Back to reading HELLBOY comics these days . . .

I'm finally catching up on some of the HELLBOY comics I had bought in the past year or so but not yet read.

Over the weekend I read:

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Long Night at Goloski Station


Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb #1 and #2



Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Saturn Returns #1-3

Next time I get to the comic book shop (whenever that may be) I hope to pick up

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club (which just came out this past week)
and maybe even

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Her Fatal Hour
(currently due out December 2nd)

MajorHoy wrote:
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb #1 and #2

Here's how those two issues are described by Dark Horse Comics:

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb #1
Years after he banished the Crooked Man, Hellboy returns to Appalachia when a young psychic warns Tom Ferrell of looming danger. But the Crooked Man's house is no longer empty, and threats both new and old simmer in the Virginia woods.
Mike Mignola returns to continue the tale of ''The Crooked Man.'' He's joined by artist Zach Howard and colorist Dave Stewart for a stellar fright fest!

Creators
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Zach Howard
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Cover Artist: Zach Howard
Genre: Horror, Crime, Action/Adventure
Publication Date: February 19, 2020
Format: FC, 32 pages; Miniseries
(U.S.) Price: $3.99

NOTE: variant cover by Mike Mignola:

https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3005-664/Hellboy-and-the-B-P-R-D-The-Return-of-Effie-Kolb-1
and

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb #2
Following Hellboy's strange encounter with the new residents of the Crooked Man's home, a young spiritual sensitive still feels that something bad is going on in the old Virginia mansion . . . and she's right.
Prepare for monsters and mayhem in the second half of Mike Mignola's return to the story of ''The Crooked Man,'' with artist Zach Howard and colorist Dave Stewart!

Creators
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Zach Howard
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Cover Artist: Zach Howard
Genre: Horror, Crime, Action/Adventure
Publication Date: October 28, 2020
Format: FC, 32 pages; Miniseries
(U.S.) Price: $3.99

https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3005-665/Hellboy-and-the-B-P-R-D-The-Return-of-Effie-Kolb-2

Yeah, a slight Cough!  Cough! gap between the dates for the two issues due to COVID-19 and related.

MajorHoy wrote:. . . Next time I get to the comic book shop (whenever that may be) I hope to pick up

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club (which just came out this past week) . . .

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club (one-shot)


The team behind the Eisner Award-winning one-shot Hellboy: Krampusnacht spins a new ghostly yarn! Hellboy comes to the aid of a young girl whose ghost hunt goes wrong, and a visit to an abandoned medical school reveals sinister layers to a grisly, long-ago murder. Stolen cadavers, vengeful spirits, and more abound in this one-shot.
Hellboy creator Mike Mignola reunites with fan-favorite artist Adam Hughes for a spirit-fueled scream fest sure to excite old and new fans alike!

Creators
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Adam Hughes
Colorist: Adam Hughes
Cover Artist: Adam Hughes
Genre: Horror, Crime, Action/Adventure
Publication Date: November 11, 2020
Format: FC, 32 pages; One-shot
(U.S.) Price: $4.99

(https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3005-549/Hellboy-and-the-B-P-R-D-The-Seven-Wives-Club-one-shot)

There are also listings for a black-&-white variant cover of the Adam Hughes version, as well as a Mike Mignola variant cover:

which lists the colorists as "Adam Hughes, Dave Stewart".
So, maybe Dave Stewart was the colorist for only the Mike Mignola variant cover itself?
(https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3005-577/Hellboy-and-the-B-P-R-D-The-Seven-Wives-Club-one-shot-Mike-Mignola-Variant-Cover)

Does it make sense to just start at the beginning and work through them, or would you recommend an alternate order?

Mbast1 wrote:Does it make sense to just start at the beginning and work through them, or would you recommend an alternate order?

Boy, that's a loaded question!

If you try to read things in order, you'd be going all the way back to 1993!

Plus, there's a whole lotta jumping around in time for the stories.  As an example, the stories I recently read took place in 1967 ("Long Night at Goloski Station" and "The Return of Effie Kolb") and in 1975 ("Saturn Returns"), and I believe the recent issue ("The Seven Wives Club ") is set in 1992.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about starting at the very beginning and going in exact order.  After all,

Spoiler:

If you feel more comfortable trying to read things from the start, there are multiple collected editions that Dark Horse has put out over the years, but just watch out there, too, because they went from tpb books to larger Omnibus collections, and sometimes the orders of what's collected in what has varied as later stories filled in different gaps in the past.  And there different sites that will tell you what goes in what order (at least in the opinion of who runs the site or who put together the list).

The Hellboy universe is so extended and complicated (after all it's normal, after more than 25 years of continuos publishing with various mini-series coming out every month) that Dark Horse has published the Hellboy Companion with various updated editions too, maybe it's time they publish a new updated one...

MajorHoy wrote:Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about starting at the very beginning and going in exact order.

This was what I was kinda wondering. Some things need to be read in order, some don't. I'll just grab things as I see them, then. Thanks!

Barry_Allen wrote:The Hellboy universe is so extended and complicated (after all it's normal, after more than 25 years of continuos publishing with various mini-series coming out every month) that Dark Horse has published the Hellboy Companion

THIS is what DC should have done, not Crisis...
Anyway, thanks!

Mbast1 wrote:

Barry_Allen wrote:The Hellboy universe is so extended and complicated (after all it's normal, after more than 25 years of continuos publishing with various mini-series coming out every month) that Dark Horse has published the Hellboy Companion

THIS is what DC should have done, not Crisis...
Anyway, thanks!

Well, in all fairness, DC had a lot more continuity issues back then because of multiple creators / multiple changes in direction during the 1930s-1980s when they came out with Crisis on Infinite Earths. And it was such a BIG thing at the time it happened, it gained major attention from the media beyond just the cloistered world of comic books.
And who knows how many former/lapsed readers it got to start looking at and buying DC comic books again, even if it was only for a little while?

With Hellboy, even though it had been around for those 25+ years, it's overall writing / direction was more tightly controlled Mike Mignola and those who worked with him.

MajorHoy wrote:Well, in all fairness, DC had a lot more continuity issues back then because of multiple creators / multiple changes in direction during the 1930s-1980s when they came out with Crisis on Infinite Earths.  

I'm not sure I agree. I've only ever seen a small group of people who thought this stuff was a big deal, while I have met/known/talked to plenty more who just didn't care if the "wrong" version of the character showed up. So, I think they could have done it in the way of a handbook and left it at that.

Mbast1 wrote:

MajorHoy wrote:Well, in all fairness, DC had a lot more continuity issues back then because of multiple creators / multiple changes in direction during the 1930s-1980s when they came out with Crisis on Infinite Earths.  

I'm not sure I agree. I've only ever seen a small group of people who thought this stuff was a big deal, while I have met/known/talked to plenty more who just didn't care if the "wrong" version of the character showed up. So, I think they could have done it in the way of a handbook and left it at that.

Perhaps, but again it was easier for new readers if there was a single, cohesive backstory to the comic book universe. (Of course, DC couldn't even get all that to stay in place, so they had to try and fix things AGAIN about ten years later with Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.)

MajorHoy wrote:Perhaps, but again it was easier for new readers if there was a single, cohesive backstory to the comic book universe.

I just don't know that I agree. Part of the fun of comics, for me, as a kid was working to figure stuff out. And I know casual readers won't do that, and if they are who publishers target, so be it. But, what kept me coming back was the "making sense of it" part, and then realizing that I could decide for myself which parts mattered and which didn't.

Also, I think it's no longer the case that fans of superheroes can't deal with multiple iterations. Or mistakes.

MajorHoy wrote:(Of course, DC couldn't even get all that to stay in place, so they had to try and fix things AGAIN about ten years later with Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.)

Yeah, that seems to be their thing now. Keep "fixing" things. Fixing. Yeah.

MajorHoy wrote: . . . Next time I get to the comic book shop (whenever that may be) I hope to pick up

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club (which just came out this past week)
and maybe even

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Her Fatal Hour
(currently due out December 2nd)

Went this morning and picked those up.

Also added the coming four-issue series Young Hellboy (The Hidden Land) to my pull list; first issue is currently due out in February.