B.P.R.D.: Being Human

What I like most about Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson’s documented love of short stories is that Mike Mignola  loves to exploit– er, make that, utilize the publishing opportunities it provides.  This means that in the gaps between collections of the next “proper” arcs of “Hellboy” and “B.P.R.D.” we occasionally get volumes like this that collect the various ancillary mini-series and one-shots that are published in between.  This happens a lot with “Hellboy” and many of those collections, like “The Crooked Man And Others,” are among the very best in the series.  “Being Human” is the only the second such collection of side-stories from “B.P.R.D.” (well, after it be came an ongoing “series of mini-series” from vol. 3 onward) and while it’s not an essential read, it is a fun one.

There is a unifying theme for all the stories collected here, as they’re all tales of certain cast members earliest days with the organization.  “The Dead Remembered,” written by Mignola and Scott Allie, is the longest of the bunch and tells us about Liz Sherman’s first outing with Prof. Bruttenholm.  Convinced by Hellboy that a trip to Massachusetts to exorcise a ghost haunting the house of a priest will be a good chance for the sullen pyrokinetic to re-connect with ordinary life.  Naturally this happens through the relationship she strikes up with a local boy as the two eventually try to solve the mystery of the accused witch who died in the forest.  It’s not nearly as “Scooby-Doo” as I’m making it sound as the supernatural bits were suitably intense thanks to Karl Moline’s art.   Though I also enjoyed seeing Prof. Bruttenholm doing his thing in a more modern setting, Liz’s arc and the story’s twist were both very predictable.  You’ll see a lot of familiar beats in Liz’s character arc here, and while that doesn’t make it a bad story, I was expecting better.

“Casualties” is a short that effectively functions as a coda to “The Dead Remembered,” as Liz and Abe go werewolf hunting and the sole human member of their team winds up getting caught in the crossfire.  While their subsequent recriminations about the incident are nothing new, Liz’s ultimate conclusions and how they tie into the previous story do provide some welcome insight on why she continues to remain with the team.  This Mignola/Allie-scripted story also has art by the always excellent Guy Davis, whose presence will certainly be missed after his last “B.P.R.D.” story is collected in the next proper volume.

The next story wasn’t published under the “B.P.R.D.” banner as its full title is “Hellboy:  Being Human.”  I think we’ve all been spoiled rotten by the collaborations between Mignola and artist Richard Corben this year, but their work together is one good thing you can never have too much of.  Here, Hellboy takes Roger the Homunculus on his first mission to a haunted plantation in South Carolina.  As the title of the story implies, Roger learns a little more about what it means to be human when a crazed descendant of the plantation’s owner decides to extract some vengeance on the spirits of him and his family.  This is just as creepy and engaging as the previous Mignola/Corben collaborations and the best story in the collection, even before longtime readers like me take into account the nostalgia factor of seeing Roger again after all these years.

“The Ectoplasmic Man” is a solo story for — wait for it — Johann Kraus.  It’s also his origin story as we see both how he lost his body and how he came to work for the B.P.R.D.  A mass possession in China and a very hungry demon are both independently related factors to this incident.  The more I think about it, the more this story works in setting up Johann’s ongoing need for retribution against slights to his character.  This Mignola/John Arcudi-written tale was a good finish with some great art from Ben Stenbeck.

So when your worst story is merely “okay,” I’d say that’s a victory for any anthology-style collection.