Hellboy II: The Golden Army

The sequel to the first incredible feature film adaptation of Mike Mignola’s horror hero Hellboy is on its way. The official site is live for fans to check in and see concept art, poster images and read the production blog.

Mignola describes the sequel thusly:

It’s not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world. I kind of equate it to the whole American Indian situation. The Indians were shoved onto reservations. You had your old, wise Indians who said, “You know, this is the way it is. We can’t fight anymore. We just have to accept our fate.” You then have your Geronimo character saying, “Or we could just kill the White Man.” That’s kind of the situation we have in the film. We have our elf characters resigning to the way things are and then there’s one saying, “Or we could take the world back.” The main difference is – what if the Indians had a nuclear warhead? The elves have their equivalent of the weapon that is too terrible to use. What if this guy decided to use it?

The first film, while a tad repetitive in parts (Hellboy punches monster, monster punches Hellboy… repeat), captured the characters from the comic book series quite well and also the detailed visuals as if they came straight from Mignola‘s pen!

I have a lot of hope that the sequel will be even more successful.

The Batman ‘Green Lantern’

In an interview with ComicBookResources.com, producer Alan Burnett let a few secrets out for fans of The Batman cartoon. One of them is for the upcoming Green Lantern episode entitled Ring Toss.

“I like Kyle Rayner and I like Guy [Gardner] and I like John [Stewart],” remarked Burnett. “They each have their qualities that I like. But the idea here was that we were dealing with a young Batman so the young Green Lantern or the first Green Lantern was who we were going with.

“When we did the Flash episode, you didn’t know who he was under that mask. I always thought it was Barry Allen, so that was our approach and that’s why we went with Hal Jordan.”

The veteran writer said it was sheer coincidence that Green Lantern would be introduced on “The Batman” the same year the character enjoyed such an incredible following in comics due to the success of the “Sinestro Corps War” storyline. “That’s just a fluke, just a coincidence,” laughed Burnett. “But it worked out well because I wrote ‘Tales of Sinestro Corps Presents: Cyborg Superman,’ which was just one book out of a big story from Geoff Johns; an epic story, so I, strangely enough, got to do some homework for the comic book, which helped me get into the Green Lantern mode for doing this episode.”

Providing the voice of Green Lantern is Dermot Mulroney, whose breakout movie role was 20 years ago in “Young Guns.” His siblings Kieran and Michele Mulroney also co-wrote the screenplay for George Miller’s live action “Justice League of America” film. “Dermot’s the guy from ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ with Julia Roberts. I think this is the first superhero he has voiced and only his second time working in animation,” explained Burnett. “We also have Miguel Ferrer (“Twin Peaks,” “Robocop”) as Sinestro and the Penguin is in there too.

“In the story, through a series of circumstances, the Penguin gets his hand on the ring,” laughed Burnett. “That’s going to be a lot of fun. There’s a lot of good action in it. In fact, it’s one big fight in this particular episode because everybody is after the ring.”

The season has been great fun so far and many are sad to hear that this fifth season will be the last. In truth, the jury is still out on that one, but with most of the animation team working on the upcoming Spectacular Spider-Man series, I can’t see how a season 6 could work… or even a season one of the new Justice League of America.

But we can hope.