Berlin lurk similar dangers and pitfalls.
No doubt you think I am sounding rather overly melodramatic here, perhaps, but when all is said and done part of the mystique of B.P.R.D and Hellboy lies in the horror element. And in the horror genre sometimes a little bit of melodrama goes a long way to building tension, suspense and then absolute fright at certain key points. This isn’t Beverly Hills 90210 here, its men delving into things and areas that are best left unsaid and undiscovered, and so there is a certain need to stick to the conventions of the genre. Otherwise you just end up looking rather silly and lame, and no one wants a lame action/horror graphic novel, it makes you think the shop where you purchased it from has somehow gipped you.
Our protagonist has come to Berlin along with an assistant and friend of his, one Dr Howard Eaton, to find answers as well as cataloguing all the occult material and knowledge left behind by the Nazi’s in the fall of Berlin. It seems that over the last few years allied soldiers have been discovering all manner of ambiguous items and incidents that defy rational explanation. This is where the B.P.R.D comes in, however they are not the only ones interested in what various occult items, lore and paraphernalia the Nazi’s managed to get their hands on and employ during the years of their regime. Other parties are just as interested in such fields, namely the Soviets, and they have begun implementing a systematic operation to recover as much knowledge and items as they can whilst in charge of their particular sector of the former German capital.
You’d think that in the Stalinist Soviet Union the study of the occult or esoteric would be looked upon with at best scorn if not some kind of recidivist, reactionary bourgeois tendency that needed to be purged swiftly and brutally. Of course it doesn’t take into account the fact that at previous points in the past the Russians themselves it seems have resorted to occult means to achieve their agenda and Stalin seems no more different in this regard than the Tsars whom he and his compatriots overthrew in the revolution. What these Soviet occultists are unaware of is the fact that even though the body politic of the Reich may be dead it still has horrors that it can unleash upon an unsuspecting world via both occult and scientific means. Imagine if you will a plague of blood thirst vampires unleashed upon the unsuspecting masses of America, imagine these vampires in their insatiable hunger infecting those that they feed upon and thus heralding the creation of an endless, ever hungry horde of leeches. Such is Vampir Sturm; an operation conceived by Hitler and his lackey Himmler and carried out in the year of 1944.
It’s good to see that the vampires portrayed in this work are inhuman, bloodthirsty monsters rather than the usual svelte fashion pates that seem to people the standard vampire fare nowadays. They fit in nicely with the brooding and doom laden atmosphere that seems to permeate the pages of this graphic novel. In fact even though it is set in 1946 there is a certain millenarian vibe to the whole story enhanced by the dark, sombre imagery employed. Edgar Allen Poe would probably have been a fan of this work, frankly I felt it was a well written finely crafted piece of art, definitely worth getting a hold of and enjoying…in the hours of light, definitely do not read it during the hours of darkness if you don’t want to get the hebbie jebbies…
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Production Team: Mike Mignola – story/cover art, Joshua Dysart – story, Paul Azaceta – art, Nick Filardi – colours, Clem Robbins – letters & Dave Stewart – cover art
Cost: AU$28.14/US$17.95
The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, an organisation headed up by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and founded at the behest of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the occult forces and menaces that the Third Reich were attempting to unleash against the Allies during the Second World War. If you have seen the original Hellboy movie then you’ll realise that in 1944 the Reich under the auspices of Grigori Rasputin, the infamous mad monk of Tsarist Russia, attempted to unleash the Ogdru Jahad against the world. This was just one of many such schemes as in that same year another scheme was hatched by the Nazi’s one that would have unforeseen consequences when two years later the armed forces of the Reich have surrendered and the once mighty capital of Berlin is a rubble strewn wreck occupied by the victorious forces of the Allies.
Two years after the incident which saw Hellboy enter into the world of man Professor Trevor Bruttenholm has made his way into the veritable dark heart of the Third Reich. And let’s not forget that even though this is 1946, two years after the war has finished the Reich is not completely vanquished, its armies, navies and air forces may have given up and surrendered but there are other weapons, other sources of potential chaos and carnage that lie amidst the rubble and ruins of the once great city of Berlin. Just as even today in our current era unexploded ordinance of all sorts can be found across the length and breadth of the European continental landmass so to in the shadows of pre Cold War Berlin lurk similar dangers and pitfalls.
No doubt you think I am sounding rather overly melodramatic here, perhaps, but when all is said and done part of the mystique of B.P.R.D and Hellboy lies in the horror element. And in the horror genre sometimes a little bit of melodrama goes a long way to building tension, suspense and then absolute fright at certain key points. This isn’t Beverly Hills 90210 here, its men delving into things and areas that are best left unsaid and undiscovered, and so there is a certain need to stick to the conventions of the genre. Otherwise you just end up looking rather silly and lame, and no one wants a lame action/horror graphic novel, it makes you think the shop where you purchased it from has somehow gipped you.
Our protagonist has come to Berlin along with an assistant and friend of his, one Dr Howard Eaton, to find answers as well as cataloguing all the occult material and knowledge left behind by the Nazi’s in the fall of Berlin. It seems that over the last few years allied soldiers have been discovering all manner of ambiguous items and incidents that defy rational explanation. This is where the B.P.R.D comes in, however they are not the only ones interested in what various occult items, lore and paraphernalia the Nazi’s managed to get their hands on and employ during the years of their regime. Other parties are just as interested in such fields, namely the Soviets, and they have begun implementing a systematic operation to recover as much knowledge and items as they can whilst in charge of their particular sector of the former German capital.
You’d think that in the Stalinist Soviet Union the study of the occult or esoteric would be looked upon with at best scorn if not some kind of recidivist, reactionary bourgeois tendency that needed to be purged swiftly and brutally. Of course it doesn’t take into account the fact that at previous points in the past the Russians themselves it seems have resorted to occult means to achieve their agenda and Stalin seems no more different in this regard than the Tsars whom he and his compatriots overthrew in the revolution. What these Soviet occultists are unaware of is the fact that even though the body politic of the Reich may be dead it still has horrors that it can unleash upon an unsuspecting world via both occult and scientific means. Imagine if you will a plague of blood thirst vampires unleashed upon the unsuspecting masses of America, imagine these vampires in their insatiable hunger infecting those that they feed upon and thus heralding the creation of an endless, ever hungry horde of leeches. Such is Vampir Sturm; an operation conceived by Hitler and his lackey Himmler and carried out in the year of 1944.
It’s good to see that the vampires portrayed in this work are inhuman, bloodthirsty monsters rather than the usual svelte fashion pates that seem to people the standard vampire fare nowadays. They fit in nicely with the brooding and doom laden atmosphere that seems to permeate the pages of this graphic novel. In fact even though it is set in 1946 there is a certain millenarian vibe to the whole story enhanced by the dark, sombre imagery employed. Edgar Allen Poe would probably have been a fan of this work, frankly I felt it was a well written finely crafted piece of art, definitely worth getting a hold of and enjoying…in the hours of light, definitely do not read it during the hours of darkness if you don’t want to get the hebbie jebbies…
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