Gods Just Want the Blood

   

"At 1:40 p.m., at the main branch of the New York public library on 5th avenue, ten people witnessed a free-floating, full-torso, vaporous apparition!"  -- Dr. Raymond Stantz GHOSTBUSTERS  1984

"The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures gives classifications to all known beasts, beings and spirits. These offer an at-a-glance guide to the perceived dangerousness of a creature. The five categories are as follows:
XXXXX   Known wizard killer / impossible to train or domesticate.
XXXX     Dangerous / requires specialist knowledge / skilled wizard may handle
XXX       Competent wizard should cope
XX         Harmless / may be domesticated
X            Boring "

--Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - a Harry Potter Schoolbook

Hellboy: Cut to the end, will ya? How do I kill it?
--Hellboy (the Movie) 2004

Arguably that last quote was in the movie as a gag and not a suggestion of the movie's world view but all those quotes suggest that the supernatural can be codified and neatly arranged into categories.  In fact, that's part of the fun of the Harry Potter books, taking the fantastic and treating it as a mundane science or a pragmatic piece of daily life.  In Role Playing Games, your characters and their adversaries are regulated by fixed rules and defined abilities.  But Mignola magic is much more dangerous.

The supernatural is chaotic.  Faerie magic is unknowable; you mess with them at your own peril.  And almost nothing fits into neat little categories.  The agents of the BPRD are more likely to say, "We ran into a pack of those little Scottish blue guys.  With the teeth and the ears.  Man, I hate those bastards." than to call them by a name from Celtic literature.  Okay, maybe Kate Corrigan, but she's an academic geek who loves that stuff.  She's got parchment dust under her fingernails.  We may look at those cool faerie folk that Mike draws and recognize them as something like the Tuatha de Danann, certainly some of the names have been used in the comics but Hellboy doesn't call them that.  He knows they've helped him a couple of times and still doesn't trust them.  According to Mike, the best modern interpretation of how Faerie works is the book "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke.  The only thing worse than a faery curse is when they decide they like you; they have entirely different agendas than mankind.  I highly recommend the audio version for long drives.  VERY long drives.

So there are no easy answers in Hellboy world.  If Kate is prepping something for a mission, she might say the MO sounds like a certain kind of troll in Scandinavian literature then quote a piece of a poem,  show a photo of a rock carving and the Latin diary of a lost troop of Roman soldiers.  It certainly isn't as easy as, "Hmm, vampire.  Okay, here's your silver cross, mustard seeds and garlic lozenges."  It's like the story of the vampire who laughed at a cross his about-to-be-lunch brandished, "Bad luck for you.  I'm Jewish."  Nothing works on every occasion.

Supernatural power is also radioactive in a way.  A paranormal event sends out ripples of secondary effects.  I love the panels in BOX FULL OF EVIL where the taxidermy deer heads drip blood.  They have nothing to do with the central ritual but they were affected by the radiating power of the forces it summoned.   That's why wind might rise before something bad happens or the crickets go silent before something creepy appears.

Rituals are a slightly different matter.  They draw their effectiveness from ancient agreements between the gods and men so you better do them right or suffer the consequences.  But over the years, a bunch of foofurah is usually added to impress the rabble.  Mike and I were discussing how to write dialogue for a goddess.  He was cutting lines that were right out of his early comics.  He said something like, "The gods are so powerful, they barely notice us.  Just enough to accept a sacrifice.  It's the priests who like the ritual, the fancy clothes, the chanting and flowery language.   The gods just want the blood."

Normally in the guidelines of an animated series, writers are given the rules of the fictional universe.  But in this area the rules are nebulous.  There's a tradition that if you step into a circle of mushrooms, "a faerie ring," you will be transported into their world.  But we take the view that that could happen to you walking down the hall to the bathroom.   A werewolf is supposed to be able to be killed by a silver bullet.  Maybe, if its hide isn't too thick.  Nothing is black and white.  Why?

Because it's scarier that way.

--Tad

Comments

[Gale Caswell]

OOOh. Cool.
Have a scary Christmas.

[stavner]

Wanna know how the monster and superhero hating aliens I created deal with their enemies?

Usually they just blast away at them with anti-matter bombs or lasers.

Usually....

[phil]

i agree about the nebulousness of the mythic/horror world...as per neil gaiman's blog a few days ago (re: flamethrower post): it is the mystery that stays with you, not the explanation.

[Uruloki]

Great comic strip! I'm still laughing...

[taterpatch]

That absolute deadpan "it's a living" attitude about the extraordinary was one of the things that made Ghostbusters funny (and Men in Black, for that matter). Somehow it never worked for me in Buffy, where it rang too snarky.

The sound effects of the dice in your strip reminded me of a question that's only relevant in animation. When HB walks, do his hooves go "click click click," like a goat or a woman in heels, or "clop, clop, clop" like a horse? And does he ever wear little cleft-toed ninja booties when he wants to be quiet? Just curious...

[Tad]

Sound effects? Whoa, I love working with sound in post but hadn't thought of his footsteps. Well, he definitely won't be sounding like a woman in high heels. But look closely at his feet and you'll find Hellboy doesn't walk on his hooves. At least not in the way of a goat or horse. He has human feet up to the point of the toes. That's where the hooves start. Who knows what that will sound like?

My main worry would be doing something "accurate" that ends up being distracting.

Good question!

[taterpatch]

Oh, nobody includes sound (heels, boots, dog-claws) except at those points where it will enhance the mood, and that's as it should be. In fact, I always liked the way Genndy Tartakovsky used silence in Samurai Jack.

And you're right, HB definitely has knees and heels instead of hocks. It's hard to tell how he walks sometimes, because Mignola usually puts his feet in shadow unless he's in midair, leaping or being blown up. I had always assumed he was balanced up on his toes.

Thanks for answering.

[Parker]

Another great post, Tad! And you made me very happy by including a GHOSTBUSTERS quote.

"You are so kind for helping that man."
"I don't think he's human."

[Toren Atkinson]

My roommate is the world's biggest Ghostbusters fan. Or at least Canada's. His website is http://www.protoncharging.com/ghostbusters/

That is how we met. I used to tape Real Ghostbusters when it first aired in the 80's. As a gamer I enjoy monster stats and classifications, and I used to draw the different ghosts from the show and tried to fit them into the different classes. Fun stuff. I know it isn't important for storytelling, but I do enjoy that Dan Aykroyd supernatural technobabble!