Hellboy

• Title: The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed #4 (of 5)
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson
• Artist: Paul Grist

The penultimate issue of Dark Horse’s five-issue mini-series offers a further look into the life of the mysterious Visitor. Set decades after the first issue, Hellboy has grown into the hero that the alien always hoped he could be. However, he and the B.P.R.D. still need his unseen help from time to time with anonymous tips and even taking down a cult leader when needed.

Much of The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed #4 focuses on the Visitor’s life away from Hellboy and the life he made with his wife Ruby. Although the issue is a celebration of the pair’s life together, in spite of what society of the times thought of them, there is melancholy feel in this issue as Ruby’s memory slips.

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• Title: The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed #2 (of 5)
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson
• Artist: Paul Grist

The latest Hellboy-adjacent mini-series continues here with a longer look at the alien visitor sent to destroy Hellboy as a child and instead chooses to watch from afar while the demonic creature destined to destroy the world develops into a hero. We get panels of Hellboy’s heroics in various times here and there, but it’s the Visitor who is the real focus of this issue.

Although he has mixed emotions about humanity, the Visitor decides to take a wife and build out a life for himself as he watches time pass and Hellboy grow into the type of man the alien hoped he could become. The subplot fleshes out the character more than I expected as it appears our watcher is spending equal time watching both Hellboy and humanity. While the later has disappointed him from time to time, with the mini-series now into the 1960s, our visitor hasn’t seen any signs of the creature his people expect to destroy the world.

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• Title: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1954 – Ghost Moon #1
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson
• Artist: Brian Churilla

Set in August of 1953, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1954–Ghost Moon #1 sends Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. to the Walled City of Hong Kong during the month of the Ghost Moon on the Chinese calendar when people believe the gates of Hell open allowing spirits to return. Called in by Trevor Bruttenholm who has already lost one agent to mysterious happenings in the city, Hellboy, Susan Xiang, and Archie Muraro arrive to investigate.

Hellboy and his team stumble across the same strange happenings including a pair of monstrous beasts desperately searching for something that has been stolen and the discovery that someone has taken an hunpig and is using the spirit jar for their own evil ends by drawing the life energy out of the locals for his own selfish ends.

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• Title: The Visitor: How and Why He Stayed #1 (of 5)
• Comic Vine: link
• Writers: Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson
• Artist: Paul Grist

For the latest Hellboy storyline, creator Mike Mignola (along with the five-issue mini-series co-writer Chris Roberson) goes back to the beginning. Showing up just before Hellboy‘s arrival, an unnamed visitor was also on hand with explicit instructions to kill the beast prophesied to destroy the world should it appear.

Seeing a helpless infant with many possible futures, and not a monstrous beast determined to wipe out all life, the visitor chose to watch rather than act rashly and see what the creature might become. Taking place along Hellboy’s timeline but outside of it, the new five-issue series ponders an important idea about how far you would go to prevent someone from becoming a monster. Is Hellboy indeed destined to destroy? Or is his fate in his own hands?

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