Hellboy: Winter Special: 2016 #1

This special delivered its four dollars'worth by cramming a ton of great art and storytelling into one comic. It's a lot of fun to read, and I love the winter theme. I'll be reading this until Spring rolls around and re-reading in in joyful anticipation before the 2017 Hellboy Winter Special. Read Full Review

Over the course of five stories you get to see the world's of the Mignola-verse in all its variety. If you have ever wondered what the fuss is about regarding Hellboy and his gang, this is a great opportunity for you to dip your toe in. Read Full Review

Fans of Hellboy will love this winter special. Its a sample of everything that makes the character and the universe he inhabits great. Read Full Review

If you need a quick Hellboy fix, you could do far worse than picking up this one-shot anthology issue. Read Full Review

This collection of short vignettes from some of the best in the business read like spooky campfire stories from three different periods. Read Full Review

Obviously, this was great. Can we please make this an annual tradition? That'd be awesome. Read Full Review

A variety of creators leads to some interesting productions in this short story collection. A must-have for fans of Hellboy and a curious sampling for the uninitiated. Read Full Review

Earlier Hellboy comic books were known for their convictive short stories, but we don’t get that degree of intensity here. Even so, there are more good things than there are bad in this issue. With any Hellboy comic book, I’ll give it a shot, since I love Hellboy. If you’re a fan, too, and want a few quick stories to satisfy your Hellboy craving, this is it. I would have loved to see Hellboy a bit more, but this is a great issue nonetheless, so I definitely recommend checking it out. Read Full Review

Despite the impressive display of artistic capabilities, none of these Hellboy stories reached the full potential of the character, and almost all relied on similar tropes. A winter collection is a fun idea, but for this one, I'd wait to see what's in store for spring. Read Full Review

Dean Rankine closes the book down with a two-page Lobster Johnson joke; this is an example of a short that really is just a punch line waiting to happen, but that works well. It knows what it's aiming for and jumps right in with gusto. In the end, it's a nice silly note to end the comic on. Ultimately, there's more things to like than not here, but it is a shame that two of the three main shorts didn't live up to their potential. Early "Hellboy" comics were known for their strong short stories, and that pedigree isn't accurately reflected here. Read Full Review

Anthologies are always a tricky proposition. "Hellboy: Winter Special" offers three short stories and one two-page story. They showcase a wide range of writers and artists and mostly center around Mike Mignola creations, two contain Hellboy. There isn't a dud in the bunch, but there isn't anything too memorable either. This is a decent read for four bucks if you like Hellboy and other Mike Mignola ideas. Read Full Review

BrightestDaycare.com

Feb 02, 2016

I liked reading these short stories, but they just didn't really jump out at me. Seeing Mignola, Oeming and Tim Sale all working on the book was neat, and I liked how different each of the stories looked. But I just couldn't get myself to really LOVE reading this book. It looked neat, but the story stories felt too, I guess the word is, short. It just felt like the stories rushed a bit too much. Things looked nice, so maybe going back and re-reading it will make them flow a little better if I take my time to really pour over the pages. But just reading casually I felt like I finished the book too soon. I like that these books are made periodically, because it allows new readers to jump into Hellboy and BPRD and Abe Sapien and Lobster Johnso n and all the Mignolaverse titles that have a pretty hefty back catalogue of stories to get into. more