Hellboy: 10 Comics You Should Read Before Seeing The New Movie
9. Hellboy: Conqueror Worm
In this 2001 miniseries Hellboy and his team from the Bureau Of Paranormal Research And Defence (B.P.R.D.) head to an Austrian castle to prevent a Nazi scientist, preserved as a head in a jar, and his cybernetically enhanced gorillas from reviving a Nazi space programme designed to summon a monstrous being from space. The story ends with Hellboy quitting the B.P.R.D. and deciding to walk the earth alone.
None of that seems like it will make it into the new movie. But Conqueror Worm is worth checking out anyway because of one iconic supporting character that it introduces: The Lobster (AKA Lobster Johnson).
Played in the new movie by Spider-Man 3's Sandman, Thomas Haden Church, the Lobster is a violent gangbusting 1930s New York vigilante who would later receive his own spinoff series. In the contemporary 21st century world of the comics he is thought to be an urban legend, better known for a series of Mexican lucha libre movies which for some reason renamed him "Lobster Johnson".
However, as seen here, the Lobster served on covert missions with the US army at the start of the War, dying preventing this Nazi rocket from launching in the first place. His ghost returns here to save the B.P.R.D. team. Perhaps look for some similar ghostly assistance from Church's movie version.