OK, doing an article about every god and monster in the Hellboy universe would be pure insanity. That’s not going to happen. My focus for this article is thankfully a little narrower than that. This Hell Notes I’ll be looking at “the old gods,” otherwise known as the Ogdru Hem, and the monsters associated with them. And at the end, I have something a little special for you…

Please note, this column contains spoilers for those that have not yet read up to and including B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Lake of Fire.

In the beginning, the Watchers were sent to guard the world from Ereshigal, the darkness, during the slow emergence of life from the newborn oceans. But the watchers grew impatient. One day, the watcher spirit known as Anum reached up to take the fire from the heavens, and with it fashioned out of the mud the Dragon, the seven who are one, the Ogdru Jahad. The watchers gathered around the Ogdru Jahad and set their seals on them, naming them Amon-Jahad, Adad-Jahad, Namrat-Jahad, Irra-Jahad, Nunn-Jahad, Belili-Jahad, and Nergal-Jahad. When this was done, Anum breathed fire into the creatures, but they remained lifeless husks.When night came, the darkness descended on the Ogdru Jahad, and Ereshigal entered into them. The Dragon birthed the first life on Earth, three hundred and sixty-nine Ogdru Hem. At dawn, the watchers saw how their creation had been corrupted by the darkness and chaos they had been supposed to protect the world from. In an attempt to fix their mistake, they rained down lightning from the heavens. For ten thousand years they were at war. At the end of it, not even a single Ogdru Hem had been killed. Most had had their bodies destroyed and were cast into the wind, becoming the Ogdru spirits. Those that remained were left buried in the earth. When the last Ogdru Hem were defeated, the Ogdru Jahad was imprisoned and hurled into the Abyss.

For a long time the Ogdru Hem remained sleeping or adrift while the first race of man, the Hyperboreans, ruled. Then Hecate came and corrupted the Hyperboreans, setting in motion events that would ultimately destroy the Hyperborean capital of Gorinium. The Temple of King Thoth, which had been profaned by Hecate, was made into the Temple of the Ogdru Jahad, and through the blood of slaughtered priests, the Ogdru spirit Sadu-Hem was reborn into a new body. Then it waited.

The corruption of the Hyperboreans gave the Ogdru spirits a foothold in the world again. These spirits could drift into creatures and people and change them. Some Hyperboreans tried to fight against them, but as the Hyperboreans’ time in the world was coming to an end, they taught a select few of the new race of man, humanity, how to channel Vril to combat the Ogdru spirits. As far as we know, these human shamans were the only ones with the power to fight the Ogdru spirits. There is little known about this time period, but some of it survives in splinters of Mayan and Aztec mythology as explored in Abe Sapien: The Shape of Things to Come.In that story it was revealed that the Mayans kept alive some of those shaman traditions. Elena and her father were shape-shifters whose ancestors fought Ogdru Hem such as Cipactlhem and Vucub Caquix. Elena has some knowledge of which parts of Mayan and Aztec mythology are actually history. But Elena and her father are extremely rare exceptions. When the Ogdru spirits lost their foothold in the world, they slipped into history, and then myth, and then faded until they came to be forgotten by humankind.

That’s not to say they were altogether gone. There have been isolated incidents when an Ogdru spirit has managed to crawl its way back into the world or to speak to humans of rare sensitivity. On two occasions Hellboy has come across Ogdru spirits that were using ectoplasm to try to regain human form, once in 1965 in the French Abbey of La Noe, another in 1979 involving the medium Mr Tod. These were frail creatures though, nothing compared to what an Ogdru Hem should be…

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This is the Ogdru Hem that was meant to begin the end of the world. It had slept under Polarian ice in the Temple of the Ogdru Jahad since the fall of Gorinium, waiting. In 1945, there came a monk, a man with the sensitivity to not only hear the Ogdru spirits, but the voice of the Dragon itself. Grigori Rasputin had created the Ragna Rok engine with the help of the Nazis and had brought into the world the key to shatter the prison of the Ogdru Jahad, but his time to act was not yet upon him. He sat at the foot of the statue-like Sadu-Hem, and for forty-eight years he meditated, communing with the Dragon.

In 1993 he was found by the Cavendish expedition, of which Professor Bruttenholm was a member. Upon touching Rasputin, the monk saw Bruttenholm’s mind and recognised what Hellboy was. Sadu-Hem awoke and turned the Professor’s companions into frog monsters. Professor Bruttenholm, however, was left human so that he could be used to draw out Hellboy.

Sadu-Hem was transported to Cavendish Hall in upstate New York where it awaited Hellboy. This could have easily been where things ended, but Hellboy had been very lucky to have with him two companions that could disrupt Rasputin’s plans. Abe Sapien, in his former life as Langdon Caul, had known Elihu Cavendish, the ancestor of the three Cavendish boys that had been turned into frog monsters (I’ve written about frog monsters before) . His spirit possessed Abe and threw a harpoon through Rasputin. And then there was Liz Sherman, perhaps the only person alive capable of calling Vril (the fire of heaven) without the aid of an implement. And Vril is the most effect weapon against Ogdru Hem. With it she burned Sadu-Hem and Rasputin, presumably killing them both.In 1939 the Nazi’s launched a rocket into space. It’s sole occupant was a corpse specially prepared as a vessel for an Ogdru spirit. When the space capsule returned in 2001, it released a gas that turned people into frog monsters. Even wearing a gas mask afforded little protection. It merely preserved the human mind during the transformation.

Like the Ogdru spirits Hellboy had encountered in 1965 and 1979, the Conqueror Worm used ectoplasm to create its body, only it was at a far more advanced stage and far beyond Hellboy’s ability to beat into submission. And it only grew stronger as the Conqueror Worm feasted on the frog monsters it created.

Hellboy knew of only one way to defeat it, to use a device given to him by an alien. This would have worked if a Nazi robot body hadn’t managed to smash it. At that point it looked like the world was doomed, and it would have been except for a homunculus called Roger.

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Roger released the energy that gave him life into the Conqueror Worm, destroying its body and drawing it spirit into himself. He then demanded Hellboy destroy him (the B.P.R.D. had recently put a bomb in Roger because they didn’t trust him and gave Hellboy the detonator). But Hellboy wouldn’t do it; he wanted Roger to fight it. Meanwhile the Conqueror Worm was eating Roger from the inside out. However, thanks to an electrical storm and the help of the ghost of Lobster Johnson, Roger was saved.In 2004, ten years after the incident at Cavendish Hall, the B.P.R.D. found something during one of their routine investigations, a tiny fungus. It was taken to a lab in New Jersey where in a mere six weeks it was allowed to grow. The lab was visited by a Professor Irwin Derby, who upon seeing the fungus, shot the professor showing him around and began hammering on the glass containing the fungus. He was shot by security, smashing the glass and freeing the fungus, which then began to work its way into his corpse. By the time the B.P.R.D. arrived, the fungus and Professor Derby’s corpse had escaped underground, and the security guards had been turned into frog monsters.

Back at B.P.R.D. headquarters in Connecticut, Professor O’Donnell declared that the fungus was Sadu-Hem returned. Fortunately Professor Irwin left one rather big clue as to his current whereabouts: a month ago he had become a member of an organisation calling itself “The New Temple of Mysteries” based in Crab Point, Michigan, and began writing them sizeable checks.

Just like the New Jersey lab, when the B.P.R.D. arrived the town was deserted. The local church had been converted into “The New Temple of Mysteries” where a priest and the Sadu-Hem fungus-man were turning people into frog monsters.

History repeated itself when Liz Sherman unleashed her fire to destroy Sad-Hem’s body, but it escaped into the graveyard outside the church, raising a small army of corpses, which again she dispatched with her fire. Despite the B.P.R.D.’s efforts to round up the frog monsters, many of them escaped, beginning a plague that the Bureau would spent several years fighting against.

In 2005 Hellboy washed up on the shore of an island off the coast of Portugal after spending more than two years floating unconscious in the ocean. While there he found a tower surrounded by a golden liquid (actually blood), from which emerged Urgo-Hem and, after a short battle, killed Hellboy. Urgo-Hem had been reborn centuries earlier in 1525 when a priest, the living record of the true history of the world, was killed by members of the Spanish Inquisition. Like Sadu-Hem had been reborn from his priests’ blood in the Temple of the Ogdru Jahad in Gorinium, so was Urgo-Hem reborn from this priest’s golden blood.

So, back to 2005, the priest that had died all those years ago began to remake himself from Hellboy’s blood, becoming everything that Hellboy had once been. With the aid of an African witch doctor, Hellboy was restored to some sort of life, and set about having a rematch with Urgo-Hem. Urgo-Hem, though very large, was still weak at this point, only existing because of the blood of one man, and so it could be killed as a man could be killed. By fighting smart, Hellboy defeated Urgo-Hem and in the process restored himself to full life, returning the Ogdru Jahad priest to death.

Katha-Hem

March 2006, the frog monsters successfully awoke one of the old gods, Katha-Hem, with the help of the Black Flame. Katha-Hem wasn’t an Ogdru spirit that had been restored to an ectoplasmic body, or a body still growing in strength. Katha-Hem had been one of the Ogdru Hem sleeping in the earth and was awoken at full strength.Like the Conqueror Worm, Katha-Hem released a gas, its “breath,” which changed humans, this time not into frog monsters, but something else, creatures with blue flames burning out through the top of their skulls. If this flame came into contact with someone, it would engulf them in but a moment.

Conventional weapons had no effect on Katha-Hem. In the two days it was active it levelled Lincoln and several surrounding cities in Nebraska and had the US government ready to use nuclear weapons. It was finally destroyed by Liz using a Hyperborean artifact that amplified her fire, striking as blue lightning, and destroying Katha-Hem in a single hit. Liz collapsed afterwards and the device fell into a crevasse and was never recovered. The flaming-head creatures that Katha-Hem created were likewise killed by branches of the lightning bolt, but the frog monsters escaped underground.

The corpse of Katha-Hem was bombed and buried in the crater of destruction underneath the rubble of the cities it had destroyed. Over seventeen hundred people had been killed in a single city alone. I don’t recall the books gave a final death toll. This was the first time the Bureau had come up against a fully-formed Ogdru Hem, and although they defeated it, they didn’t come out of it feeling very victorious.

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Ineight Hyperborean war machines emerged in Munich, Germany, and began destroying everything in sight. These machines were strong, not Katha-Hem strong, but there were eight of them.However, they were not unfamiliar to the Bureau, and they knew how to deal with them. Their power source underground needed to be destroyed. Once this was done, (no easy task) the machines became inactive. But they were more than just machines. Throughout the battle they had been changing and becoming stronger. Investigating the wreckage afterwards, they found frog monsters had been hooked up to the machines.The war machines showed up again induring the battle at Thadrethes, a Hyperborean city made new by Memnan Saa. During this battle, the war machines changed further than they had in Munich, their heads splitting open with a blue-ish, tentacle-like mass emanating from them, much like Katha-Hem during one of its transitional phases. These war machines were killed by dragons created by Memnan Saa using Liz as a power source, meaning they were destroyed by a Vril flame.

The true purpose of the war machines was revealed in B.P.R.D.: King of Fear when Abe and his companions witnessed a war machine with far more advanced changes opening up to release an Ogdru Hem. They were incubators for the frog inside. These war machines, along with the last of the frog monsters and everything else in Hollow Earth, were destroyed by Liz releasing all the flame she could muster.

Hell on Earth

The scorching of the Hollow Earth caused devastation across the globe. In the Salton Sea it awoke an Ogdru Hem that spewed out a red gas into the upper air, transforming those that came into contact with it into monsters. After this initial appearance, it became dormant. With everything else going on in the world it was simply left alone, as it was a fully-formed Ogdru-Hem like Katha-Hem was, and with no available way to hurt it there was no sense in provoking it.Further disasters followed, such as a volcano appearing overnight in Houston, Texas, wiping out the whole city. In the area around the volcano a new breed of monster appeared, the Hammerheads. These creatures travel primarily underground and have spread slowly outward from Texas. They are extremely difficult to kill, though shooting them in the mouth has proven to be very effective on numerous occasions. There appears to be different varieties of the Hammerheads. The ones that appeared in Chicago inare noticeably different from their southern relatives.The world-wide devastation changed things in other, less obvious ways too. It created a way for Ogdru spirits to slip into the world through vulnerable people. InAbe Sapien and Ben Daimio battled a twin Ogdru Hem, not two Ogdru Hem, but rather a single Ogdru Hem in two simultaneous forms, one a larval creature that subsisted on living human souls to grow stronger, and the other its growing body. This Ogdru Hem had once been an Ogdru spirit, but through the rips created by the scorching of the Earth, it heard the pain of a woman who had lost her child and it grew inside her as a new child. This is exactly what had been happening in the early dawn of humankind.

In B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Seattle Carla Giarocco and her team (including Agent Vaughn) managed to kill another monster. The story wasn’t really about the monster so much as it was about the spirit of humanity, but they did succeed in killing it. It seems likely then that this was not a fully formed Ogdru Hem, but rather an Ogdru spirit that had recently been able to muster together a body. This was happening all over the world at this point.

Russia in particular had a severe problem. In the abandoned city of Rampayedik, zombies had begun to appear in neighbouring towns collecting construction equipment. The Russian Special Sciences Service sent teams to investigate, but all were lost. Finally they sent Commander Nicholas Verlacz of the Esoteric Teachings Division, supposedly the best psychic since the last Czar. No sooner had Commander Verlacz been sent in when he was possessed. This was no usual possession though, and exorcism was of no use. He had been possessed by an Ogdru spirit.

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Commander Verlacz was bound in runic chains and studied, but nothing could be learned. Finally, the S.S.S. director, Iosif Nichayko, was able to get the B.P.R.D.’s help. He shot Commander Verlacz, insisting the human inside was long dead (this was actually true, by the way), and set Johann on the Ogdru spirit that emerged. Through this incident, Johann discovered that his lack of biology, specifically a mind, gave him a level of protection from possession from Ogdru spirits. Though still very dangerous, he could fight the possession.With this new confidence, Johann set out to complete the mission Commander Verlacz had not been able to. In a mine under Rampayedik he found an Ogdru hem in an advanced stage, though not yet fully formed. Like it had with Commander Verlacz, the Ogdru Hem possessed the Russian troops with Johann and turned them against him, ripping his containment suit to bits. Johann found a temporary vessel in the form of one of the Russian corpses, and finished the mission, blowing the Ogdru Hem’s body to bits.But was it truly gone? The seven scientists that had been studying the possessed Commander Verlacz had been possessed also. When they met in secret, Isoif found them and killed them all, remarking that they were still nascent. But Iosif missed one. Dr Lazar escaped to Scotland where he began assembling a cult around himself. It was suggested inthat Lazar didn’t even know what he was, but it seems no one else did either. He was killed, eventually, but there are still a lot of questions about him, and not all to do with him being possessed by and Ogdru spirit either.

Cults worshipping the Ogdru Hem were starting to appear all over the globe. In Atlanta, the Reverend Nedin claimed that the hell being unleashed on Earth was the wrath of God as punishment for our sins. Months later he had changed his tune, opened up a new church, the First Church of the Living Earth, and began claiming that the Salton Sea monster was God. He changed from a Christian to a man adamant that the Christian Bible was not his book, that the stories in that book, even if they really happened, were irrelevant. He now believed in the future, not in Heaven or Hell, but in a future in this world.

When the Salton Sea monster laid its eggs by the Salton Sea and in San Diego, people began to worship them, at first peacefully, but then later taking violent action against those that wouldn’t join them. All the eggs at the Salton Sea have since been destroyed, but as for the ones in San Diego, I’ve no idea. But the change in the people is most curious. Liz Sherman came up against a cult of her own in. However, it seemed more than just a cult. The people had physically changed too, their eyes black. This black-eyed effect was also seen in Russia by people transformed by the Ogdru Hem in Rampayedik.

Other people have undergone changes in this new world without losing their minds. In Seattle the Institute of Biomedical Research was working with the B.P.R.D. to investigate people that began to change after the Ogdru Hem was killed there. This illness showed characteristics of both viral and bacterial infection. Abe Sapien came across this in the small town of Grayrock, in San Juan County, Colorado after he escaped from B.P.R.D. headquarters. Many people had had parts of their body changed, but their local minister wanted them to rejoice in their deformity. When the town turned on this minister and hung him, he transformed into Ghennu-Hem. Just like Sadu-Hem and Urgo-Hem before him, Ghennu-Hem was reborn through the death of his priest (though Abe made sure it was a very short life).

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Inthe changes to people were much more radical, touching both body and mind. Like the Conqueror Worm, Katha-Hem, and the Salton Sea monster, the Ogdru Hem in Chicago transformed people with its breath. This gas only affected humans though, and fortunately a gas mask was enough to protect from the transformation. But is it a complete transformation? In the story, a small boy, Lucas, goes looking for his mother who had been transformed by the gas. When he found her, she didn’t kill him. Was this some remnant of the mother left inside or was it instead a ploy to get Lucas to lead her and all the other monsters to the small team of B.P.R.D. agents?

There are new monsters emerging all the time, like the crab-spider people in Georgia that lure people to them with songs sung in beautiful voices, only glimpsed in a single panel. And next year there will certainly be more monsters, such as these “cricket” guys…

The Return of the Black Flame

Things kicked into high gear in The Return of the Master. The Black Flame’s return awoke numerous Ogdru Hem sleeping in the earth, two in New York, one just on the edge of the dead zone around New York, one in Chicago, one in Scotland, two in Russia… and probably many more. I want to emphasise, these ones were woken from the earth. They are fully formed, just like Katha-Hem, just like the Salton Sea monster (who, by the way, laid some eggs and then disappeared. No one knows where it is). These ones can’t be killed by conventional means, although the Russians seem to be able to at least wound them (as seen in the finale of The Return of the Master and again in A Cold Day in Hell).

The only know way to hurt destroy these Ogdru Hem is Vril, like the flame Liz Sherman uses, or the lightning Sledgehammer used back in the Second World War. But… are they really destroyed?

The Watchers fought the Ogdru Hem for ten thousand years and they never killed a single one. They got roughly a third of them to sleep in the ground, and destroyed the bodies of the other two thirds. So when Liz burnt Sadu-Hem’s body, did she kill its spirit too? If the Watchers couldn’t, it seems unlikely. Could it be that every single Ogdru Hem the B.P.R.D. has killed is not really dead at all, merely weakened and disembodied? Could it be that some day a raving Ogdru Hem priest will be cut down and from that priest’s body Katha-Hem will emerge? And if these creatures grow inside the heart of their priests, what is festering inside Reverend Nedin, the head of the Salton Sea monster’s church?

The world has indeed gone to hell. There’s so many monsters and disasters out there it’s difficult to keep track of it all. Which brings me to your Christmas gift…

Extra Credit:The Writers’ Map

The writers have trouble keeping track of this stuff too, which is why Scott Allie has a map in his office keeping track of all the various horrors they have unfolding. And they’d like to share this map with you, the readers (You should definitely click that link). This map marks key locations, disasters, monsters, Ogdru Hem, and even the journeys of certain characters, like Abe Sapien.

The map has been divided into three layers. You’ll find it easiest to navigate if you only have one layer active at a time. Just tick or untick the box next to the layer name. This map is the one the writers use for their own records, so it will be regularly updated. You can return to it and see as more disasters are added, track the Salton Sea monster as it moves… and occasionally, you may even find an Easter egg or two. Speaking of which, if you look in Gallup, New Mexico you’ll see some Hammerheads are active there… I wonder what they’re up to? And in Santa Fe, there’s an Ogdru Hem you can look forward to meeting in B.P.R.D. next year. Every now and then you may find a little teaser has appeared on the map.

Have fun exploring it.

And that’s the last Hell Notes for 2013. Sections of this article replied heavily on Hellboy: The Companion, so I owe thanks to Stephen Weiner, Jason Hall, Victoria Blake, and Mike Mignola.

Merry Christmas from the team here at Mignolaversity! You are going to love what we’ve got in store for you next year.