jazzfish | Hellboy 1-3 / Pearls 2

Mike Mignola and John Byrne, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction
Mike Mignola, Hellboy: Wake the Devil / Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others

Hellboy falls into the category of "comic books I kept meaning to read because I kept hearing how great they were from a variety of sources." Preacher's in there as well. The first Hellboy book (written by John Byrne, drawn by Mignola) is pretty cool. Nazis, an origin story, dumps you right into the middle of something that feels like a long-ongoing tale without leaving you totally lost. Well drawn and exciting. Number two (Wake the Devil) is the first 'long' Hellboy arc that Mignola wrote himself. It's a bit rough in places, but it's also where we really get some of the humor showing through. "Smoke on the horizon." "Hellboy must be blowing things up again." Etc. More backstory, which is good, and hints of a Great Fate awaiting Hellboy, which isn't. (Had quite enough of that in David Eddings, thank you.) The third book is a collection of shorter pieces written at various times (I don't think any are earlier than Seed, but I'm not sure). They range from pretty cool (The Iron Shoes) to only so-so, but the dialogue and the art are excellent. Hellboy is officially Good Stuff, and I'll read the other two collections on the next slow day at work.

Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine: This Little Piggy Stayed Home

As of this writing, the LJ RSS feed for Pearls is b0rked. This makes me sad.

I discovered Pearls by picking up the first collection at work one day and reading the strip on the back:

Rat: If you could have a conversation with one person, living or dead, who would it be?
Pig: The living one.
Pig: You must think I'm really stupid.

That got a louder-than-usual "Heh" and I started reading, and haven't really been able to stop. It's dark and witty and occasionally involves random characters from elsewhere. (There's several weeks in the second book where various characters defect to other strips.)