Is the new ‘Hellboy’ the comic book industry’s last unfilmable idea?

In the symphony of weirdness in the comic book medium, Mike Mignola is the virtuoso, first chair, concertmaster par excellence. Pushing to one side his museum of phenomenal side project oddities like The Amazing Screw-On Head and Joe Golem, 30 years of Hellboy comics have consistently exceeded expectations while never giving fans an inch of consistent narrative ground to stand on. Longtime readers have been unsettled by crooked men, freaked out by foul-mouthed leprechauns, had their hearts broken by a troll-witch, and, if only vicariously, gone drinking with skeletons. 

All of which is to say that when Mignola announces something bizarre – maybe too bizarre for tourists – his audience knows to go limp and enjoy the ride. That’s never been more true than it is right now, with the comic auteur’s recent unveiling of his newest project: Giant Robot Hellboy. Based on the quarantine-era sketches produced for charity by Mignola, It’s a story with a premise that’d be tough to not over explain, the gist of which is that Hellboy gets trapped by nefarious forces and has his mind put into a giant robot version of himself. It does what it says on the tin.

Would Hollywood even think of touching Giant Robot Hellboy? Image via Dark Horse Comics What makes the upcoming series so remarkable (besides Mignola’s return to the world of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. after half a decade) is the way that, in 2023, it might just be the last mainstream comic book that isn’t clearly begging for a big screen adaptation. If anything, in a franchise with a historically murky run of Hollywood reinterpretations, Giant Robot Hellboy seems specifically designed to be impossible to pitch to a studio with a straight face: A character that audiences have had a hard time connecting with in the past, but this time, he’s Mechagodzilla. Purposely, impenetrably bizarre, it’s practically to sci-fi what “Lonesome Schoolboy Blues” or “Vampire Money” were to music: An outstretched, bright red, stone middle finger to the idea that any producer will ever make a paycheck off the back of this work.

Although, in fairness, the counterpoint to all of this is that Guillermo del Toro, the director of the first two Hellboy movies, also created Pacific Rim and this could all be a setup to the most ill-advised crossover flick of all time. They wouldn’t do that, right? Right? Guys?

The three-part Giant Robot Hellboy is written by Mike Mignola, and illustrated by returning Hellboy artist Duncan Fegredo. Published by Dark Horse Comics, the first issue is due to hit shelves October 25, 2023.