I am a Hellboy Fan

Mike Mignola has inspired me since the age of 14. I was fortunate enough to fall upon his works pretty much as soon as I started getting into comics and I was immediately hooked. I had experienced all the classic Marvel and DC superheroes and whutnot, but never before had I seen a comic so drastically different from that stuff, so original in content and so visually delicious. At any rate, it became the one comic I had to buy, and Mike Mignola became my favorite artist throughout the years and to this day. I've followed everything Hellboy, from the toys, to the movie to the recent animated series...I am a Hellboy fan for life. You can understand my fanboy panic that ensued then, once I discovered Mike Mignola, after a multitude of years of drawing Hellboy comics...was deciding to leave the drawing to someone else....How would it be possible to captivate the same essence, the same style?....They would never find a suitable artist, that would be willing to replicate his distinct style. I had my doubts, but mostly I was sad to hear Mike wouldn't be the one drawing HB anymore.

It is then announced that this one guy will be doing the art that is to replace Mike's art: Duncan Fegredo. I checked his site and found something drastically different from Mike Mignola, casting even more uncertainty into my fanboy heart. When your favorite comic in the world gets a new artist, you hope he damn well has a style that is very similar to that of the original artist's.
Mike Mignola was still behind everything though, so I had confidence it was at least going to be alright.

I recently picked up the first two issues of the first ever Hellboy series not drawn by Mike Mignola himself, with Duncan Fegredo doing the artwork. I was blown away. The style is not the same, but its damn close. Enough so that some panels look as if they were drawn by Mignola himself. Colours, design, panel design, composition. dialogue...Everything but the art itself was exaclly the same as the old Mignola comics. the art itself borrows very much from the style characteristics that defines Mignola's style, except it is distinctly not his...it is more solid and detailed. In any fashion, I am extremely happy with Fegredo as the take-over artist. Here are some comparison panels.

MIKE MIGNOLA



DUNCAN FEGREDO