Since first appearing in 1993 as "The World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator," the adventures of lovable big red demon and monster fighter Anung Un Rama, known to all of us as Hellboy, have grown into a hugely ambitious and imaginative world that combines traditional folklore, Gothic storytelling, steampunk and H.P. Lovecraft. Creator, writer and occasional artist Mike Mignola is now responsible for multiple spin-off titles set across the centuries as well as the big red guy's ongoing adventures in hell. The Hellboy universe is one of the most consistently entertaining and creative comic book worlds and one of its star features is a cast of bizarre creatures and characters that have grown up around the stone-fisted demon hero. This list counts down 25 great characters from Mignola's Hellboy universe, showing the full diversity of his crazy world.
Honourable Mention: Karl Ruprecht Kroenen
A character that has appeared since Hellboy's inception and one that is still appearing in the recent BPRD The Return Of The Master arc, Kroenen is a Nazi scientist who assists Hellboy's first villain, Grigori Rasputin. In the comic Kroenen's main noticeable feature is the fact that he always wears a gas mask. Beyond that he doesn't have a lot of personality: in all honest, he's possibly one of the more timid evil scientists in the world of entertainment, and that's about it. Kroenen, however, is worthy of a mention purely because of the version of the character that appeared in the 2oo4 movie adaptation of Hellboy. Although Mignola worked closely with the design and development of the movie, Kroenen is the character that seems most to belong to director Guillermo del Toro, in whose hands he became a surgically addicted immortal assassin powered by clockwork. A villain with style and a chilling monstrosity, Del Toro's Kroenen wasn't really Mignola's, but was one of the standout elements of the whole movie and one that film fans would love to see return if there was ever a third part. Kroenen deserves a place on a list of great comic book movie characters, but the rest of this list is based specifically on the characters on the page. So, let's get on with it.
