Wherever Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy” movies didn’t quite match the original comics, del Toro confidently made the material his own. Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) all look like they stepped straight off the pages of Mike Mignola’s original comics. Mignola wrote these three fantastical heroes like ordinary working stiffs working an extraordinary job, while the movie versions of these B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) employees are less stoic, more romantic, and softhearted.
Changes in characterization aside, Perlman is perfectly cast as Hellboy and he’s maintained he’d only come back to the franchise if del Toro did too. Yet del Toro’s trilogy-wrapping “Hellboy III” has been unfortunately left for dead, cast into development hell in a most cruel twist of fate.
We have only an incomplete picture of del Toro’s plans for “Hellboy III,” and plans put into practice can and inevitably do change. Case in point, del Toro originally wanted “Hellboy II” to include another “Mignolaverse” hero. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2006, two years before “Hellboy II” premiered, del Toro said he’d wanted to cast Bruce Campbell of “Evil Dead” fame as Lobster Johnson. “Sadly, Mike [Mignola] is very protective of Lobster Johnson,” del Toro explained.
In the “Hellboy” universe, “the Lobster” was a masked vigilante active in early 20th century New York. From 1932 to 1939, he fought gangsters, Nazi spies, twisted scientists ,and occultists. His glove contained a heated-brand carved in the shape of his lobster claw insignia; he’d burn the lobster symbol into the foreheads of villains he defeated. The Lobster was later turned into the star of pulp novels and comics, which a young Hellboy read and adored.
Campbell would’ve been a perfect fit for del Toro’s “Hellboy” — del Toro doesn’t do farce like “Evil Dead” creator Sam Raimi does but his movies sometimes lean into horror comedy, which Campbell excels at. Seeing the actor share the screen with Perlman sounds like a team-up for the ages. Plus, Campbell looks like a superhero. (I’d like to live in the timeline where Campbell and Raimi made a Batman movie together in the ’90s.) In “Army of Darkness,” Campbell’s Ash Williams is trying to be the action hero his chin deserves, but constantly failing.
Unsurprisingly, there are also now real “Lobster Johnson” comics, telling the “true” story of the hero’s life. Mostly written by Mignola and John Arcudi (“B.P.R.D”), the comics’ artists include Tonči Zonjić and Sebastian Fiumara. Buy why should you love Lobster Johnson as much as Hellboy himself does?
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