Classic Hellboy Villain Will Return In New Comic Mini-Series

Though the tale of Hellboy officially ended this year with the conclusion of B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know, the stories of horn head continues as creator Mike Mignola fills out the formative years of the character in various one-shots and mini-series. The next story in these sporadic tales has been announced by Dark Horse with Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.: The Return Of Effie Kolb, picking up from a story thread previously told in the pages of Hellboy and serving as a sequel to the iconic and Eisner award winning story, The Crooked Man.

The official description for the new series reads: "Years after he banished the infamous backwoods demon known as the Crooked Man, Hellboy returns to Appalachia when a young psychic warns Tom Ferrell of looming danger. But the Crooked Man's house is no longer empty, and threats both new and old simmer in the Virginia woods." Mike Mignola will once again write the story which has artist Zach Howard (Exiles, The Cape) on pencils with the ever reliable Dave Stewart on colors.

"Sometimes you create a character, they perform their function, and that's it," Mike Mignola said. "Other times you finish with them and they just refuse to get back in their box. Tom Ferrell is one of those characters. Even as I was writing The Crooked Man I knew there was a whole lot more to that guy. And Effie Kolb… It turns out there are worse things you can do to a character than turn them into a horse."

"Getting to stand in the shadows of the two legends that made The Crooked Man is an honor," Zach Howard added. "Mignola asking me to draw the sequel is an opportunity I have not taken likely, and I've given my absolute best to live up to his wonderful creation. This will be my final sequential art as a freelance comic book artist, and I couldn't ask for a better end to this chapter of my career."

The first issue of Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.: The Return Of Effie Kolb will debut on February 19, 2020.

The original Hellboy: The Crooked Man storyline debuted in 2008 with legendary artist Richard Corben on art duties. Corben went on to win the "Best Finite Series/Limited Series" Eisner Award for his work on the series, his first ever Eisner award.