Which Hellboy Comics to Read (2021)

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Hellboy Comics and Where to Find Them

I get asked by many comic book fans about Hellboy a lot. Specifically, where to start. Hellboy is, after all, a multi-faceted character whose legacy multiple Volumes of work. Thankfully, Dark Horse Comics have released a Volume of work collecting Hellboy Adventures that answer that question – “Which Hellboy Comics to Read.”

Hopefully, this body of work should make getting into Hellboy a lot easier for you and explaining Hellboy a lot easier for me. But before we get into the nitty gritty of Hellboy and Which Hellboy Comics you should Read let’s first delve into the history of Hellboy creators – Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart.

Who created Hellboy

Mike Mignola

Mike Mignola’s fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age; reading Dracula at age
twelve introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore, from which he has never recovered. Starting in
1982 as a bad inker for Marvel Comics, he evolved into a not-so-bad artist. By the late 1980s, he’d begun
to develop his unique graphic style, with mainstream projects like Cosmic Odyssey and Batman: Gotham
by Gaslight. In 1994, he published the first of many Hellboy series through Dark Horse, leading to many
spinoffs, prose books, animated films, and two live-action films.

Along the way he worked on Francis Ford
Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), and with director
Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). A new Hellboy film by Neil Marshall will be released this spring. Mike’s books have earned numerous awards
and are published in a great many countries. He lives in Southern California with his wife and cat.

Dave Stewart

Dave Stewart was born on the high desert, while his mother danced to the chatter of a rattlesnakes tail.
Despite a rare case of Sasquatch leg and the desire to run with any north bound moose migration, he
found the coloring arts were a suitable profession to fuel the resources needed to build a moonshine still
in the backwoods hills of Southwest Portland. Much to his surprise he found that his coloring garnered
him industry awards, unlike his feverish gathering of dry leaves for winter bedding. And he colors on.

Which Hellboy Comics To Read

The stories of the Hellboy Universe are some of the most celebrated and beloved in comics fandom. Blending folklore, horror, mythology, action, and adventure, legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and a host of celebrated writers and artists have chronicled the adventures of Hellboy, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Lobster Johnson, and Sir Edward Grey for more than two decades.

Beginning in 2021, Dark Horse Books will publish four volumes of essential Hellboy Universe stories, all selected by Mike Mignola, each featuring all new covers by Mignola and award-winning colorist Dave Stewart.

Mike Mignola had the following to say about this upcoming Hellboy Comics collection:

“In some cases—B.P.R.D. and Witchfinder—it was pretty easy to select the one “essential” book. Hellboy was more complicated, as there is so much ground to cover. In the end we chose to go with a collection of short stories rather than a single graphic novel, to give more of an overview of the character. We chose certain stories that say important things about his background, but also some that just show what he does and how he does it. A couple of stories are in there just because they are my favorites.”

The Hellboy Universe Essentials Line will be debuting in July 2021. Priced at $14.99, the trade paperback will collect the following iconic stories: The Chained Coffin, The Third Wish, Pancakes, The Nature of the Beast, The Corpse, The Baba Yaga, A Christmas Underground, The Ghoul, and The Troll Witch.

This release will then be closely followed the Hellboy Universe Essential: B.P.R.D. in November 2021, which will then be followed by Hellboy Universe Essentials: Lobster Johnson in March of 2022, and will finally close out with Hellboy Universe Essentials: Witchfinder in July 2022.