Having faced off against witches numerous times in his career (even his mum's one), it should come as no surprise to see the original classical goddess of witchcraft as one of Hellboy's major villains. As Buffy would show us a few years later, it's one thing to fight vampires and demons, but an actual goddess is an antagonist on a whole other level. Hecate was one of the few monsters to fight Hellboy and emerge still alive and at least as powerful as before. Hecate's enormous power is apparent in the way that many writers like to showcase a new villain, the ease with which she polishes off the previous major villain. In this case the Conqueror Worm story shows her mocking Rasputin before casually destroying even his ghost so that only a tiny crumb of his soul remains. What makes Hecate really interesting, though, is the element of her that makes her especially powerful and is also her eventual undoing: part of her becomes human. She escapes from Hellboy by merging with Rasputin's Nazi assistant Ilsa Haupstein when the latter puts herself into an iron maiden, creating a series of unforeseen consequences that result in her end.
12. The Ogdru Jahad
The single looming ever present threat throughout the entire Hellboy narrative, it's hard to tell whether the Ogrdru Jahad, a multi-faceted monster of unimaginable power that is half the Cthulhu Mythos' Great Old Ones and half the seven headed beast of the Book of Revelations, constitutes seven parts of one complete entity or seven individual beings. What is absolutely certain, though, is that in Hellboy's version of the apocalypse it will be the Ogdru Jahad that bring it about sooner or later. Even their 369 significantly lesser offspring, the Ogdru Hem, are monsters on a city destroying scale. The Ogdru Jahad are virtually indestructible, ultimately undefeatable and, perhaps oddly for a creature with seven heads (or possibly seven creatures), utterly single mindedly devoted to one purpose: to break free of their crystal prison and bring utter and absolute destruction to the world. They may not, therefore, be considered a "character" (or seven characters) in the strictest sense of the word, more an entity, but they give Hellboy's story a constant dark edge.
