Hellboy
Hellboy is a comic book superhero created by Mike Mignola and appearing in comic books published by Dark Horse Comics. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2, and has since appeared in various miniseries, one-shots, and intercompany crossovers. The character has been adapted into four live-action films: Hellboy and its sequel The Golden Army, a 2019 reboot film, and The Crooked Man. The character also appeared in two straight-to-DVD animated films and three video games – Dogs of the Night, The Science of Evil and Web of Wyrd.
A well-meaning cambion whose true name is Anung Un Rama, Hellboy was summoned from Hell to Earth as a baby by Nazi occultists. He appeared in the ruins of an old church in the Outer Hebrides in front of a team assembled by the Allied Forces, among them, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, who formed the United States Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. In time, Hellboy grew to be a large, muscular, red-skinned ape/monkey-like man with a tail, horns, cloven hooves, and an oversized right hand made of stone. He has been described as smelling of dry-roasted peanuts. Although a bit gruff, he shows none of the malevolence thought to be intrinsic to classical demons and has an ironic sense of humor. This is said to be because of his upbringing under Professor Bruttenholm, who raised him as a normal boy.
Hellboy works for the B.P.R.D., an international non-governmental agency, and for himself, against dark forces including Nazis and witches, in a series of tales that have their roots in folklore, pulp magazines, vintage adventure, Lovecraftian horror, and horror fiction. In earlier stories, he is identified as the "World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator".
Fictional character biography
The half-demon that would become Hellboy was conceived April 30, 1574 at a Witches' Sabbath. Sixteen-year-old witch Sarah Hughes summoned the archdemon Azzael, an archduke of Hell, consorting with him and unknowingly conceiving his son as well.On October 5, 1617, within a church in East Bromwich, England, Hughes made a deathbed confession to her children, both members of the clergy. Upon the moment of her death, Azzael came forth to claim his unborn son and incinerated Hughes' children for attempting to drive him off. He then brought Sarah to Hell, where she too was burned away. The newborn half-demon half-human's right hand was cut away, replaced with a large stone forelimb that held the power to free the Ogdru Jahad and awaken the armies of Hell to wage war against Heaven. When the other princes of Hell learned of Azzael's actions, they condemned him, but Azzael was able to send his half-demon child away moments before being stripped of his powers and imprisoned in ice.
On December 23, 1944, in the final months of World War II, the mystic Grigori Rasputin oversaw an occult Nazi ritual to awaken the Ogdru Jahad and turn the tide of the war. Though nothing appeared to happen at first, the child suddenly appeared on Earth in a fireball at the ruins of the Bromwich church, likely guided there by the spirits of his half-siblings. Though his appearance was a shock to the Allied forces encamped there, they quickly realized that he did not seem dangerous. As one onlooker remarked that the half-demon looked "like a little boy", Professor Trevor Bruttenholm uttered "Hellboy", inadvertently giving the child a name.
With the B.P.R.D.
The infant Hellboy was taken to a United States Air Force base in New Mexico. Soon after, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, an organization dedicated to combating occult threats, was established by Bruttenholm and other paranormal experts. The fledgling B.P.R.D. was initially granted custody of Hellboy, though Bruttenholm himself officially adopted the child as his own in March 1946.Hellboy matured much more rapidly than a normal human child: he learned to crawl within a week, and was walking and talking at a month old. He appeared fully-grown by the age of eight, and did not appreciably age further over the following sixty-plus years.
Though initially raised in secret, Hellboy was revealed to the world by 1947. He briefly became a media darling of the Atomic Age, featured in LIFE magazine, and his appearance rarely provokes a reaction of shock or alarm. He began filing down his horns as a child, continuing the practice through adulthood. On August 6, 1952, a special act of the United Nations officially granted Hellboy honorary "human" status.
B.P.R.D. career
In 1952, a week after he was legally recognized as human, Hellboy officially joined the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense as a full time agent. Having matured with years of experience, Hellboy quickly becomes the Bureau's top investigator and field operative, alongside other human and quasi-human agents that include Kate Corrigan, a professor of folklore at New York University; Abe Sapien, an amphibian humanoid ; and Liz Sherman, a young pyrokinetic.During one of his early missions, he rescued a young girl named Alice Monaghan, who had been replaced by fairies with a changeling named Gruagach; this act foiled Gruagach's hopes of an easy human life. He also went to Russia and shot out the eye of the witch Baba Yaga for kidnapping and eating children. Gruagach and Baba Yaga both held lifelong grudges against Hellboy over these incidents.
Things change dramatically for Hellboy during the events of Seed of Destruction when he searches for Professor Bruttenholm after he disappears during an expedition in the Arctic. He finds his adopted father only to witness his death at the hands of a Lovecraftian frog monster. The search takes Hellboy, Abe, and Liz to the Cavendish Hall mansion, where they fall into a trap set by Rasputin to lure Hellboy into an embrace of his own "destiny", with the assistance of Sadu-Hem, one of the 369 spawn of the Ogdru Jahad. Controlled by the spirit of one of the ancestral Cavendish men, Abe impales Rasputin. Liz's firestorm then incinerates Rasputin's body alongside Sadu-Hem's and destroys Cavendish Hall.
Soon after, during a visit to Bromwich Church, Hellboy gets a glimpse of his conception 300+ years ago and learns he has two human half-siblings, a nun and a priest whose spirits remain bound to the place of their deaths after dying at the hand of his father Azzael.
During the events of Hellboy: Wake the Devil, Hellboy, ostensibly content to remain ignorant of his true nature, is set back on his journey of self-discovery when a mission for the B.P.R.D. leads him to Romania to investigate the theft of an ancient box containing the corpse of Vladimir Giurescu, a Napoleonic officer who was, in fact, a vampire before he was "killed" on the order of a fearful Adolf Hitler. The culprit of the theft is revealed to be Ilsa Haupstein, one of the surviving members of Project Ragna Rok, who was revived from suspended animation and then aided in Giurescu's resurrection. Finding Castle Giurescu after splitting up with the other search groups, Hellboy learns that the source of Giurescu's rebirth is the ancient goddess Hecate. Though Hellboy destroys Hecate's original body by forcing her into the sunlight, he faces her again after Rasputin unintentionally provides her with Ilsa's iron maiden-encased body. Hecate swallows Hellboy and reveals to him his ultimate purpose as destroyer of worlds, but he returns to his own reality after he denounces his supposed destiny.
Hellboy later learns that Liz is dying after losing her powers when she accidentally revived a homunculus while tracking Giurescu, finding Roger in the events of Hellboy: Almost Colossus as he convinces the homunculus to save Liz's life. Following the events of Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom, gaining insight about his stone hand and being referred to as a harbinger of the Apocalypse, Hellboy is accompanied by Abe to hunt down the warlock Igor Bromhead in Box Full of Evil. He is overpowered and taken captive by Bromhead and his master, the demon Ualac, who use Hellboy's True Name, Anung Un Rama, to restrain him, so that the latter can claim Hellboy's normally invisible Crown of the Apocalypse to increase their power. But this act, however, proves to be counterproductive, as it allows Hellboy to no longer be controlled by his true name, Anung Un Rama, and he kills Ualac's mortal body before the demon and the crown are forcibly dragged back to Hell by the archdemon Astaroth, who is later revealed to be Hellboy's paternal uncle.
In the events of Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, Hellboy is assisted by the ghost of his childhood hero Lobster Johnson and Roger the Homunculus in preventing an alien entity called the Conqueror Worm from arriving on Earth through the continued machinations of the surviving members of Project Ragna Rok. Over the course of the story, Hellboy learns that the B.P.R.D. has implanted a bomb in Roger as a failsafe in case he should turn on them. Disillusioned by this knowledge and finally ready to look deeper into his origins, Hellboy resigns from the Bureau and becomes an independent detective.
Post-B.P.R.D.
After some time with a witch doctor in Africa, Hellboy is captured by a trio of mermaid sisters and brought underwater to a witch known as the Bog Roosh. In exchange for Hellboy, the Bog Roosh grants each sister a wish. The first two sisters are tricked by the Bog Roosh and killed by their wishes, but the third sister is clever and gets her wish, a missing piece of her father's grave. While the third sister returns to her father's grave, the Bog Roosh explains her plan to completely destroy Hellboy, thereby preventing the apocalypse. At the grave, the third sister is told by her father's ghost that the only way to honor him is to save Hellboy. She does, and when the Bog Roosh realizes she cannot prevent the apocalypse, she allows herself to be killed by Hellboy in the ensuing battle. The third sister becomes the new Bog Roosh, releasing the souls of drowned sailors from which the previous Bog Roosh drew her power. She then releases Hellboy, leaving him lost at sea.In Hellboy: Strange Places, after several years adrift at sea and spent drinking with the ghosts of sailors, Hellboy arrives on a mysterious island. He encounters Hecate, who once again insists that they are bound together and must unite in the destruction of the world, but Hellboy, true to his values and somewhat drunk, brushes her off. He travels deeper into the island, and is attacked by a long slumbering Sadu Hem. The fight with the creature takes him into a temple at the center of the island, where the creature stabs him through the chest, seemingly killing him. While dead, Hellboy has another conversation with the Witch Doctor, who somehow resurrects him. Hellboy awakens to find his spilled blood absorbed by the corpse of a long dead mystic who was killed in the temple. Hellboy's blood resurrects him and transforms him into a more demonic looking version of Hellboy himself. The Mystic reveals to Hellboy the true nature of his Right Hand of Doom, which is actually the severed hand of one of the Angels involved in the creation of the Ogdru Jahad, and is therefore the only power in the universe capable of fully returning the Ogdru Jahad to Earth. The Mystic threatens to force all of mankind to worship the Sadu Hem, and Hellboy fights to stop him. Hellboy is ultimately able to win the fight. Rattled, Hellboy sets sail for England, much to the chagrin of Gruagach and the council of fairies who have been watching over him.
Six years later, as Hellboy: Darkness Calls opens, Hellboy's search takes him to England where he finds himself in the middle of a power vacuum caused by Bromhead incapacitating Hecate in Italy. Refusing to serve the witches as their king, Hellboy ends up in the dimension of the witch Baba Yaga. Managing to defeat Baba Yaga's champion Koshchei the Deathless, Hellboy returns to his reality and is led to Bromhead after he became monstrous and in agony from his attempt to take Hecate's powers for his own. Hellboy gives Bromhead a merciful death before returning to England.
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt opens with Hellboy receiving an invitation by the Osiris Club to join them in hunting Giants. Hellboy joins, but is betrayed by the Club and left to die. He survives, and, despite being given a means to escape, decides to engage the Giants in battle. He grows more bloodthirsty and demonic over the course of the fight, only returning to his senses when all the Giants are dead. He is found by Alice Monaghan, who, since being rescued by Hellboy in her youth, has become a close consort to the faeries of England. She takes Hellboy to meet Mab, Queen of the Faeries, who hints that his mother's ancestry entitles him to a crown. After this, Alice and Hellboy are led into a trap where Alice is nearly fatally poisoned. The two are the taken to the castle of Morgana Le Fay to save Alice.
To enter the castle, Hellboy must fight Eligos, a high-ranking demon from Hell. Hellboy is able to defeat Eligos with the help of one of his slaves, in exchange for Hellboy remembering the slave when he becomes ruler of Hell. Once inside, Morgana reveals to Hellboy that, on his mother's side, he is a descendant of Mordred, and subsequently the rightful ruler of England. She also tells him about Nimue, a long-imprisoned witch who has been freed by Grugach and wants to conquer England. She takes Hellboy to the sword Excalibur, but he does not take it. Alice tries to convince him that he should, but is unsuccessful. Soon afterwards, he is visited again by Astaroth, who reveals to him that he is destined to kill Satan and become the ruler of Hell. Hellboy fights against a demonic illusion of himself, exploding into a fireball that destroys part of the castle and seemingly kills Alice. Convinced that Alice was right, Hellboy takes up Excalibur and suddenly finds himself atop a hill, with Alice, alive and well, standing beside him.
As Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury opens, Hellboy and Alice have begun travelling throughout England, amassing an army from the noble dead of England. Soon, they are attacked by one of Nimue's soldiers. Hellboy is able to defeat the soldier, but while dying the soldier warns Hellboy that Nimue is transforming into something else. The two stop at a pub, where Hellboy decides that he no longer wants the sword, suggesting to Alice that she leave it in a lake. They share a kiss, and Hellboy asks Alice to move to America with him after he has defeated Nimue. On the way to Nimue's fortress, Hellboy has another confrontation with Astartoth, rebuking him again. He then runs into Baba Yaga, who tells him that he will only be able to reach the fortress with her magical help. In exchange, Hellboy finally sacrifices his eye to Baba Yaga. Reaching Nimue, Hellboy sees she has been completely possessed by the Ogdru Jahad and now seeks to destroy the world. The two engage in battle as storms rage across England, and Hellboy is able to defeat her using a sword given to him by the ghost of Vasilisa. As the Dragon collapses, Nimue's ghost emerges and plucks out Hellboy's heart, damning him to Hell.