HELLBOY – The Storyline

In a kind of prologue, The British Paranormal Society, an army troop, and the superhero called The Torch of Liberty go to England to await a Nazi “Spook Squad” during World War II, but see nothing. Meanwhile, on a small island off the coast of Scotland, the group called Project Ragnarok by the Nazis hold an occult ceremony. A Gateway is opened. Nothing happens. Back in England, however, a lightning bolt strikes, and there appears a tiny little devil-looking being affectionately named “Hellboy” by the military, and adopted by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (pronounced “Broom”).
 
We join the present day with Hellboy discussing The Cavendish Expedition to the Arctic with the Professor, who had been missing for some time after his participation. At the top of the world the Professor had discovered an ancient temple housing a statue of a cthonian deity and a man sitting in front of it. Except the man wasn’t a statue, it was the monk Rasputin. A plague of frogs is unleashed upon humanity, and the Professor is killed.
 
Hellboy, Elizabeth Sherman (a firestarter,) and Abraham Sapien (a gill-man discovered in the long-forgotten chamber of a hospital on the day Lincoln died,) from the B.P.R.D. investigate Cavendish Hall to learn more, and a battle with inhuman frog-men ensues.
 
During this investigation, Rasputin appears to Hellboy as an illusion and explains that he had summoned him to this world to stand beside him at the true Ragnarok, the end of the world. Rasputin explained that after he himself was killed by Russian nobles, the Serpent, the Ogdru-Jahad, spoke to him and offered for him to preside over the fall of humankind. After Rasputin was recruited by Himmler and the Ragnarok Engine was built to summon Hellboy, and after the fall of the Nazi regime, the wizard went North to the Temple of the Ogdru Jahad, where he joined with the god until awakened by Professor Bruttenholm.
 

The Sadu-Hem, left by the Ogdru-Jahad that they might always have a foothold in this world from which they were forever banished… I felt its mind alive and waiting… and saw the imprisoned forms of the Seven Beasts: Nunn-Jahad, Adad-Jahad, Amon-Jahad, Irra-Jahad, Belili-Jahad, Nergal-Jhad, Namrat-Jahad. Wrapped they were in darkness and dreaming, and in that silent state I joined them.

 
Rasputin captures Elizabeth and channels her power to attempt to release the binding of the Ogdru-Jahad, and would have succeeded had Ape Sapien not harpooned him. Elizabeth’s power is explosively unleashed, Cavendish Hall is destroyed, and the frog-cursed Cavendish family-line ended.
 
An epilogue story shows us that The commander of Project Ragnarok, Professor Herman Von Klempt, survives as a head-in-a-bottle, a giant gorilla as his aide.

In probably the most important book to understanding the Hellboy mythology, A wealthy man named Roderick Zinco signs on as a servant of The Master, and joins the others from Project Ragnarok in swearing allegiance to Rasputin, offering his wealth to underwrite their macabre plans.
 
We begin to learn more of the history of Rasputin and his followers, Ilsa Haupstein, Leopold Kurtz, and Dr. Karl Kroenen, who offer to join The Master after Ragnarok is disbanded.
 
Haupstein had run Himmler’s Project Vampir Sturm and recruited Vladimir Giurescu, believed a vampire, and apparently fallen in love. Recently a wax museum was robbed of just an empty box, but The B.P.R.D. believe someone is returning Giurescu’s body to his Romanian castle to raise him again. So Hellboy drops in for a visit.
 
There he meets with Giurescu’s father, who reveals that he has found another secret. Purchased from fishermen in Greece, he has found the body of Lamia. When his son died, drowned under ice, he had made sacrifices and She raised him as one of the undead. Now Vladimir’s body is guarded by the Witches of Thessaly, and Hellboy must fight his way through them to get to the vampire.
 
Rasputin , now a ghost thanks to Abe’s harpoon, visits Ilsa and explains that before he had secured a position with the Russian Royal Family, he had once given Baba Yaga half his soul to hide beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree, so that it would always be safe. Then he offers Ilsa to be reborn.
 
In the midst of all this, Liz Sherman, who has accompanied Hellboy to Castle Giurescu, finds an alchemist’s lab that had been sealed off for a hundred years. In it there is a dead golem, but Liz gives it a spark of life, hoping to rid herself completely of her curse.
 
While Kurtz and Kroenen, having created an army of their own (golems? zombies?) in an old castle in Norway are presented with the head of Professor Von Klempt, and argue about whether to revive him. Dr. Kroenen considers hima friend as they had been recruited by Himmler together, and says that Rasputin had never recognized Von Klempt’s genius.
 
Lamia calls Hellboy by his true name: Anung un Rama.

You have made war against members of your own family and mine… ancient spirits of the air, the mountains, streams, and pools; old gods of graves and shadows and demons of Hell… witches, striges, vampir… ghosts come forth from their tomb… these are your people, your kith and kin… and you are soaked in their blood.

 
Hellboy blows up Castle Giuirescu, Rasputin closes Ilsa in Elizabeth Bathory’s very own Iron Maiden, (telling her that the Ragnarok storm will be too harsh for the flesh,) Leopold Kurtz attempts to destroy the animated head of Von Klempt when it undermines Rasputin and is himself killed by Karl Kroenen. When Rasputin discovers this, he blinds Zinco for having found the head. Crazed, Zinco hits a Big Red Button, and the castle blows up.
 
In a last, bizarre scene, Giurescu, already killed by Hellboy and resurrected by Lamia, who is now equated with Hecate, sacrifices himself to bring his mother back. She comes back to the world through Ilsa’s Iron maiden body, and reveals to Hellboy his true form. Hellboy breaks off his Satanic horns to break the spell.
 
The epilogue is a truly sweet, emotional scene between Rasputin and Baba Yaga, who gives him a grandmotherly talking-to and offers to allow him to stay with her and the others. He decides to return. “Maybe a man can make himself a god.”
 
*This book refers to the story The Troll Witch, which happened chronologically earlier, where Baba Yaga lost her eye in a fight with Hellboy.

 

The Corpse

A retelling of Teig O’Cane and the Corpse (by Douglas Hyde). This is one of Hellboy’s best stories. It follows the classic fairy tale about trickster leprechauns’ demands, except instead of being a womanizer, Hellboy must find a place to bury a corpse before sunrise in order to get back a baby who has been stolen and replaced with a doppleganger.
 
The human baby is Alice Monaghan, who grows up to be Hellboy’s friend, and she is with him at the end. The fairy baby is none other than Gruagach, and this is the tale in which Hellboy, burning him with iron, first earns the fairy’s hatred. Gruagach raises Grom, Champion of Connaught and Queen Medb. But the first thing the pig-headed giant does is eat the little imp in one bite.
 
We meet a lot of folks from this tale later in the series, Queen Mab, Gruagach, and Baby Alice all become major players in the end time (see The Storm and The Fury).
 
The best detail is the look on Jenny Greenteeth’s face when she is discovered almost having eaten the corpse’s arm after the fight.
 
And this were all the doing of the Daonie Sidhe:
 

Soon I think the king will gather us, and march us down into the shadows under the world where the old people go. Too late the Sons of Adam will cry: “Where are the children of the earth?” Gone.

 
Teig O’Cane and the Corpse by Douglas Hyde
 

The Iron Shoes

A short where Hellboy fights and chains up a type of goblin called an Iron Shoes who lives in ruined towers.
 

The Baba Yaga

Stories of missing children and tiny bones calls Hellboy to Russia. He waits for Baba Yaga to show up in a cemetery to count the fingers of the dead (the real legend has her counting spoons in people’s kitchens,) and they fight it out.
 
Hellboy pulls his gun and shoots the witch, taking her eye. Don’t worry, she’ll get it back from him in the end.
 

A Christmas Underground

Hellboy appears as the Spirit of Christmas (Ho ho ho!) in an attempt to save Annie Hatch, who has been taken underground after wandering in the cemetery.
 

“There are stones in that place older than any Christian grave.”

 
After being shown around a palace and introduced to the guests, Hellboy delivers a gift from Annie’s mother, a cross, that dispatches the glamour. Then her captor appears and gives Hellboy a run for his money until the church bells ring out for Midnight Mass.
 

The Chained Coffin

Hellboy returns to find out the story of the ruined church in East Bromwich where he first appeared. He dreams about a woman on her death bed who confessed to being a witch, and begs her children to secure her body with chains and watch over her because “My devil will come for me. But bar his way, and after three nights his claim to me will be broken.”
 
He wakes up inside a vision and sees the demon appear and watches the woman’s son and daughter deny his claim… and get turned into toast for their trouble. The demon takes the witch during a revelation that her unborn child, conceived on Walpurgis Night, his “favorite son,” is still on his way. Then the dream-devil turns and looks Hellboy right in the eye.
 

The Wolves of Saint August

A tiny village in the mountains of Europe was renamed from St August to Griart. Why? The Grenier family curse. A new priest shows up with stars in his eyes and gets a smack down by a werewolf. Too bad for the wolves Father Edward Kelly was a personal friend of Hellboy.
 
He and Kate go to investigate, and after they fall through the floor and meet some of the family, William Grenier finally appears. He turns into a really BIG werewolf and there are some great fight scenes. An end note documents that a team of mediums had officially declared the site clear of supernatural activity, unable to detect any trace of Father Kelly.
 

Almost Colossus

A key story in understanding Roger the Homunculus. In the ruins of Czege castle, Liz Sherman and a BPRD team had found a homunculus (later dubbed Roger by Hellboy,) and Liz brought it to life by sending some of her firestarter energy into it. Now, she is slowly dying without her juice, and seems to be lost without a soul.
 
Having fled into the wilderness, Roger meets his disfigured “older brother” in the mountains and hears of his history. An alchemist’s failed first attempt, the brother homunculus had been poisoned and thrown in a well, but returned to life to exact a Frankensteinian revenge.
 
Meanwhile, Hellboy and Kate Corrigan investigate some weird happenings up in Romania. In the ruins of the Capatineni Monastery, they are set upon by an army of little goblins… or are they homunculi?
 
The triumph of science over nature, the brother sees himself and Roger as the light of the future rather than monsters. He takes his brother back to his lab, where he has been conducting experiments based on their creator’s notes. He has learned to “work in flesh” and has created the body of a giant so that he will no longer be trapped in his disfigured body. I love his soliloquy challenging the world.
 

I have made for us the body of a giant. A gigantic form for us to stride the earth, and you and I , together, the brain of the thing. Then all the human race will be fodder for our Greater Works! To build, grow, climb, to crack wide the celestial vault and rake there for secret knowledge! See the universe tremble in our colossal grip! It only remains for us to become liquid.

 
Kate has been taken captive, but when one of the brothers’ experimental slaves goes to throw her into a pit, Roger protects her in defiance. Then Hellboy shows up, invading the brother’s laboratory. Which does not make him happy.
 

Fools. How the world will suffer for this. I feel a fury rising in me now and only blood will quell it. How much blood? HOW MANY MILLIONS WILL DIE FOR THIS OUTRAGE?!

 
Gotta love a guy who can give a speech like that. I’m gonna use that on Facebook someday.
 
Anyway, The brother enters the body of the Colossus, calls himself God, and Hellboy shoves a tree into his neck. As the Colossus beats Hellboy to a bloody pulp, Roger steps forward and asks to join him in his glory. When Roger is taken into the giant body, he releases the fire stolen from Liz, burning the Colossus from within, killing his brother.
 
Roger survives, and Hellboy brings him back to Liz, where he gives her flame back. And dies.

Pancakes

Hellboy Jr. makes his first canonical appearance and with a single bite, is lost to the world of demons. Mignola answers the question of what really made Hellboy turn from his intended destiny as Anung-un-Rama.
 

Nature of The Beast

A short where The Osiris Club send Hellboy on an errand to slay a dragon, the Saint Leonard Worm. It turns out the club is just trying to discern Hellboy’s true nature. Unfortunately for them, there is an accident during the melee, and they are left unenlightened, as are we.
 

King Vold

Hellboy’s foster dad,Trevor Bruttenholm, asks him to do an old school chum a favor and accompany him on a research trip. Right. The Lord of the Wild Hunt soon appears, and bids Edmund Rickman to watch over one of his hounds for just one night. And he pays in gold. Turns out Vold’s hounds are really the souls of viking berserkers, and guess who ends up getting himself beaten up?
 

Heads

Hellboy travels to Japan to look into a haunted house that caused the local town to be deserted. He is invited to stay in the safe home of a wanderer where he is hosting many other guests. Later that night, Hellboy discovers the guests without their heads, but no blood. Something supernatural, he thinks, and throws the bodies down to the bottom of the well.
 
It doesn’t take a long walk to run into the floating heads of the guests who let slip that they were really going to eat Hellboy, and he seems to take offense at that, playing baseball until dawn.
 

Goodbye, Mr. Tod

As he grows older, a medium turns to drugs to help induce his trance state, from which he invites ectoplasmic entities here from the other side.
 

My guess is the drug put him too far over. Instead of plugging into the regular spirit world… he sort of went fishing in the deep end of the pond.

 
Though Hellboy tries to ward the thing that gets stuck halfway between the worlds with a sprig of arbutus unede, it takes a bigger bite to push it back over the threshold.
 

The Varcolac

A simple staking of a vampire shouldn’t phase Hellboy, but after a plunge into a pool of blood the countess and her kin manage to offer him up to the varcolac, represented here as a gigantic vampire tall enough to block out the moon.
 

You put the whammy on me!

 

The Right Hand of Doom

Designed to explain “what the deal was with the big stone hand,” this story finds Hellboy in Spain to meet with the son of Professor Malcolm Frost. Malcolm had dedicated his life to ridding the world of the demon he believed Hellboy to be since he witnessed the little monkey’s arrival in London.
 
Mignola first summarizes “the story thus far…” frog monsters, Rasputin, Hecate… and a big “Screw you!” from Big Red. The disks on his head are revealed to be the stumps of impressive horns, but what about the hand? “What if I cut it off?” he wonders in earnest to the priest, and here we see Hellboy open up to someone almost as if in confession, but he finds only more of a burden.
 

And what would you do with it? Where would it ever be safe? What if it were used?

 

Box Full of Evil

Abe Sapien backs up Hellboy as they investigate a break-in at an old home in England that involved a hand-of-glory and one Igor Bromhead stealing away a box and some large fireplace tongs.
 

“What about the key?”
 
“A completely separate item from the box. Expensive to locate and ‘acquire’… my gift to you both.”

 
The tongs were used by Saint Dunstan to capture the Devil in the second century. The box was purchased by a couple in Scotland who believed that the Devil would grant them wishes in exchange for freedom. Wishes such as piles of gold and a crown. After Count Guarino wished that, he was turned into a monkey by his wife, now possessed by the demon in the box. Igor, on the other hand, occultist and sorcerer, was prepared and protected. He even knew the name of the demon in the box and bound and enslaved it by the name Ualac.
 
Soon Hellboy and Abe arrive at the would-be House of Usher in Scotland, but Igor is ready. Abe gets shot by the crazed monkey and he is dragged off to the basement to be tortured with a branding iron. (By the monkey.) Hellboy is bound by Igor by his secret name just as Ualac had been, Anung-un-Rama: The Beast of the Apocalypse. Igor says a few choice incantations and Hellboy is trasformed into the imposing Beast, horns, crown and all.
 
Then Ualac takes the crown so that he might be raised up in the infernal heirarchy, and becomes the Beast of the Apocalypse. Though Igor begins to beat Hellboy to death with the tongs, Ualac takes the tool and tranmutes it into a magic sword that can cut off the Right Hand of Doom. During this, Hellboy has a vision of a Celtic trio, and a leprechaun (Dagda and another are in the background) asks him, “What’s your name?” The World Destroyer. “Is that who you are?” the woman asks.
 
Since Ualac now wears the crown, Hellboy discovers he is no longer bound by Bromhead. He throws down with the now taller Ualac. Meanwhile in the dungeon, Abe puts the monkey-Count Guarino through a wall with a boulder, where it symbolically lands on a pile of gold hidden within the walls ages ago. Now free, Abe chases after Bromhead, who hides and calles upon Astaroth for protection. Too bad his charm was broken, unbeknownst to him. His bottom half becomes that of a lizard.
 
Hellboy returns Ualac to a mysterious man who appears outside, (this is Lord Astaroth himself,) who offers him back the crown.
 

In Pandemonium, in the house of the fly, there is a seat reserved for you. The crown will wait for you there. When you want it… Call me.

 
In 1939, the Nazis blew the top off of Hunte Castle in Austria. Sixty one years later, something is returning to the castle from outer space. The two most indestructible members of the B.P.R.D are sent in to investigate, but end up wishing they had stayed in bed.
 
There is a briefing where the B.P.R.D. reveals that they have placed a “failsafe” device within Roger when they created a generator for him (after he returned Liz’s energy back to her at the cost of his own life,) raising Hellboy’s temper.
 

You know, I’m not human either, remember? When are you gonna put a bomb on me?

 
Roger the homunculus and Hellboy infiltrate the castle, but it is a trap set by Herman Von Klempt (a head in a jar when last we saw him,) and his granddaughter, Inger. Herman has a new giant gorilla, Kriegaffe No. 10, who likes to electrocute Hellboy.
 
Roger falls off a cliff, but ends up running into none other than the original Lobster Johnson who had been present in 1939, when the allies stormed the castle trying to prevent the Nazis from launching a rocket. They were too late, but at least they shut down the power to the “experiments” in the basement. (Unfortunately, the experiments do seem to be able to absorb power from Roger, and and attack him and the Lobster.)
 

All right then. Come and taste the Lobster’s Claw!

 
To escape the predicament, Roger ends up taking out the current live generator, which frees Hellboy to take out Number Ten. Hellboy soon meets a soldier chained to a wall that knows an awful lot about Big Red. He also knows what Von Klempt is up to. The Nazis had struck a deal with beings that live in space (beings Hellboy has encountered in Goodbye, Mr. Tod and that we have seen at other points in the symbolic saga,) and had sent a corpse in the rocket rather than a live pilot in order that they might find a host for one of their own to manifest on Earth.
 
Then the rocket ship lands. Luckily, the soldier has a special object that will trap the being inside. It resembles the Philosopher’s Stone. As the spacecraft containing the ex-Doctor Oeming opens, it releases a noxious gas that transforms all the neo-Nazi soldiers in Inger’s employ into frog-men.
 

Goddamn Nazi-Frankenstein monkey! You don’t know when to quit!

 
There is a sizeable Melee during which Inger learns that her grandfather is less interested in her welfare than in calling down the end of humanity. He believes the reptilian men are “evolved into the final great race of man” because he received a vision proclaiming him the Chosen One. Lobster Johnson appears in full regalia and proclaims that this is Roger’s fight alone, and that he must prove himself.
 
I think the greatest genius of this series is Mignola’s choice to stick with the canonical history set down by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. He speaks of Hyperborea as mankind’s golden age and after the polar ice crushed that world, a second race of humans that arose, with beginnings in Atlantis, Lemuria, Sumeria, and Babylon.
 
The giant worm that the space entity has become is meant to destroy all of humanity, growing larger with each life it transforms, and once it marks the passing of man…
 

then the three hundred and sixty nine children of the Ogdru Jahad will wake and come up out of their prisons in the earth and in the sea. Then the Ogdru Jahad will wake. The seven who are one. The serpent. They will cast off their chains, come out of their prisons, and burn the Earth, make of it a blackened cinder… and that will be the end.

 
Von Klempt destroys the magic block just as it is beginning to work. All seems lost. Then the boys figure out that the giant chthonic worm has an aversion to electricity. All eyes land on Roger.
 
Inger bemoans her fate as she transforms into a new human, but a shadowy figure brings her the good news, that an ending is just a new beginning. But she soon has a final run-in with Justice.
 
Roger absorbs the space entity, and encourages Hellboy to use the failsafe device, but Hellboy refuses. It’s OK though. Lobster Johnson is present. He rams a lightning rod into Roger’s chest to diffuse the thing’s energy. Can a hero like that ever die?
 
The issue of the bomb and the whole Crown of the Apocalypse thing (we also find out that when the Osiris Club had tested Hellboy, the mysterious soldier had been watching and saw Hellboy’s blood turn to flowers like the saint who had originally slain the dragon,) leads Hellboy to quit the B.P.R.D. and head for Africa, transitioning us into Strange Places.
 

Epilogue:

This doesn’t really fit into the story other than to revisit the shadowy figure that seems to be the one responsible for Von Klempt’s vision, (in fact therefore having orchestrated the entire thing,) but is as thrilling as a fight with a giant gorilla. Ilsa Haupstein was put in an iron maiden by Rasputin to change her, and that allowed Hecate to become flesh at Castle Giurescu. Rasputin and the iron maiden have both come to lie in the basement of Hunte Castle now, and Hecate confronts the sorcerer.
 
Hecate believes herself bound to Hellboy, and that when Ragnarok comes they will pass into it together. She says to Rasputin, “You think you can shape these events?” and recounts his failures. He responds that he is the chosen of the Ogdru Jahad to deliver Hellboy and make way for a new world.
 

Poor Rasputin. You know and I know that only one power on Earth can ever loose the dragon… You’ve always known.

 
Hecate blasts Rasputin to ashes, a goddess dashing away human dust, and his bones scatter. A shard reaches another figure, deep in the forest. A one-eyed witch sitting in a pestle decides to “keep him in a nut shell and wear him close to her heart forever.”

This story brings Hellboy to the “Crossroads of his life,” where all possible paths lead to strange places. Hellboy goes to Africa and meets with a medicine man who gives him a bell as a talisman then sends him into the sea.
 

The Third Wish:

The Bog Roosh sends three mermaids to drive a nail into Hellboy’s head. Then it tries to dismember him in order to “save the world.” This is a beautifully horrifying story that is more about the mermaids’ deepest wishes being fulfilled in return for the deed that incapacitates Hellboy for the Bog Roosh.
 

I see your right hand taken. I see the power of that hand used to loose that Dragon Ogdru Eb Juhad and the whole world laid waste.

 

The Island:

Hellboy washes up (via a ship of dead men) on the shore of an island with a ruined church atop its highest peak. In the depths of the church Hellboy encounters a thing reborn, once a man, now the living embodiment of “the first stories.” From him we learn more of the Hellboy mythology, (though it is unclear at times,) before the thing is returned to the dust by those who originally burned him as a witch long, long ago.
 
It was the Watchers, the angels, that created the Ogdru Jahad. And from them came 369 Ogdru Hem, which were eventually banished to sleep Cthulhu-like, below the Earth and in forgotten places. In punishment, the other angels turned on the things’ primary angelic creator and tore it apart, but missed one part… its right hand.

The Penanggalan

A malay legend of a beast that when its body is swollen with blood must soak its intestines in vinegar to shrink them so that her organs will fit back into her body. A local girl leads Hellboy to its cave, telling him the legend of the thing, that its head cannot separate from its body during the day. But it was dark in the cave, and it turns out the guide is the actually the monster, “I knew it! I knew it!” but it was still daylight otside, so: “So much for you, pal.”
 

The Hydra and the Lion

Hellboy runs into a dragon near the grave marker of a stron man whose true name was Hercules. When he comes upon the sleeping beast, a girl is pulling out its tooth with a pair of pliers. He argues with the kid, who tells him she is half lion and roars, waking the dragon. When Hellboy takes out one of its heads, it becomes clear that he has a hydra on his hands.
 
While the hydra is making a meal out of Hellboy, a big lion comes and rips into its flank, then ties its long necks together. Hellboy says the B.P.R.D. will “send somebody out for that.” Why would Hercules stick around as a protective spirit? The professor believes it may be unresolved guilt for his sins.
 

The Troll Witch

One of my favorite Hellboy stories because the solution is arrived at with only the vague hint of violence. Trolls are reminded of a savage vengeance that was so bloody all Hellboy has to do is leave the blood-soaked spoon in the doorway to the cave, and they will not return to it, but rather turn to stone in the sunlight.
 
The real beauty of it is the legend told by the troll witch, a witch who at first wonders if Hellboy has arrived to kill her. “Maybe.” he says. It is the story of two sisters, the trolls’ Yule celebration, and the head of a cow. (The original is called tatterhood.) The witch wonders aloud, why did the ugly sister go out to fight with them? “Do you think she saw in them the thing that was monstrous in herself?” In the folktale, the pretty sister’s head is retreived. In the witch’s real story, her sister lived out the rest of her life as a cow. “Can you imagine then the fury of that ugly child?”
 

Dr. Carp’s Experiment

As Hellboy opens the door to a secret and hidden room in the basement of Doctor Carp’s Long Island mansion (the good doctor was a Grand Master of the Golden Lodge of the Heliotropic Brotherhood of Ra,) he goes back in time to when “a single act of violence” once took place, according to B.P.R.D. psychics. There, Dr. Carp is waiting for him and takes a syringe of Hellboy’s blood. He injects it into an ape that he has chained up, and the ape turns into a demon that throws Hellboy aside only to be shot by Carp.
 
Thrown back into the present, Hellboy reveals the room where it all happened long ago. As a B.P.R.D. agent goes on about how “this is one for the books,” Hellboy picks up a syringe still about a quarter full of something red.
 

The Ghoul

Hellboy beats the crap out of a ghoul as the foul beast recites poetry. I love the scene where the ghoul drops his tool bag. Hellboy is robbed of killing the man as he takes his own life in the end.
 

You’re gonna have to start fighting back, Ed. I’ve never yet brought one of you guys in alive.

 

The Vampire of Prague

Hellboy goes to Europe in a story based on the legend of the gambler of Prague drawn by P.Craig Russel. The vampire takes him for a Nantucket sleigh ride through the city, crashing through a window filled with puppets, one a card player. Hellboy gets tangled and finds a series of cards in his hand, then uses a shard of window glass to take off the vampire’s head. As he chases after it, the vampire also drops a series of cards. The legend says that if you beat the gambler at his game it will set his soul free, so when Hellboy points out that his full house beats the undead’s flush… and “there you go.”
 
The story reminds me of the Twlight Zone episode with Jack Klugman called A Game of Pool. It is “the story of the best pool player living and the best pool player dead.” It is also reminiscent of the legend of Charon the ferryman of the Styx wherein he asks of of his charges to hold his pole for him. The one who takes on the mantle is then cursed to forever be the new ferryman. Hellboy lucks out though, and doesn’t have to play any more cards.
 

Makoma

The African folklore story of Makoma and the Giants is adapted for Hellboy here because of the parallels between his story and the African hero’s. Hellboy is visiting the New York City Explorer’s Club in 1993, and listens to the adventure of a professor of archaeology who discovered a lost city in the desert. He brought back pictures and a mummy, but the city disappeared, and he was never able to find it again.
 
Hellboy looks at the mummy and is taken by a vision. He becomes Makoma (the story pictures Hellboy in his place,) and goes on a saga, walking the lands of Africa like Cain in Kung Fu. Before he leaves, an old woman gifts him with a bag and tells him to put the bones of his enemies inside and bring it to her at “The End of Time.”
 
The name Makoma means “He who is greatest and without fear,” a name that a giant takes issue with. Makoma defeats the giant with his iron hammer, and puts its whole body in the bag. He does the same for the next giant, and a third. Then he faces off with a fire demon, reaching his hand inside and pulling out a salamander.
 
Makoma’s next confrontation, in true heroic epic form, is with the undead– a city of singing corpses. The ruler of the city is angered when the giants whisper from the bag that his illusion of paradise is false, and sets an entire army of humanoid giant ants on Makoma. He fights for a hundred days and In the end, they make a deal. If Makoma gives the ruler his bag, he’ll let him go. Makoma says fine, but I’m keeping this other case I have of green wood. Nonsense, the ruler wants the wood case. He gets it. Too bad for him. That’s how Makoma was carrying the salamander fire demon.
 
After the city of the dead is burned, Makoma wanders Africa for years until his strength gives out. There stands the old woman, who takes the bag, and nurses Makoma to health that he might face The End with all he’s got. (She does this by feeding him the bodies of the three giants,, whom Makoma had grown to think of as friends, but they were glad to make the sacrifice.)
 
The parallels with Hellboy get stronger as Makoma faces The Dragon at the End of Time, the seven-headed beast that appears at Ragnarok to destroy the world… They fight each other to a standstill. They both die. (Well, Makoma does, the Dragon isn’t mentioned again. Maybe he’ll come back in a future episode.)
 
Inside the bag still, back in the witch’s home, was one think overlooked. Out came the body of a boy from the skin of the fire demon that had once possessed him. Then the magic of the bag transforms Africa into a green, vibrant land. The boy collects the bones and hammer of Makoma and carves a monument and tomb for him in the lost city.
 
Back at the Explorers Club, the mummy reveals that he was that boy, and that now the story has been told the wind can carry away his dust. The mummy crumbles before Hellboy.
 
The original came out in a two-issue mini-series drawn by Richard Corben.

This trip into Russian folklore begins with the witches of England hosting a great gathering at which they offer Hellboy the title “King of the witches.” Of course, he declines and the witches declare war against him. In retaliation, they transport him to the spirit version of old Russia ruled by Baba Yaga, who wants revenge for Hellboy having taken her eye. First she sends a skeleton army against him, but he is rescued by the giant wolves of the Leshii. Then Baba Yaga kills Perun to prevent him from assisting Hellboy.
 
Next she summons Koshchei the Deathless, who cannot die because he has hidden his soul inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a goat. It is his curse that Baba Yaga has control of the goat, and is thus her slave. This time Hellboy is saved by two gifts from Vasilisa, her comb and her scarf.
 
During the action in the other world, the witches in England, (spurred by Gruagach from Loch Leane,) embark on a quest to raise a goddess from the dead, one who will restore them to their former greatness who remains unnamed. When Dagda appears to give warning, he is stabbed and dies!
 
We learn from Hecate, who is trapped inside the body of Ilsa Haupstein and entombed within the walls of castle Giurescu, that the task will fall to Witchfinder Edward Grey to save Hellboy when he is “lost” during the war with the witches. We also see the glorious end of Igor Bromhead.

We find Hellboy dreaming his attendance at The Dagda’s funeral, but he is soon awakened by the delivery of an invitation to visit the Osiris Club. There he is encouraged to join the Wild Hunt, a group of men led only symbolically by Herne, who hunt giants when they rise and begin causing trouble in groups. It is a setup by Sir Ashtree, and Hellboy ends up in a ditch with a spear through his chest.
 
At the same time the Hunt is being organized, Gruagach is embarking on his own mission. (His origin story is told. He is now trapped in the body of Grom, last of the Fomor.) Gruagach raises his queen from the dead, the Queen of the Witches, Nimue, who gets revenge for her murder then reclaims her throne, (now calling herself the Triple Goddess, The Morrioghain, Goddess of War).
 
Miraculously healed, and after savagely beating down a whole gang of Giants, Hellboy joins up with a woman in Ireland named Alice, who was once rescued by Hellboy, the victim of a changeling. She takes him to confer with Queen Mab.
 
The Duke of Gloucester leads Hellboy into another trap. He and Alice are set upon by a horde of the victims of the Black Annis (another of Hellboy’s casualties), and Alice ends up poisoned. Luckily, minions of Morgan Le Fay invite him to get a cure from their mistress… if only he will defeat the demon that has besieged her castle.
 
LeFay drops a bomb on Hellboy, (already alluded to by Queen Mab as his one chance to escape his fate,) and tells him that he is heir to more than one crown. We know of the crown that is hidden above his head, his father’s legacy, but Hellboy’s mother was of the blood of Mordred, son of Arthur. She hints that she herself may be Hellboy’s mother.
 
Should Hellboy choose to pull Excalibur from the stone, he would command an army that could prevent Nimue’s “holocaust of blood.” But Hellboy thinks back to when he lost his temper with the Giants, regrowing his horns, and has a vision that parallels drawing Arthur’s sword and the sword that lies waiting for him in Pandemonium.

You take the one sword, it WILL eventually lead you to the other.

 
Hellboy’s inner fight ends up burning down the castle, and Alice along with it. Vasilisa appears to Hellboy, and convinces him that he, like Alice believed, is worth saving. He draws Excalibur. Alice is restored to life. We see a chess board that implies Hellboy is a pawn in a war between Morgan Le Fay and Nimue.
 
As an epilogue, We see the ranks tighten in the Osiris Club.

…He would refuse his crown, but his soldiers would know him, and, in the end, he would lead them into the last battle– and there he would be killed. And we seven shall be there to cut off his right hand– and use it to elevate ourselves over all that remains…

The Crooked Man

 
This is one of the best drawn (Richard Corben) and best written of Mike Mignola’s comic book stories I have encountered. It was inspired by Manly Wade Wellman and his Appalachian backwoods supernatural stories with John the Wanderer.
 
A man named Tom Ferrell returns to his home town to find a woman fallen into the grip of witchcraft. He recalls when he was younger, he had fallen in with a beautiful young woman named Effie Kolb, who had taught him how to pull a lucky bone out of the carcass of a dead cat. But it wasn’t really Effie’s magic flowing that day, and Tom regrets what he did because he believes his soul now belongs to the Devil.
 

Tom Ferrell: “Everybody knows the Devil can’t set foot in a church.”
Hellboy: “You know I’m not…”
Tom Ferrell: “The Devil? I’ve seen him, an he don’t look nothin’ like you.”

 
Effie eventually appears, riding on a horse that seems awfully familiar to Tom. She says she’s been riding it hard every night since Tom left. Then she allows it to transform back into his father, whom Tom believed had drunk himself to death.
 
After a near-fatal run-in with the Melungeon witches, Hellboy, who’s inclusion in this story seems superfluous, finds himself trapped in a church with Tom and a blind priest surrounded by witches under the influence of the Crooked Man. (The vision of him still gives me the creeps at night.)
 
There is a very Warren-esque splash page on how to make a witchball to curse someone that could have been delivered by EC comics’ Old Witch herself. It’s these little things that really sets Hellboy in the realm of genius.
 
The old priest magically charges a shovel by turning the magic of the bone, “squeezing the power of the Holy Spirit” into it, and givel it to the big red guy to do his stuff. And he has a blast doing it.
 
After the big fight scene, Tom gets the opportunity to bury his Pa in consecrated ground. An epilogue follows where Tom and Hellboy go up into the woods nearby to a place known as The Hurricane for a hideously freakish final confrontation.
 

They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships

A guy who reads tarot cards on the beach for a living discovers the skull of Blackbeard in a curio shop. It possesses him and leads him to the Bahamas where the pirate’s body crawls up from the depths of Tech’s Cove looking to be whole once more. Hellboy isn’t about to let this happen, and arrives in the nick of time. Meanwhile Abe Sapien goes underwater and sees more happening than just Blackbeard’s resurrection.
 
The artwork is watercolor, but retains the grim bleakness you would expect from a Hellboy story, even on the beach. This should probably be filed as a B.P.R.D. story, since Hellboy and Abe team up.
 

In The Chapel of Moloch

An artist rents an apartment in Portugal, and the landlord throws in the old chapel for free. But that’s probably because of the hole in the floor. Three months later, a friend who cannot get hold of him finds Jerry in a bizarre state of mind, and calls the B.P.R.D., who of course, sends in Hellboy.
 
Hiding in the shadows, they watch at night as a small creature crawls out of the hole in the floor and guides the hand of the artist, whose only recent work is a gigantic statue of Moloch, the ancient god that children were sacrificed to. Hellboy finds the symbol of the Knights of Saint Hagan in the chapel, meaning that “something bad was going on here, and they had stopped it… but a lot of the time the really bad stuff, it doesn’t go away completely.”
 
I love it when Hellboy uses some esoteric charm to drive away the bad things. This time he uses a silver button from the coat Bishop Zrinyi was wearing when he fought the Carpathian Goat. After a fight with the giant Moloch manifestation, Hellboy advises the artist to get his rent money back… and tell the landlord to do something about that hole in the floor.
 

The Mole

The library edition places this story with Darkness Calls, where it belongs, but it is included here in the Crooked Man graphic novel collection. It was originally presented in the Hellboy given away at Free Comic Book Day in 2008.
 
Hellboy is drinking and playing cards with some ghosts, who notice a mole growing on his hand. The mole grows and eventually Hellboy’s skin tears right off and goes flying through the town. It turns out to be a drunken hallucination (or a symbolic vision?) and spurs Hellboy to pour some more hair of the dog that bit him.

 

Hellboy in Mexico

Hellboy finds himself in Mexico (back in 1956), where there is a monstrous uprising. Vampires, witches… entire towns wiped out.
 

The Devil lives in a cave in the center of the Earth and every hundred years he blows his stink up through holes in the ground. Then all evil things flock to that stink. They call down the hole to him and do terrible things to the people, for the Devil’s pleasure– in hopes that he will wake up.

 
Hellboy teams up with a trio of luchadores who had received a vision from the Virgin Mary that they should prepare to fight monsters. They were good at it, too. Until they got cocky and drank too much. One night Esteban, the youngest brother who had hit it off with Hellboy, went outside by himself.
 
They had to hunt hard and mercilessly to find him again, and what they finally found wasn’t Esteban. It was a bat-headed demon named Camazotz inhabiting his body. There is a hellish wrestling match with undead things as an audience, including an appearance by Coatlique. I never imagined I’d see Hellboy in a professional wrestling match, but this is everything I never knew I wanted in lucha libre. Awesome!
 

Double Feature of Evil

Two movies are shown in a theater — by the dead.
“Sullivan’s Reward” is a take on Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House”. A house is gifted to a man who soon learns that every time someone dies in the back room, gold coins fall down the stairs. Who built the house is a mystery. The man tells Hellboy it’s not about the money, it’s the house making him do it. He tells Hellboy this just before he shoots our hero and leaves him for dead. The judas gets his blood money, but the payment for Anung-un-Rama is more than he bargained for.
 
In “The House of Sebek,” the guy from the gift shop of a museum thinks he is Thesh, pharaoh of Egypt. After saving a woman from mummies, Hellboy follows the nut-case into the temple of Sebek, reconstructed for an exhibit. But a priest of Horus shouldn’t dabble in other gods’ temples. Hellboy drops some sagacious advice: “It’s never a good idea to piss off a god with an alligator head.”
 

The Sleeping and the Dead

1966, Suffolk. Hellboy offs a vampiress and a local stranger asks, “What have you done?” He explains that there was once a planned strategy enacted by the vampires, not the ragged creatures they have in the Americas, (Coatlicue appears again,) but old-world vampires. In 1774 all reports of vampirism stopped. Why? The heads of the great families decided to hide themselves. They would create more vampires, but leave them in their graves until such time, hundreds of years away, when they would wake and rise against an unsuspecting humanity to take over the world.
 
One European vampire, very old, very strong, came to visit this stranger’s house years ago, and stayed. It took his older sister as its bride, and made the man his willing servant. Little Mary became their plaything. What will happen tonight when the vampire returns and sees his bride dead, the man asks. Then he drops Hellboy into the cellars of the vampire’s mansion.
 
This is another of the best Hellboy stories. Creepy atmosphere abounds, doll-coffins and an undead little girl singing to a dead cat dressed in doll clothes. Horrible specters. The old vampire? He loses his temper and calls up an entire churchyard of those “sleeping” vampires, and even an additional unit from the B.P.R.D and the local Sheriff’s Office can’t contain the outbreak. Luckily, little Mary can.
 

The Bride of Hell

An American tourist disappears in France. Hellboy catches up to her just before the knife blade plunges as she is about to be sacrificed to Asmodeus. He carries her unconscious body to the sanctuary of a nearby cemetery dedicated to Saint Hagan, the crusader who rose from the dead to fight alongside his army, and leaves her in the care of the resident monk.
 
The Order of the Knights of Saint Hagan was a group of knights who continued to hunt witches after the crusades. Many of them eventually settled down there in France, Hellboy is told by a local monk, but they were followed and killed off, slowly, one by one, by Asmodeus himself in revenge for their deeds.
 
The demon himself appears to Hellboy and tells the story of how King Solomon bound Asmodeus in cuffs emblazoned with the holy name of God, and so enslaved him. And of how Solomon forgot his ring one day, and Asmodeus killed him and became king of Jerusalem himself. When the Order of St. Hagan came and slaughtered his human wives, Asmodeus swore revenge.
 
Hellboy and Asmodeus fight. Hellboy gets in a few good punches, then a scream is heard. The woman… alone in the monk’s care. Will Hellboy be in time to save her from herself?
 

The Whittier Legacy

Professor Emile Stoop has stolen a skull once used in occult ceremonies by the Whittier family. He has also raised the Whittiers from the dead to help him in his quest for the power to “look beyond our common geometry.” The nutty professor, by blood truly a Whittier descendant himself, seeks his legacy by summoning Ubul Satha (Clark Ashton Smith’s Ubbo Sathla?) and “those who shamble, undimensioned, in the cold spaces between worlds.” The corpses of the original Whittier family occultists ask Hellboy if Emile had one of the amulets of protection they always used to wear to commune with alien and dangerous spirits. No, he hasn’t got one.
 

Hey! Emile! Cut it out, you’re making the dead people nervous!

 

Buster Oakley Gets His Wish

Some rural kids get into some trouble. Hellboy goes to Kansas to investigate some cattle mutilations and discovers the remnants of an occult ritual. The kids were messing with a book of Demonology and Witchcraft. Turns out it wasn’t Beelzebub, Astaroth, nor Belial that got the kids, it was aliens.
 
Now finding himself abducted and up in a flying saucer, Hellboy meets one of the kids who now has a cow’s head (creepy, not funny,) and they fight the alien greys and a giant robot (of course!) amidst the floating ghosts of dead cows and pigs. In the end, the cow-headed kid runs away, and it is left to his pals and their book of Dark Arts to set him right again.

 
This was written to be the final chapter in the Hellboy saga, the climax and conclusion that ties together all the loose ends and completes Hellboy’s prophecy. Picking up the story from the end of Volume 9, He holds Excalibur, a descendent of The Pendragon, and he is given a great army with which to fight the hordes of Hell. But, as always, he turns it around in ways we would not expect from the son of Azzael.
 
In the beginning, Hellboy is with Alice Monaghan (from The Wild Hunt) and is in the UK investigating the missing corpses of Britain’s noble dead. Nights have been rising from their tombs and walking away. Hellboy reminisces about leaving the B.P.R.D. and traces his journey through Africa and his encounter with the Bog Roosh, the island where he got drunk with some dead people, and the whole ordeal of Ilsa Haupstein coming back as Hecate…
 
As the story continues, Hellboy makes it back to England and climbs back into the bottle. Then, just as he sobers up– Boom. Witches. An invitation to go hunt giants. But then he landed on Alice’s doorstep. And that was pretty good deal. In fact, Hellboy’s falling in love with her. He’s the true king of England, and he’s got Excalibur stashed in the back of her rental car.
 
Suddenly he’s attacked by a giant hedgehog who was turned into a monstrous warrior by the Blood Queen’s magic. The enchanted beast claims Mab is now dead, the last of the De Dannans now gone from the world, leaving the path clear to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth.
 
Gruagach falls upon Merlin’s grave, granting the old wizard a chance to convey the tale of Nimue, who has made herself the Goddess of War: Badbh-Macha-MorRioghain… but now she’s becoming something even more.
 
Hellboy and Alice stumble upon an Inn in the woods where the army of noble dead risen from their tombs meet up with him to follow their king into battle. Hellboy has a flashback to his childhood with Professor Bruttenholm and remembers his hero, Lobster Johnson. The good guy. Hellboy leaves by the backdoor, Excalibur on the table. He’s not going to lead that army. That’s the wrong road for him. He’s a “good guy”. If he makes it back, he decides he’ll re-join the B.P.R.D. and he asks Alice if she’d like to move to America.
 
He wanders and meets first Gruagach, who, for his sins in raising Nimue, has been cursed to live forever, to witness the coming age of darkness. Then he encounters a wanderer that reveals himself to be Astaroth (from Vol.4’s “The Box of Evil”, but he’s always been lurking in the shadows, watching…) and he reveals to Hellboy the army that has gathered to destroy humanity. The only way to defeat it is to call that other army. “Screw you!” He says.
 
Hellboy will never make it into Nimue’s castle alone. Not through a hundred thousand hellish creatures with no fear of bullets nor fire. But whose path does Hellboy cross next? Baba Yaga– and she knows the way into the castle… but he must repay her a debt. Odin, Arthur… myth runs deep here. Morgana’s chess board shows two armies poised against one another, a red pawn between. Deep inside Nimue’s fortress, Ushered in by the words of Ganeida (Merlin’s twin sister,) The Blood Queen… becomes.
 

They set you above all the others that have served them. You are blessed. They have made you their vessel. Out of you They will be born again. Rejoice to see their sign written in flesh! The Seven become one!

 
Meanwhile, at the tavern, the bar maid tells the tale of the Inn’s proprietor, George Washburn, who had a woman in white proffer him a drink from a golden vessel and save his life during the first World War. He is still upstairs. Alice offers him the Sword. He is followed down the stairs by a spirit who holds the Grail, and now offers him a crown.
 
The Army of the Apocalypse meets the gleaming hosts led by Washburn on the field of Vigrid (Ragnarok). Nimue transforms into a great dragon (that resembles Fin Fang Foom from the golden age of comic books.)
 
There is an epic battle between Hellboy and The Dragon, the Ogdru Jahad born in flesh. We see the human world struck by earthquake and tidal wave, London, the epicenter, laid waste. The witches that started it all see the horror that is coming and do not wish to live through it. They drown themselves. We see Arthur surrounded by the three queens who will deliver him to Avalon. We see landscapes of fire and waste inhabited by cthulhoid things crawling through the ruins of civilization.
 
Though the Dragon has been released too soon, the world has run its course; Hellboy fights only to give humanity a little more time. He is crushed below the enormous taloned foot of the Dragon. Then Vasilisa appears, and she is holding a gleaming sword.
 
At the end of Ragnarok, it is foretold that Thor and the Midgard Serpent, Jormungand, will deal each other fatal blows at the same time.
 
We revisit the imagery of flowers blooming in ruins to symbolize a place of great sacrifice. We are treated to a happy ending as a truly repentant Gruagach is taken by Morgana LaFey to the lands to the West.

 
Hellboy must bear the burden of his right hand even in Hell.
 
He falls into the abyss, where he is met by Eligos, the demon he bested on the bridge of Morgan Le Fay’s castle in The Wild Hunt. The demon has been stripped of his power because of that loss. He’s pretty miffed, and he has a big hammer.
 
Edward Grey is warned that he will end up taking some of Hellboy’s burden upon himself, but he is willing to aid our hero in escaping the pit. He teleports them both away from Eligos’ rage.
 
The story plays out in the formula of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where Hellboy is led through Hell by three spirits as he gains insight into the factors that made him who he is.
 
First, a robed character with a flame above his head (a symbolic crown in the Mignola universe,) takes Hellboy to Pandemonium, the capital city of Hell– a city now empty, abandoned at the news of Hellboy’s coming. He is shown his crown, his throne, his father’s sword, his ring of office, “All rightfully yours to take.”the first spirit offers. To which Hellboy responds, “I’ve been through all this crap before.”
 
Hellboy is told that Satan sits in the cellars in a catatonic state, where he has been for two thousand years (“Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”) and is now unguarded. It would be so easy to go down there and cut his throat, like Macbeth. The cloaked figure holds out a dagger before him.
 
The second guardian of Hell appears, flame above his head, to guide Hellboy the place where the Fisher of Souls bangs out the Army of Hell at his forge.
 

The only power there is that can break down those walls that separate Hell from Heaven and Earth… and there is only one object that can breathe life into that army. Your own right hand.

 
Hellboy is next transported to witness his own birth. The witch Sarah Hughes, on October 5, 1617, hangs from a hook in Hell. She bears a son to the brother of Astaroth, who is also in attendance as the baby’s arm is cut off with a magic sword and replaced with the key. The hand of the fallen one. The other princes of Hell discovered what Hellboy’s father, here named as Azzael, had done and so summoned “Angels of Destruction” to destroy his fortress. As the walls crumbled, baby Hellboy was sent into the ether, like Superman fleeing a collapsing Krypton.
 
There, encased in ice like the centerpiece of a Dante novel, stands Hellboy’s father, imprisoned alive forever for the act of creating him. And out of the shadows come two demons Astaroth has invited because he is fed up with Hellboy’s humanity, tired of waiting. Hellboy’s brothers. He says whoever takes the hand shall have it. And so they fight.
 

The seat of power has never been so empty. Pandemonium is a tomb, but whoever wears that hand, ape-like Gamon or scheming Lusk, he will go there to take your crown and your father’s sword… then wake that sleeping army.

 
Out of nowhere, to put a final resolution to the conflict, Leviathan, the giant sea creature, breaks through from under the ice upon which they fought and swallows Astaroth, Gamon and Lusk. Boom.
 
One last note before the end: a little cherub demon floats up to Hellboy and informs him that he and the other slaves want to take over Pandemonium, …and reveals that it was truly Hellboy that slit the throat of Satan. Hellboy has no memory of it. Nonetheless, Hell is now a hollow kingdom, and Hellboy is nothing.
 
Mignola’s Hell is beautifully envisioned in his primitive style, filled with chthonian… things… that resemble tiny translucent bugs and sea creatures like shrimp, water bears, and jellyfish.
 
We also get to learn the fates of the Heliotropic Brotherhood of Ra and Edward Grey, Witchfinder, both entwined in a death-grip. They all met their ends while the Brotherhood is raising a Duke of Hell called Amdusias. The guns of Grey took out The Brotherhood, but he was dragged back to the Abyss where Amdusias cursed him to eternal life and then tore him apart. Grey lives now in the house of the warlock Angus Weir, relocated to Hell, but protected from evil.
 
There is a final chapter that seems unrelated and tacked-on. An old soldier (Captain Jules Eugene Dulot) who deserted and sold his soul to a devil wanders by asking for help to locate a cemetery. He had been promised by the devil that if he can guess what his meal will be, the one that will be waiting for him in Hell, he can have his soul back. But time is up at midnight and he hasn’t a clue. A snake (the one from The Amazing Screw-on Head’s “The Magician and the Snake”) had given him a tip: if he found the devil’s grandmother, she might help.
 
So Hellboy gives an assist and leads the soldier to the tomb of the devil’s grandmother, who hides the pair in a lantern where they eavesdrop on a discussion with her grandson about his plans for the evening. The snake retrieves Capt. Dulot and returns him to the overworld where he dies, his soul his own.

 
Hellboy is dead. Dead and cast into Hell where he cut the throat of Satan and threw the realm into turmoil.

Two dead men are writing the definitive history of Hell, and tell Hellboy that they have a map (but only in their heads, of course.) Mr. Jenks and Mr. Dean explain the topography of the land, a bowl with the island of fire in the middle, and Pandemonium at the center of that, with only the abyss beyond. The men then flee as our old friend, the Vampire of Prague shows up.

The Verger of St. Peter’s Church in Prague, cursed as a vampire, found salvation when someone finally beat him at his own game. Ater he found death, he awoke in Hell, and he blames Hellboy and his full house for that final, eternal curse. They have a knock-down, drag-out ten page fight until the vampire is chased away by a nameless Minister of the Damned, tied to his own church bell, and thrown into the sea.

Chapter two finds Hellboy in the care of two “doctors,” Chatrain and Erckmann, who found him lying in the road. They offer him a draught that sends him on a vision. In what was once England, (apple trees hint at Avalon,) he is shown the new world tree, grown from his own blood and final sacrifice. It is Alice who shows him; she has taken the place of Queen Mab. She says the old world tree is dying and it has Hellboy’s true name carved into it. The old world is almost done.

The two doctors inform Hellboy that a carnivorous parasite has attached itself to his soul. There’s nothing they can do about it… but they know a fellow. A Doctor Hoffman, but of course, he is on trial, being prosecuted by one Dr. Wilhelm Coppelius, for some unknown reason. (Coppelius had it in for him, blaming Hoffman when his a golem had run amok.) But Hoffman is acquitted of whatever it was, Hellboy punches out Coppelius after he turns into a demon-ape, and they retreat to Hoffman’s lab, where Hellboy’s reflection shows the parasitic organism is real. Then Coppelius shows up again, this time enraged to the size of a giant, but his spirit is deftly dispelled.

”I’m going to lie down in this trunk. If you could just keep him occupied while I trap his soul inside this dead cat.”
“Yeah, OK.”

We see the repeated symbolism of a prayer in flames; Mother of Sorrows, Pray for us. Mary grieving for the loss of her son.

Hoffman is finally able to bring out Hellboy’s parasites: the Furies. Alecto, Magaira, and Tisiphone are invoked to see justice done when someone escapes the laws of both man and God. They accuse Hellboy of the murder of his brothers and uncle. But they taste his blood and find him innocent. Turns out he was falsely accused, set up… by his half sister Gamori! (See Hellboy: The Midnight Circus) The Furies claim her instead, and her punishment will end in the complete fall of Pandemonium, “The heart of Hell gone forever.”

Attention shifts and we listen in as three captains of Hell discuss how their masters died. They have found themselves homeless ronin as the ranks of the underworld face rebellion. Generals of Hell taking their own lives in disgrace, mountains of dead devils. To offer themselves as servants to Beelzebub, the last demon standing, the three attempt to bring the demon lord the head of Hellboy.

They fail only because of the interference of Hellboy’s wife. Remember back in Mexico? 1956? (See Dark Horse Presents #31-32). She insinuates that she had influenced Hellboy to kill Satan, offering the push he needed to fulfil his destiny, and reminds him of his unclaimed crown. Will they stay as King and Queen? Alas, no. She keeps his father’s ring with the fly in it, and removes herself to hide far away. In the end, she explains that the only way out is through. “You want to start over? You want a new life? First you have to finish the old one.”

The bell tolls. The final scene. The unnamed devil from the end of The Death Card speaks with his grandmother again, describing, as a witness, the end of Hell– the fall of Beelzebub in his castle. Where the survivors had all gathered, Beelzebub has just announced that he had decided to call to Pluto, one of the original watcher angels cast off the face of the earth for creating the Ogdru Jahad.

Before he was able to make the attempt, a giant figure, the figure we recognize as Anung un Rama, comes for a visit. He is first met by Leviathan and Behemoth in a great kaiju battle that shakes the world. “Then… lightning.” From the right hand of doom. Beelzebub’s castle crumbles as a swarm of lesser slave demons takes a bloody revenge. Hellboy walks away, his crown ablaze.

Now in his more comfortable incarnation, he walks past the statue from The Magician and the Snake, and on across the worlds… to Professor ‘s Bruttenholm’s house. It is empty.
 

The Exorcist of Vorsk

(A Puppet Story Told in Hell)

Once upon a time Yegor Ivonovich threw his nagging shrew of a wife down a well. Soon after, a demon came up out of the well and told him to take her back, she wanted too much. They discussed how to do it, and decided that they would play the old game where the mouse goes inside the house and the cat catches him, now beloved by the family and showered with treats and love until they go to the next house.

So Yegor is given the Zagovor, a spell containing powerful hebraic words to defeat the demon when he infests the homes of the rich, and is thus himself showered with wealth. Then he’s supposed to take his wife back, but he’ll be able to give her all she asks. The exorcism of the demon may only be cast three times.

Yegor, of course, gets greedy. The fourth time he is revealed as a fake and hanged. His wife marries the demon.