SuperHeroBooks - On Earth As It Is In Hell (Hellboy)
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List Price: $6.99
Our Price: $2.94
Your Save: $ 4.05 ( 58% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Pocket Star
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416507826
ISBN: 1416507825
Label: Pocket Star
Manufacturer: Pocket Star
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2005-09-27
Publisher: Pocket Star
Studio: Pocket Star
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: The book starts off great, especially the first chapter, but quickly goes downhill. You really need to be a huge Hellboy fan to enjoy this book, I think. Technically, the writing is fine. But the pacing is slow. Some of the plot seems forced, and there's no humor or "magic" to the writing. It's rather dry for a pulp story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Super Reader
Comment: This book is considerably longer, and perhaps the better for it, with room for more characters. It is much longer than the two preceding Golden works, and does not have the dozens of illustrations those had, either, so a story with some more depth and background.
While the other books have been a little more action oriented, this is more introspective and melancholy. Given that it literally depicts a battle between the forces of heaven and hell, with the BPRD caught in between. In clear and present detail you see the effects of their jobs and fights upon their own psyches, as well as the victims.
This is based around the struggle for The Masada Scroll. This document was written by Jesus as a septuagenarian or thereabouts, shortly before a certain Roman officer had a landscaping party at the Masada fortress, forcing a mass suicide.
It comes to light in the mid 1900s, and is buried in the Vatican. Found again, the Opus Angelorum faction send seraphim to destroy it, while the demon Moloch is plotting to other ends.
Hellboy is swallowed by Leviathin, a rookie psychometric has to read a demon after Liz battles angels, and the veteran field team end up in Tartarus.
Pretty hardcore. Not a lot of light hearted wisecracks and jokes to be found here, just stressed out black humor and nasty choices.
Never read anything else by Brian Hodge, but certainly worth looking him up now, I think.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow Beginner Wins the Race
Comment: This novel started off slow and i do mean slow. The writing was slightly confusing at times or hard to understand, like he was trying to reinvent English. I had got bored with the book and put it down several times but by midway through geez-la-weez. I could not put it down and i became an insomniac, staying up till 4:30 in the morning to finish it because it was that damn good.
On a side note, i also thought this was a Comic/Graphic Novel with nice beautiful art by Mr Mike but twas not. Not like i hate reading, its just what i was looking for and what i got were two different things, so be weary. Amazon needs to state it somewhere or at least let us look inside the damn book
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overall a good read, but not without its flaws...
Comment: I liked it. Good solid story, albeit a tad confusing at times. Characterizations seemed spot-on enough. New characters got just enough of spotlight, so that the story didn't seem to be just about the headliners.
The flaws? Well the author falls into the trap of giving the backstory of all the headliners. Nothing all too horrible, but I've read just enough franchise-turned novels to see this is a reoccuring problem.
Personally, if an author feels the need to do this, I suggest taking a leaf from a Farscape novel I read once. In said book, before the story even began there was a single page that outlined all the headliners, with brief descriptions & whatnot. Afterwards, the book just treated them as characters, and didn't drag the reader through a re-envisionment of a backstory that fans of the series should already know.
The only other problem I had with this novel was that I found it a tad confusing. There was a bit much mythos to be had, and sometimes it was fairly difficult to wrap your head around it all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lacking Mignola's Art
Comment: Other reviewers here have dealt with the book itself and there is no need to repeat what was said there. The story is pretty good, though someone who has not read the comics will not be able to jump right in to the book.
What is very sad is this Hellboy novel, unlike the previous two written by Christopher Golden, does not beyond the cover feature any Mignola artwork . This is a great disappointment. The other novels benefitted from Mignola's illustrations and this one would have done the same.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Fifty years ago, a blood-red, cloven-hoofed demon was conjured up by Axis powers at the end of World War II, but adopted by the United States government, which gave him the name Hellboy and raised him in secrecy. Today, Hellboy is a top field agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. He questions the unknown -- then beats it into submission. His latest case: Angels have attacked the Vatican, destroying an entire floor of the building's precious library. That's a new one, even for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. The BPRD dispatches Hellboy and his amphibious colleague, Abe Sapien, to investigate. When they arrive on the scene, they discover that thousands of documents from all eras of history have been destroyed -- except for one, saved from the holy fire by an obsessive scholar. His prize? An ancient scroll allegedly written by Jesus the Nazarene -- decades after the crucifixion. Hellboy's first thought is that the scroll was the focus of the seraphim's attack -- but why would heavenly creatures undertake such violence and ruin? The answer to this puzzle will lead Hellboy down a terrifying trail to ancient gods, vengeful demons, and a hidden world made of the purest evil....
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