“Look Roger, A Dead Alien”: Extraterrestrial Life and Esotericism in Mike Mignola’s Hellboy
摘要
The chapter focuses on the presence of extraterrestrial beings in significant events within Hellboy. Mass culture products, such as comic books, are vessels for the survival of ideas, their transformation (visually and textually), their communication, and their consumption. Through diverse fragments of Hellboy’s stories, I analyse how aliens integrate the intricate network of possible references and sources used by Mike Mignola, Hellboy’s author, intimately related to ideas and practices from esoteric currents and literature. I use one extraterrestrial character in particular, the Visitor, as a vehicle to navigate through the constant dialogue between works of fiction, popular culture, science, and the production of religious currents. By looking at these elements from the perspective of the comic book alien actions and nature, we can argue for the role of comics as vehicles, causes, and progenitors of ideas, images, and objects in terms of the survival and constant transformation of culture and religious thought, including here the belief and understanding of extraterrestrial life.