by: Justin Spotten

He is Anung Un Rama. The Beast of the Apocalypse. Bearer of the Right Hand of Doom. Born of the demon Azzael and the witch Sarah Hughes, his sole purpose in this universe is to release the Ogdru Jahad, the Dragon of Revelation, and burn the world to a cinder.

He also loves pancakes.

Hellboy was summoned into our world on December 23rd 1944, by a group of Nazi occultists who wanted to use him as an instrument to turn the tide of the war in their favor. Hellboy instead was summoned to the wrong island and was discovered by Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm, an expert on the occult, and the US military. Seeing that the demon child meant no harm, Professor Broom adopted him and gave him the name Hellboy. He lived in secret in New Mexico and was raised like a normal human boy. He matured very quickly, reaching adult hood in only a few years, but then his aging drastically slowed. At the beginning of the series it is stated that Hellboy is over fifty years old but barely looks out of his twenties. During Hellboy’s childhood, Professor Broom started the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). The purpose of the BPRD was to study, but foremost protect humanity from any and all supernatural threats. Since its inception, the BPRD have gone up against everything from vampires and harpies to Lovecraftian horrors of all shapes and sizes. In time the BPRD became the world’s foremost guard against everything that goes bump in the night, and Hellboy was its number one agent. Over the years the BPRD grew and expanded their team to include Abraham Sapien, an Ichthyo Sapien (merman), Liz Sherman, a pyrokinetic woman who has only recently gained some control over her abilities, Roger, a man-sized Homunculus, Johann Krauss, a medium who lost his body during a séance and now lives as a ghost inside a containment suit and Kate Corrigan, a Professor of folklore at NYU and one of the few active human agents that has survived in the BPRD.

The series’ titular character is a walking oxymoron. On the outside, he is a red-skinned goliath with horns, a tail and a large stone hand. On the inside though, he is pure human. Mike Mignola stated in an interview with Wizard that he based Hellboy’s gruff but loveable demeanor off of his father, who was a regular blue collar stiff. In the comics, Hellboy goes to painstaking lengths to deny his demonic heritage, including filing down his horns in order to blend in more with humanity. This doesn’t mean that his demonic origin does not haunt him. Hellboy’s destiny is to come to earth and start the apocalypse by summoning the Ogdru Jahad, a Lovecraftian dragon composed of seven parts that wants to destroy the world utterly. This can only be done with Hellboy’s stone hand, which has been dubbed the Right Hand of Doom. Hellboy wants no part of this and frequently faces on threat after another that attempts to either use him to bring about the end of the world or to stop him before he can fulfill his destiny. For the longest time Hellboy simply ignored the rumors and prophecies surrounding him and fought monsters for the BPRD, but at the end of the “Conqueror Worm” arc, Hellboy decides he has had enough of not knowing and begins to traverse the globe in order to find answers about himself, his origins and his ultimate destiny.

The Hellboy universe was first introduced to a wide audience by Dark Horse in March of ’94. This was not Hellboy’s first appearance though. Hellboy first began as a sketch Mike Mignola did for the Great Salt Lake Comic-Con back in 1991, of a black and white demon with “Hellboy” scrawled across its belt. Hellboy later appeared on an Italian fanzine named Dime Press in 1993, as his current incarnation and finally in San Diego Comic-Con #2 in 1993 where he took on the Egyptian god Anubis in an abandoned American town. This paved the way for the dark and macabre world of Hellboy, rich in retro pulp action and ancient folklore. Mignola’s distinct artistic style has made Hellboy stand out over the sixteen years it has been in print and has earned him seven awards over the course of the series. The series so far has nine trade paperback books from the main continuity, six other trade paperbacks, thirteen novels, four spinoff books (BPRD, Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and BPRD: 1946), two feature length movies with a third on the way, two animated movies, a video game and cameos in other table top games and slew of statues, busts and toys. With BPRD: King of Fear coming out and Hellboy in Mexico not too far off it is pretty safe to say that the end is not as nigh as we once thought.

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