If there's an issue that has affected every comic fan at one point or another, it's deciding where to start a series. While many comic series have a canonical beginning, they also tend to run for years, if not decades, with plenty of twists and turns both in the real world and within the story that create potential jumping-on points. For few characters is this truer than Hellboy.
Originally printed in various Dark Horse publications, old-school fans of the melancholy hero will struggling to piece together the whole narrative, but even in a world of collected editions, it's hard to know where to start with Hellboy. Mike Mignola's Hellboy universe is vast and deep, with supernatural events having genuine consequences on a global scale. Is it better to begin with the recently resurrected Hellboy in B.P.R.D: The Devil You Know, pick up the prequel Hellboy and the B.P.R.D 1952, or begin where it all actually started with "Seed of Destruction," albeit before the character had really found his voice. Happily, Dark Horse have the answer.
While there will always be some disagreement about the perfect reading order in which to enjoy Hellboy, Dark Horse have just announced Hellboy Universe Essentials: Hellboy - a curated selection of the essential stories for getting to grips with one of the most intriguing characters in comics, planned for publication in July 2021.
This collection will be the first of four collected editions of the definitive stories for Mignola's most popular characters, followed by Hellboy Universe Essentials: B.P.R.D. in November 2021, Hellboy Universe Essentials: Lobster Johnson in March 2022, and Hellboy Universe Essentials: Witchfinder in July 2022, offering readers a self-contained library of amazing stories from writer/artist Mike Mignola and his many collaborators.
While many definitive editions take advantage of filler (especially when it comes to supehero comics), it looks like this collection is all gold, including the 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." Steering away from Hellboy's pulpy Nazi-punching adventures to focus on his slower, more folklore-focused tales is the right decision in of introducing new fans to the character, and Dark Horse have taken the opportunity of hindsight to focus attention on some of the most consequential events and enemies who led the way to the superlative Hellboy in Hell, which acted as a beloved and successful cap to Hellboy's narrative after decades of storytelling... or at least it did until Hellboy was resurrected in the wake of his 2019 flop movie adaptation.
Hellboy is one of the most misunderstood characters in comics - a big, red devil with a stone fist, it's easy to assume he's all pulp and no substance, but Hellboy stories are some of the most elegiac and artistically fulfilling in comics. If you're unfamiliar with the character or always meant to give him a try, Hellboy Universe Essentials: Hellboy is the perfect opportunity to do yourself the huge favor of getting acquainted with Anung Un Rama and one of the weirdest worlds in fiction, full stop.
Source: Dark Horse
