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Edwards, Jedidiah. "Satan or Savior? Analyzing the conflicting religious imagery of mike mignola’s hellboy." Thesis. Guilford College, 2020. Added by: joachim (11/09/2023, 10:46) |
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| Resource type: Thesis/Dissertation Language: en: English BibTeX citation key: Edwards2020 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Hellboy", Horror, Mignola. Mike, Religion, USA Creators: Edwards Publisher: Guilford College (Greensboro) |
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Attachments
Table of Contents  [2/13]
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URLs https://www.jstor. ... community.29406034 |
| Abstract |
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In 1994, budding comic book artist Mike Mignola made his debut as a writer with the creation of Hellboy, detailing the adventures of the demonic paranormal investigator of the same name. Twenty-five years later, Hellboy’s role as the hero of dozens of comic book storylines and three Hollywood blockbusters combined with his monstrous red appearance has made him something of a pop-culture icon. This thesis seeks to dissect this character and examine how he embodies two seemingly different religious icons - the demonic harbinger of the Apocalypse and the Messianic hero. The central question being asked is how can this protagonist incorporate both of these images and connected actions simultaneously, and how does this affect his moral standing. It is a literary assessment of a specific pop culture medium - the graphic novel - and how it uses its distinct visual storytelling style to present Hellboy, and how this impacts our relationship with the characters as readers in a society largely shaped by religion and religious symbols. It is also a historical investigation that seeks to identify from where the images of ‘the devil’ and ‘the Messiah’ and their respective connotations originate, and how Hellboy complicates these understandings by invoking both. My ultimate claim is that Mignola has created a character that gives us insight into the struggles of “the other,” especially one connected to a destructive destiny that they actively reject, while making us question what constitutes a hero within a 21st-century context. Throughout the work, I also ask us to consider the application of religion in a seemingly secular space, assessing the ways in which much older mythotypes and archetypes are used as the structural basis for many fictional characters even today.
Added by: joachim |