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

The Corpse, which was published in the issue before The Chained Coffin, is another early one-shot that would go on to become far more important in the wider Hellboy mythology than first appeared.

In particular, for the purposes of the movie, it introduced origin stories for two later-significant characters that the movie has adapted: Alice Monaghan (Hellboy's only ever real comics canon love interest, and the movie's female lead played by Sasha Lane) and shape-shifting fairy the Gruagach of Lough Leane (played in the movie by Stephen Graham).

Set in Ireland in 1959, The Corpse sees Hellboy on the hunt for a missing baby, the infant Alice, who has been kidnapped by fairies and replaced by Gruagach as a changeling. The fairies intend to raise Alice as their own as they are unable to produce children. Hellboy rescues the baby and defeats Gruagach, who gets eaten by and then possesses the body of a boar-headed giant (which is then shrunk to dwarf size).

In the climactic later stories, a grown-up Alice has gained a connection to the magical world from her being raised, even very briefly, by fairies, and becomes the last queen of the fairies before they leave this world for good. Meanwhile, Gruagach, trapped in his boar body, nurses a severe grudge against our hero.