Hellboy: The Movie
As a fan of Mike Mignola's Hellboy character since the original comic book mini-series "Seed of Destruction" was released in 1994, I was a little baffled when I first heard (way back in late 2001) that a movie was in development. On one hand, I'm happy in general when a comic book movie gets made, and even moreso for a character I care about. But on the other hand, Hollywood has made some execrable films from comics ("Howard The Duck," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2," "Batman & Robin," "Superman 3," the list is too long) and I'd rather have a good comic that no one knows about than a bad movie that turns everyone off to the character completely.

Adding to that level of queasiness is the fact that the entire Hellboy comic universe is drawn by the master artist Mignola, whose art, though not 100 percent unique, is highly-stylized and one of the main attractions of the comic. Thus, how could a live-action film hope to possibly capture the look and feel of the very two-dimensional, yet compelling comics.

Helping to assuade much of my fears, though, are the facts that the director, Guillermo Del Toro ("Mimic," "The Devil's Backbone," "Cronos," "Blade II") is a big fan of the comics and that Mignola has been very involved with the creation of the film. Also, a 10-minute feature on the film is available at BestBuy.com which reveals that not only is the screenplay based on "Seed of Destruction" but that many of the film's stars look strikingly similar to their comics counterparts.

Aside from creating an animated film in the style of Mignola's art, the upcoming Sony Pictures film is looking like the best live-action film anyone could possibly make about Hellboy. Come April 2, here's hoping that's enough.

Official Movie Web site