6 GreatHellboyComics You Should…Probably Read Instead of SeeingHellboy, Honestly

full word ! TheHellboy rebootis out today . Bad intelligence ! It’sapparently not keen . Acceptable compromise word : If all the fuss fix you concerned in Big Red , then there ’s plenty of with child comics lead with the fictitious character that you could check out instead of making a disappointing misstep to the motion picture theatre . Here ’s a few of our choice suggestions .

The Hellboy comics chronology is a weird one — as weird as any cartoon strip continuity , really , but even then , over the past 25 yr it ’s darted about , across time and many different serial and spinoff series . Thanks to omnibus freeing in recent yr that have begun to unpick the serial ’ mythos in chronological order , pick up the first Hellboy omnibus and going from there is perfectly reasonable for a first time reader . But if you want something a bit more curated , here ’s just a few entries from across the Hellboy pantheon to satisfy any curiosity the build up to the moving-picture show might have instilled .

Seed of Destruction

Might as well start from the beginning , correct ? The iconic first Hellboy story delves into his lineage , but it ’s primarily specify well into his vocation as extremity of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense , as Hellboy regain himself investigate the death of the professor that brought him in after the Nazi ritual that summoned him to Earth as a child .

class of Release : 1994

Darkness Calls

This plot line kicks off a three - volume saga that is reckon one of the highlighting of the entire Hellboy comics ouevre , and it ’s where the fresh motion-picture show actually draws some of its plotlines from , revolving around the reappearance of Nimue , the stock Queen . This first storyline , however , is of a much more supernaturally spooky bent , as Hellboy finds himself trap in Baba Yaga ’s traction after turn away to become King of Hecate ’s witch .

If you like it , follow up with The Wild Hunt and The Storm and the Fury , for something even similar to what the new motion-picture show is doing … although perhaps in a more enjoyable style ?

yr of Release : 2007

Why see a not-great Hellboy movie when you could read some excellent comics?

Why see a not-great Hellboy movie when you could read some excellent comics?Image: Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Comics)

The Corpse and The Iron Shoes

Looking for something a little weirder and small - scale ? This duology of short stories has some important connections to the broad Hellboy mythos by introducing the new Alice Monaghan , who ’s played by Sasha Lane in the unexampled movie . The Corpse , a darkly funny chronicle about fairy abductions , serves as Alice ’s origin , while The Iron Shoes , a short aside produce to bulk out a collected release of The Corpse , features Hellboy crossing paths with a quaint and intriguing creature known only as Iron Shoes .

Year of Release : 1996

Hellboy in Hell

If Darkness phone , Wild Hunt , and Storm and the Fury represent larger-than-life Hellboy storytelling at its most sweeping and rarefied , Hellboy in Hell represents it at its most personal and knowledgeable . A saga age in the making , it chart Hellboy ’s slow journey of acceptance of his own closing , having conk at the flood tide of The Fury . He spends most of that journey stray around the afterlife fighting demon , for sure , but in and among those moments , it ’s a story about take in the permanency of endings , and the sadness and yet also the freedom in all of that . It ’s a spectacularly emotional arc for Hellboy , and one of his finest .

Year of Release : 2012

Abe Sapien: The Drowning

Abe , one of the most iconic non - Hellboy Hellboy characters around , does n’t seem to factor in into much , if any , of the new movie — but he ’s a character still worth search beyond its confines anyway . The Drowning gives us a more naive , more pondering Abe as he goes on his first solo mission . It ’s a chance to see how Abe himself specify his relationship with Hellboy early on in his paranormal life history , and his own journeying of ego - personal identity and confidence . It ’s not the Abe you might remember from the Guillermo Del Toro motion picture , but it ’s where he start up before he became that gentleman . That fish - man , technically .

Year of Release : 2004

B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs

You ca n’t talk about Hellboy as a character without talking about the BPRD , the group of extrasensory investigator and heroes who have drop the decades since Hellboy ’s arrival working alongside him to fight supernatural threats . infestation of Frogs is n’t the first story with the radical , but it ’s the first set after Hellboy himself leaves the grouping after the Conqueror Worm plot line , and the first real history that sets the tone for the kinds of stories told under the B.P.R.D. serial banner .

If you desire something tied a little closer to the moving picture , B.P.R.D. : The Dead is the storyline that introduces Ben Daimio , the rough - and - quick skinchangerplayed by Daniel Dae Kimin the picture .

Hellboy has been one of comics ’ most enduring fictional character for the past 25 years , and he ’s matched by a universe that ’s grown and boom around him , full of character and stories that only scantily touch on braggart Red himself . There ’s so much out there to identify — and even if his latest movie might not exactly represent Hellboy at his very good , there are a short ton of singular comedian that can whet your appetite for diabolical asskicking at its finest .

Image: Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart