As a fan of Art Balthazar from as far back as my early teens, and someone who's gotten to follow his Itty Bitty Works & meet him in person, I would have leapt buildings in a single bound for the chance to read this book.

I have seen a lot of the other reviews of this graphic novel from people who don't seem to be very acquainted with the Itty Bitty universe at all, and I want to set the record straight on saying this merges in perfectly with it. Sure, it's a different universe than Tiny Titans exists in, but it's generally the same kind of thing.

It's kid friendly, introduces all of your favorite characters -- our heroes, our villains, our companions. The book goes through the real world, to hell, to heaven, to outer space and underwater, as well as cute, cheerful things as normal as building fortresses out of boxes, getting crushes on new people in your life, and having birthday parties.

I think this would be a great reader for fans of Hellboy to be able to give to their kids, or young close relations.


Earlier reviewer for Dark Horse Comics & Diamond Book Distributors. ( )

ARC provided by NetGalley

I’ve been a fan of Hellboy for a few years now and I’m always up for the opportunity to read new adventures with the characters. Although I haven’t read a lot of the itty, bitty series before, I’m familiar with the style and type of storytelling they bring to the characters and it’s fun. So what could possibly go wrong by combining the two together? Well...a bit actually.

I’ll start with the good. The good is that the artwork is pretty good. The images are bright, cheery, uplifting, and uncomplicated which fits the stories well. The characters are cute, funny and adorable, which makes the book great for kids and adults to read together. And...well most of the time the gags are amusing.

The bad? Well the bad is that the Hellboy gang doesn’t really lend itself well to the comedy we see in this collection. I mean the Hellboy stories and gang are, well dark in nature and it works really well for older readers. And I know some people are thinking “well the kids don’t know that the stories are dark so they should enjoy this right?” Well...no. Again the characters were never developed for a younger audience or for humor and gags. I mean the obvious is that Hellboy is from...hell. How do you explain that part to a young kid? I mean I know it can be done, but it kinda takes the humor out of the situation doesn’t it? And his enemies include Rasputin, who some of the kids might recognize from Anastasia as the evil wizard who won’t die, and Baba Yaga, a dark witch from Grimm’s fairy tales. There’s no making these two cute and cuddly no matter what type of spin you put on it. The other problem is that the gags become repetitive and stale, even for younger readers. We got it...Roger doesn’t like wearing underpants and will take them off any chance he gets. In a short book it gets old really, really fast.

In short, while the artwork is cute and adorable, Hellboy is best left in the adult world. I give the book 3 out of 5 stars. ( )

All I can say is this was too freaking cute. All the major characters are in the book and most of the stories are done in 2-3 pages. There are some story arcs but nothing too detailed. I would gladly hand this over to some young fan of the Hellboy movies to read and not worry about them tripping over anything hard to understand that would be in the regular Hellboy stories.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Netgalley ( )