Hellboy the submariner

[benday-dot]

I'm still making my way through the wonderful Hellboy mythos. I just started reading "The Island" from volume 6 of the tpb series. It is reported in the beginning of that story that Hellboy previously spent 2 years in the ocean.

This surprised me, because in the previous tale, "The Third Wish", it appears as though the only reason Hellboy could breathe underwater was due to the nail the Bog Roosh hammered into his skull. Of course that nail is yanked free of Hellboy in the last few pages of the story. Thereafter, we see Hellboy just sort of float away, unconscious perhaps.

How did he float about for 2 years without that nail to "protect" him?

This may have been covered, and I'm likely missing something obvious, but it would be nice to have an answer from the knowledgeable people here.

Thanks.

[Jake Capps]

I'm still making my way through the wonderful Hellboy mythos. I just started reading "The Island" from volume 6 of the tpb series. It is reported in the beginning of that story that Hellboy previously spent 2 years in the ocean.

This surprised me, because in the previous tale, "The Third Wish", it appears as though the only reason Hellboy could breathe underwater was due to the nail the Bog Roosh hammered into his skull. Of course that nail is yanked free of Hellboy in the last few pages of the story. Thereafter, we see Hellboy just sort of float away, unconscious perhaps.

How did he float about for 2 years without that nail to "protect" him?

This may have been covered, and I'm likely missing something obvious, but it would be nice to have an answer from the knowledgeable people here.

Thanks.

I thought he was demon spawn from hell...so he don't die good.

[mattmanw54301]

the 2 years happens BEFORE Hellboy wakes up in the lair of the Bog Roosh.

[pimpernel]

How did he float about for 2 years without that nail to "protect" him?

A boat i assume.

Are you sure it doesn't say he spent two years at sea? I haven't read it in a while so i can't remember...

[Boston Style]

i always took it to mean that the events of the Third Wish took place over the course of 2 years......

[JohnThompson]

I always took it to mean that Mike Mignola didn't write a new series for 2 years, so he used a little creative license to fill the time gap. This is a comic book after all.

By the same token, does the fact that a comic takes a month (or more) between issues mean that the characters just stand around idly between issues? Or are we maybe being just a bit too literal?:biggrin:

[Kees_L]

I took it like what Boston Style said.
Hellboy taking a break, spending it not on land but at sea, for finding out it wasn't no break at all as the adventures simply opted to continue. As such all developments of rich and deep importance, but not to be taken either lightly or unmysteriously.
As in any *horror / kick-ass folklore* narrative, there would seem little need for mysterykillin' - such would be like clay pigeons to buffer huntsmen (and vice-versa I guess). Would you perhaps know what I mean?

[Jackson Brody]

To paraphrase something Scott Allie said in the lettercol, Hellboy's walking in more magical worlds these days, so the normal rules don't apply. Everything is happening in "The Present Day."

[benday-dot]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I suspect either mattmanw54301 or Boston Style must be correct. The whole tale took 2 years to play itself out, with the greater length of time being the period after Hellboy had the nail hammered in his horn and just before he regained consciousness from this trauma, a prisoner in the realm of the Bog Roosh..

Really, I'm usually not hung up on these these things. You are all correct of course... it is comic book, and a most magical comic book at that.

However, the discrepancy just stuck with me, because of a couple things:

First Hellboy does explicitly state that "I just spent a chunk of time at the bottom of the ocean." The statement is then footnoted to a clarification of Mignola's as being "two years."

So Hellboy was walking among the fishes for two years if we are to take a fairly literal statement, well literally. This great time of more or less non-activity in Hellboy's otherwise very storied life took me by surprise.

This surprise was additionally accented with me, because I just read Mignola's introduction to the Third Wish in wish he makes special mention of his need, in preparing his story, of coming up with a device to enable Hellboy to breathe under water. In the story itself this device is revealed to be the nail in the horn.

.. and then the nail comes out and it seems in fairly good order Hellboy floats away to the next chapter of his life. You don't get the impression that 2 years have transpired between The Third Wish and The Island.

I sound like I'm after a no-prize, but really I was just genuinely confused and taken aback by this 2 years at the bottom of the ocean business.