If there's one thing that all of Mignola's comics do well then it's poignancy: whether you're a hero or a villain in Hellboy's world chances are you have some kind of tragic story and that's something you will see crop up a lot on this list. One of the best examples of a tearjerker character is Daryl, a minor recurring character who remains a deeply sympathetic monster. A wendigo is a real flesh eating monster in Native American legends, and in this version you become a wendigo when attacked by one and can only lift the curse by killing someone else. Family man Daryl is just unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His tragedy is that he retains just enough humanity not to want to kill and shed his curse.
22. Iosif Nichayko
Born during the dying days of the Second World War and the dawn if the Cold War, Russia's equivalent of the B.P.R.D., the Special Sciences Service or S.S.S., always seem full of underhand methods and ulterior motives even when nominally helping our heroes out. This is very much the case when it comes to their current director Nichayko. Originally an ordinary, unambitious Soviet soldier in the late 40s, forced to guard a valuable relic on a sinking submarine, Nichayko remained alive as a zombie at the bottom of the ocean, guarding the relic until its recovery. The resurrected Nichayko, dressed in a sort of permanent hazmat suit to keep him alive, became stronger, smarter and much more ambitious and ended up seizing control. Given his unconventional undead existence it should come as no surprise that the B.P.R.D.'s enhanced agents relate to Nichayko, he even replaces Johann's old containment suit with one that matches his, but there always seems to be something a little duplicitous about him, not least keeping his predecessor in a bell jar in his office.
