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

Daimio's mysterious past death and resurrection, as well as his witchy war criminal ancestry, come to a head in this five-issue miniseries first published in 2007.

Here, a series of mysterious deaths around the B.P.R.D. base and Daimio's increasingly erratic behaviour, combined with the discovery of his descent from the Crimson Lotus, cause the team to question his loyalty and motivations. Then a fellow survivor of the Bolivian jungle massacre sneaks into the base and tries to blow Daimio up with a rocket launcher.

When an enormous, bloody were-jaguar type creature emerges from the flames, causing massive chaos and destruction, it is revealed that his Bolivian mission to rescue nuns from a jaguar cult had resulted in the death of virtually all of his marine crew, including Daimio himself, whose resurrection was due to being possessed by the spirit of an ancient jaguar god. He had been using Asian mysticism to suppress the jaguar, but ultimately it has burst free anyway.

Killing Ground is basically the climax of Daimio's story. Since then he's only made a couple of appearances in the comic, struggling to control the jaguar spirit within, until eventually being killed off in 2012's B.P.R.D. Hell On Earth: The Long Death.

How much of that is going to be realised by movie-Daimio is again debatable, but we know from trailers and promotional material that the were-jaguar aspect is central to the movie character, so expect some struggles with repressing his savage side before it all comes bursting out.