Professeur Hellboy?

It soon became obvious to me upon arriving in France that I didn't really have an organized plan to learn the French language. Yes, I bought and have nearly finished the "Rosetta Stone" computer-based French language course, both Levels I & II, but although it's a good starting point, you cannot realistically expect it to provide you with fluent French. I doubt there is any language program that can do this short of true immersion. I do pick up some French at work, but in general people speak so goddamn fast that I still miss the vast majority of what people are saying. My "teletexte" experiment with the T.V. helps some, but even this is still a little bit beyond my level of expertise. So I've turned to another medium to help me learn French a little bit better: comic books!

It's nice because (a) the stories are not prohibitively long, (b) there are pictures to help you piece together what's happening, and (c) it allows me to add to my already impressive collection of 2000+ comic books. My comic book ("bande-dessinee") of choice thus far has been the V.F. ("version-Francais") of Mike Mignola's HELLBOY. Perhaps you've seen the movie, which is not half-bad. The main character is a demon originally conjured up by the mad monk Rasputin during World War II in an attempt to gain victory for the Third Reich. Through a twist of fate, however, Hellboy was raised by the British and adopted a rather human sense of morals, at several points in the comic rejecting his pre-ordained destiny as Destroyer of the Earth. He spends his days investigating bizarre occult phenomena through the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD).

As a result, my French vocabulary is a little more distorted. I know the words for coffin (le cercueil), bloodthirsty (sanguinaire), werewolf (loup-garou), to curse (maudire), goblin (le lutin), and witchcraft (la sorcellerie). However, I just learned the word for "keyboard" (e.g. for a computer--it's "le clavier") a few days ago. Well, I suppose I will be well-prepared if I run into any French vampires or poltergeists...