10 Amazing Hellboy Spin-Offs Mignola Fans Must Read

Despite dying in Seed Of Destruction, the first ever Hellboy comic book story, the big red guy's surrogate father Trevor Bruttenholm has managed to fit in plenty of adventures of his own thanks to a bunch of post-war spin-off comics.

The B.P.R.D. title has produced sporadic episodes exploring the Bureau's origins and early missions. The first of these - 1946 - is both a good starting point for readers invested in Bruttenholm and the B.P.R.D. and a great example of the Hellboy universe's pulp horror storytelling on its own.

The story involves Bruttenholm traveling to an abandoned asylum once home to the Nazis' occult experiments. It features enhanced gorilla super-soldiers and a rocket ship full of frozen hibernating vampires that Hitler had planned to unleash once the tide of the War turned against him.

Crucially for the long-term development of the wider Hellboy universe story, 1946 also brings the nascent B.P.R.D. into the Cold War and introduces their Soviet counterparts, the Special Sciences Service. The S.S.S.'s leader Varvara, first introduced in 1946, is an especially memorable creation.

A demon possessing the body of an innocent-looking young girl with blonde ringlets, Varvara will be both enemy and reluctant ally to our heroes in years to come and will go on to play an important role in Hellboy's final days. So it's worth checking out her introductory story for that reason as well as the Nazi gorillas and vampires.