The Most Violent Moments From 'Hellboy' Comics
- 145 VOTES
Hellboy Takes His Anger Out On Giants
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Hellboy rides out with the titular hunting party in The Wild Hunt and is betrayed with an electrified lance. When he comes to, he is surrounded by a band of giants who have slain the rest of the members of the Hunt. In one of the worst encounters of his career, Hellboy flies into a rage, takes up the broken sword of one of the giants, and slays all of them.
- 238 VOTES
Frankenstein's Monster Tears A Guy's Leg Off
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During Hellboy's "lost weekend," a months-long bender that Hellboy took in Mexico in 1956, he ran afoul of a mad scientist who had acquired Frankenstein's monster from a traveling circus. Of course, the scientist, egged on by demons, wants Hellboy to face the monster in a wrestling ring, which he does.
When the two contenders are not entertaining enough for his liking, the scientist's hunchbacked sidekick, Tupo, whips the poor monster. In response, the creature grabs Tupo by the leg and tears it off.
- 348 VOTES
Gruagach Tries To Take His Own Life
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Not all of the barbaric moments in Hellboy are grand or epic. In "The Corpse," one of the earliest Hellboy short stories, he makes an enemy in Gruagach, a fairy who he singes with iron and who is ultimately transformed into a pig-man. Gruagach leads the other fairies to resurrect Nimue, the Queen of Blood. When he realizes what he has wrought, however, Gruagach attempts to take his own life only to find that a curse placed on him by Merlin has made him immortal.
When Hellboy comes across Gruagach, he attempts to put his old enemy out of his misery, but even emptying a clip into the pig-man isn't enough to do the trick. Though he has done terrible things, his end - or lack thereof - is heartbreaking.
- 427 VOTES
Cora Fisher Turns Into Bugs And Bats
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In the Hellboy story "The Crooked Man," Hellboy and Tom Ferrell join forces to track down some witches and the eponymous Crooked Man deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Along the way, they come across Cora Fisher, a woman who has fallen in with the witches but who agrees to help Hellboy and Ferrell anyway.
On their journey, they pass the mines where the Melungeon Witches live. The witches know Cora's name, and as they call out to her, she coughs up an enormous centipede before becoming a swarm of phosphorescent bugs, snakes, frogs, bats, and other creatures which swarm over Hellboy, subjecting him to a weird vision of a sinister church.
- 530 VOTES
There Is More Than One Way To Slay A Vampire
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Hellboy has encountered all manner of strange creatures in his travels, but he hasn't run across too many vampires. There's a reason for that, as revealed in several of the B.P.R.D. comics which tie in to Hellboy's adventures. One of the few times that he does cross paths with a vampire is in the story "The Sleeping and the Dead."
There, he also encounters a ghost girl and her mummified cat. While they face off, Hellboy manages to maneuver the ghost girl into the vicinity of the vampire who made her what she is, and she transforms into a giant specter, her hands fastening around the vampire's body and squeezing him until he loses his head.
- 637 VOTES
'The Place And The Hour Of The Beast'
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In the standalone story "The Wolves of Saint August," originally published in 1994, Hellboy and Dr. Kate Corrigan (in her first appearance in the comics) go up against the last scion of a family of werewolves. "I am much sinned against," William Grenier says when he finally confronts Hellboy after some spooky encounters with werewolf ghosts. Then, he proceeds to open up a gash in his forehead and peel off his own skin, revealing the gigantic werewolf beneath.
In the fight that ensues, Hellboy puts out one of Grenier's eyes with the thrown head of a statue and knocks him with a metal cross, leaving red, cross-shaped marks immortalized in an unforgettable, unused cover image.
- 724 VOTES
Hellboy Finishes Satan
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Hellboy finds that peace is elusive in the underworld. He faces family drama and spirits, and among other things, he ends the life of the dark overlord while he sleeps.
The blow, which is framed by quotes from Macbeth, produces a river of blood, which Hellboy's sister Gamori follows back to Pandemonium, the capital city of Hell. Once there, she goes mad, ultimately taking down the whole city.
- 829 VOTES
Hellboy Faces Rasputin
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Throughout the comics, Hellboy's most persistent foe has been Rasputin. Historically difficult to end, Rasputin has been a thorn in Hellboy's side since the beginning. It was Rasputin who first brought Hellboy to Earth as part of Project Ragnarok, and the two have crossed proverbial (and sometimes literal) swords many times since.
Their first face-off takes place in the pages of Seed of Destruction, the first Hellboy mini-series from 1994. It is during this fight, as Rasputin attempts to awaken a sleeping Ogdru-Hem monster, that he perishes for the first time in the comics. But this is Rasputin we're talking about; he's difficult to put down and usually doesn't stay down for long. Abe Sapien impales him with a harpoon, while Liz Sherman's pyrokinetic powers bring down all of Cavendish Hall before Hellboy finally dukes it out with the fire-breathing skeleton of Rasputin, who warns, "If you [slay] me you will never know who you are!"
"Yeah, you're right," Hellboy replies, "But I can live with it."
"This is not the end!!" Rasputin's skull insists just before Hellboy smashes it with his Right Hand of Doom. "It is for you," Hellboy counters, though readers of the comics know it's harder than that to keep a bad sorcerer down.
- 927 VOTES
Hellboy Hits A Horse So Hard It Turns To Bones
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In Wake the Devil, Hellboy faces off against the vampire Count Giurescu, who appears on horseback as Hellboy is chained to an enormous wooden stake at the crossroads. As the Count charges forward on his horse, Hellboy breaks the stake free from its moorings and smashes it into the animal, turning both the horse and its rider into bone in one massive, mostly white panel. "Pow!" Hellboy declares, his gift for understatement once more on display.
"That's interesting," Hellboy says in the aftermath. "No matter how hard you hit them, horses don't usually [erupt]." The goddess Hecate promptly shows up to explain that Giurescu's demise is because she has reclaimed the power that she gave him which transformed him into a vampire in the first place. Hecate and Hellboy then face off for the first time, but to his exasperation, not the last...
- 1017 VOTES
Nimue Takes Hellboy To The Underworld With Her
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In an apocalyptic face-off, Hellboy confronts Nimue, who has become a vessel for one of the cosmically powerful Ogdru Jahad. As the scene unfolds and a magical storm extirpates England, Nimue's army fights against the fallen nobles of Britain. Queen Mab describes Nimue's crew as the four horsemen.
In the end, there is a field of slain soldiers that stretches as far as the eye can see and lightening striking English landmarks. Hellboy confronts a dragon, ultimately defeating it at the cost of his own life as Nimue's spirit takes his heart and drags him to the underworld with her.
- 1129 VOTES
Hellboy Makes Sushi
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After a brief stint in Africa, "The Third Wish" finds Hellboy imprisoned on the bottom of the ocean by a mer-witch known as the Bog Roosh, courtesy of a magical golden nail and the bones of a guy who "liked to pretend he was a werewolf" and who really disliked Hellboy. While he's down there, Hellboy has to fight a couple of zombified mermaids and a whole bunch of weird sea creatures, including giant crabs and octopuses.
Using a golden spearhead, he makes mincemeat out of all of them, chopping them up in eerily silent panels that prefigure some of the work that still remains in Hellboy's future.
- 1226 VOTES
A Monkey Shoots Abe SapienÂ
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"Is that a monkey?" Abe Sapien asks as the chimp - who was once Count Guarino - peers around a darkened corner in the Hellboy story "Box Full of Evil." Hellboy notices the piece just before the chimp fires several shots, hitting Abe in the shoulder and side. It's a three-panel sequence that has become one of the most beloved in the Hellboy canon, but it's also only the beginning of things going very wrong for Hellboy and Abe.
The chimp chains Abe up and uses a hot iron brand against him while Hellboy is incapacitated by his true name and taken on by Igor Bromhead, the occultist who set the story into motion using the iron tongs St. Dunstan employed to capture Ualac. Ultimately, Ualac stops Bromhead from ending Hellboy, opting instead to fight the title character himself, who snaps off his own horns and uses them to impale the demon. Bromhead, meanwhile, finds himself half-transformed into a lizard and bricked up in a wall. It doesn't really pay to mess with occult forces in the Hellboy universe.
- 1322 VOTES
Hellboy Learns The Secret History Of The World
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After an adventure on the bottom of the ocean, Hellboy washes up on the shores of a seemingly deserted island where he spends some time drinking with skeletons before discovering that the island is, of course, not as deserted as he initially thought. Years ago, the Inquisition cornered a man who knew the secret history of the world. They pierced him with spears and one of the Ogdru-Hem monsters manifested, remaining on the island in wait for Hellboy.
In the ensuing battle, Hellboy is mortally harmed and the man knits himself a new body. He tells Hellboy the secret history, and also says, "I am everything you should have been, everything you were ever meant to be." Hellboy ultimately defeats him by tricking the Ogdru-Hem creature into impaling itself on the mast of a ship.
- 1420 VOTES
Hellboy Faces An ImmortalÂ
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Astute Hellboy fans know that Hellboy is pretty undefeatable. He has gone through the ringer but he just keeps hitting werewolves with his big stone fist while shouting "Boom!" So, when the Baba Yaga seeks vengeance for his eye that Hellboy took out years ago, he sends the immortal Koshchei up against title character.
Koshchei hid his soul inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a rabbit, inside a goat. As he fights Hellboy, he loses his head, he's pinned to the floor, and impaled on trees, all before becoming a horned giant that is swept away by a flood.
