Hellboy: 10 Comics You Should Read Before Seeing The New Movie

Perhaps the most significant amount of media coverage that the new Hellboy movie generated during its production was when white British actor Ed Skrein dropped out amid concerns about "whitewashing", to be replaced by Korean-American Daniel Dae Kim in the role of Ben Daimio. But just who is Ben Daimio, anyway?

In the comics Daimio - a tough, by-the-book, Japanese-American military man with a special ops background - never shared the page with Hellboy himself. Instead, he was brought in as the new B.P.R.D. Field Commander after Hellboy left the bureau in-universe and the B.P.R.D. got their own spinoff comic in the real world (which is now the most frequently published Hellboy comic and the one in which the big ongoing narrative takes place).

This five issue miniseries, published in the winter of 2004-5, is a good place to start for anyone wanting to know about Daimio as it introduces the character and, specifically, his antagonistic relationship with the rest of the team due to his blunt, brutish manner and love of problem-solving through military force rather than diplomatic intervention.

It also highlights Daimio's severe scarring (half his face is torn open) and the fact that he seemed to die during a rescue mission leading a team of marines in the Bolivian jungle, only to awaken days later during his autopsy. The main plot of The Dead is unlikely to play much part in the movie, but expect Daimio's personality and backstory to draw from here.