He’s faced down demons, giant monsters and the Lords of Hell, but this October, Dark Horse Comics, Hellboy in Love will tell the hitherto unknown story of the Big Red Ape’s relationship with his archaeologist ex-girlfriend.
Created in 1994 by Mike Mignola, Hellboy has been in near-continuous publication ever since, leading to various BPRD spin-off titles that have formed an entire universe around Mignola’s signature creation. Brought into the world via a Nazi experiment gone wrong during WWII, the entity that later took the name “Hellboy” eventually became an agent the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, where he investigated all manner of supernatural occurrences and fought beasties across the globe. Hellboy has also found a lot of success outside the world of comics, with feature films, animated specials and video games adapting his adventures into other mediums.
Now, this October sees the release of another Hellboy miniseries: Hellboy in Love, by the creative team of Mike Mignola, novelist Christopher Golden, artist Matt Smith, colorist Chris O’Halloran, and letterer Clem Robins. According to the solicits on the Dark Horse Comics website, the series finds Hellboy “assigned to protect a shipment of occult artifacts from a gang of thieving goblins.” While there, Hellboy meets archaeologist Anastasia Bransfield, and the two of them team up to “chase the light-fingered fey through the British countryside and into . . . a local punk show?” The miniseries is set to run for five issues, with the first two making up a two-part storyline entitled “Goblin Night.”
While Hellboy’s story reached a rather definitive end in 2016 with the conclusion of Hellboy in Hell, the character’s long life-span means there is always the opportunity to for creators to come and fill in the blanks of his past adventures. That looks to be exactly what Mignola and company are doing here, filling in the details of a relationship only hinted at in the past. “It’s been twenty-five years since Dr. Anastasia Bransfield first appeared as Hellboy’s ex-girlfriend in my novel Hellboy: The Lost Army,” says co-writer Golden. “Over the years we talked many times about telling the stories of their adventures together, and the day has finally come. It’s Romancing the Stone-style action, occult weirdness, and first love, with gorgeous Matt Smith art!”
Given that so many of the Hellboy titles in the past have traded on classic pulp genres like weird science fiction, cosmic horror and rock’em, sock’em adventure, it’s exciting to see the creators tackle a good old-fashioned love story in the Hellboy universe. However his relationship with Dr. Bransfield pans out, one thing’s for certain: Hellboy will live on to fight monsters, demons and other beasties that go bump in the night. Hellboy in Love #1 is out on October 12, 2022 from Dark Horse Comics.
Source: Dark Horse Comics
