Hellboy 3: 10 Comic Plots That Should Be Used

One of the undoubted strengths of The Golden Army was in giving intellectual fish-man Abe Sapien his own sub-plot courtesy of a doomed romance with fairy princess Nuala. Alongside Hellboy himself, Abe is really the next most significant character, so it would be good to see him continue to get his own character arc. We've already been given Hellboy's origin story at the start of the first film, but Abe's remains a mystery to movie audiences. That's where the Oannes Society comes in.

In the comics, Abe's quest for his origins eventually reveals he was once Langdon Caul, a not terribly sympathetic nineteenth century mad scientist, part of the aforementioned society (an organisation connected to raising long departed Egyptian deities from the depths of the ocean). An experiment involving an arcane ritual and a mysterious cocoon from under the sea transformed Caul into the fish-man we know and love, with no memory of his former life and a wife that drowned herself after her husband's disappearance.

Through a combination of occult lore and dark science, the Society kept themselves alive on a distant island, transferring themselves into cybernetic bodies and attempting to destroy the world through artificial tsunamis, bringing them back to the attention of Abe.

It's hard to see quite how the exact details of the Oannes Society plot from the comics could make it into a film in which Hellboy would remain the focus, but it would still be nice to see some element of Abe's backstory explored in greater detail. Meanwhile, the sort of steampunk submarine designs that Mignola also brought to Disney's Atlantis would be a great addition to the visual aesthetic of Del Toro's films.