ABRAHAM STONE 1 and 2, by Joe Kubert, in standard comic size.
(There's also a third European-formatted 9" X 12"
ABRAHAM STONE: COUNTRY MOUSE, CITY RAT issue by Kubert from another publisher)
ELRIC (Marvel Graphic Novel 2) by Craig Russell. Plus other work in EPIC ILLUSTRATED and later ELRIC series.
CAVEWOMAN: PANGAEAN SEA , begun in a PROLOGUE issue, and then 1-3, 0, and 4-11, by Budd Root. Frustratingly, the final issue 12 has been so long delayed that I wonder if it will ever be published. Artist Budd Root pretty much (since Dec 2009) only does covers on new releases these days (interior new CAVEWOMAN material done by other artists).
What I love about HELLBOY is foremost Mignola's art, but also the mixture of H.P Lovecraft-inspired horror and interdimensional demons, mixed with Golden Age pulp-hero elements, and incorporating real ghost stories, basically all the things Mignola himself loves. Hellboy is also quite funny at points, the character fights demons with the same annoyed reluctance that a plumber or carpenter would take on a dirty job. Add into the mix some fictionalized real-world characters like Rasputin and supernaturally re-animated World War II Nazis, it's unlike anything else being published. New stories by Mignola are fairly rare, maybe a 1 to 4-issue series once a year at most. I'm not a fan of the HELLBOY material scripted by Mignola but illustrated by others.
The first series in 1993 was
HELLBOY:SEED OF DESTRUCTION 1-4, with "Monkeyman and O'Brien" backup stories by Arthur Adams.
The HELLBOY stories are mostly pretty self-contained, you can read a 1-issue or 2-issue or 4-issue story without having to know past continuity and becoming lost.
I first discovered HELLBOY right before the first movie was released in 2002, and finished reading the first 5 collected trades right before the first movie came out. So I was excited about the movie. And rare for comic-based movies, I thought both movies were very true to the comic version.
HIP FLASK was a very once-every-few-years kind of publication, by Jose Ladronn. I describe the art as like Jack Kirby pencils inked by Liberatore. Airbrushed and a sight to behold. The best of the bunch is the first issue, HIP FLASK: UNNATURAL SELECTION, that I re-read several times and thought was absolutely breathtaking.
The only problem is the issues were published so sporadically that Ladronn's art visibly evolved and changed from issue to issue, and therefore was a bit inconsistent. But interesting regardless. Each issue had several variant covers, and at least one nice (but overpriced) collected hardcover edition.
I was really into GROO for a long time,
across GROO's many series and one-shots. GROO first appeared as a backup in DESTROYER DUCK 1, with some backups in STARSLAYER and EPIC ILLUSTRATED, before becoming a regular series for Pacific Comics for 7 issues, and when Pacific went bankrupt, one GROO SPECIAL from Eclipse. All this early material was collected in the 6-issue nicely formatted
GROO CHRONICLES from Marvel/Epic in 1989.
Then there was a long 120-issue run for Marvel/Epic in a regular comics format. I had a girlfriend at the time (circa 1992-1993) who really enjoyed reading GROO, and with the moral at the end of each issue, we joked among ourselves that GROO was our religion, that we were "Grooists".
I followed GROO after it was cancelled by Epic, and started a new Image series in 1995, but thought the art declined a lot. I decided to stop buying with the 12th issue, and found out years later that the series was cancelled with issue 12 anyway.
After that, GROO is more of a sporadic occsasional one-shot or miniseries here and there, some I've seen, most I haven't. And also the two Graphic novels I have, THE LIFE OF GROO, and THE DEATH OF GROO.
