BPRD

So, I started reading Drew’s Hellboy graphic novels after I saw the movie.  I like the stories, the concept, and the characters, but something about the execution of Hellboy (the art? the spareness of language? I dunno.) doesn’t grab me fully.  I read them because I want to like them, not because I love them.

But I love the BPRD series.  Whatever I was struggling with in Hellboy is not there in the BPRD books, and I am absolutely hooked.  Drew got hooked, too — he bought one, then went and bought eight more.  So I’m happily consuming the entire series from the start, and loving every minute.

BPRD stands for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, and tells the tales of the operatives who usually work alongside Hellboy… now working without him.  Abe Sapien, Kate Corrigan (“try fieldwork, he said.”), Liz Sherman, Roger the Homunculous, Johann Krauss, and others.  Each of them is a tortured personality — it’s not simple or easy being “special” in our world, and they’re fighting off a Lovecraftian evil that no one understands.  The stories are filled with action and heroics, but it’s the small things that keep me coming back.  The small humor (“I’m wearing pants.” “That’s not better.”), the gut-wrenching emotion (the wendigo, Abe’s past, Roger), the extremely smart character development.

And Liz Sherman speaks to me.  Her mantra of “The fire is not my enemy, it is a part of me, it is mine” speaks to me.  Who among us doesn’t have some facet of our personality that causes that kind of conflict? I know I do.  And there are times when I see those facets as the enemy… but times when I need them, when I have to use them, when they’re important and real and right… and they are not the enemy.  They are a part of me.  They are mine.  They may not blow things up or explode in flame, but they’re real parts of who I am, dangerous or not.  Stories that can draw those kinds of very human parallels in such a fantastic setting impress me.

So I’m going to keep reading, oh yes I am.