Welcome back to We Want Comics, a column exploring intellectual properties, whether they’re movies, TV shows, novels or video games, that we want adapted into comic books. Or at least, that’s what it usually is. This week, we’re doing something a little different. We’re turning our eye on “Hellboy.”

“But,” I hear you say, “isn’t “Hellboy” already a comic?” Indeed, it is. In fact, it’s an entire universe of comics, which always seems to be expanding in new and unexpected ways. So this time we wanted to explore what other avenues the Hellboy Universe could explore next. I won’t be talking about story avenues for existing series to explore though. This article is purely about new series.

LIZ SHERMAN

This is by far the most obvious spin-off. “Hellboy: Seed of Destruction” was built around the core cast of Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and Liz Sherman, and Liz is the only one of the three that hasn’t had her own series yet. We’ve had a glimpse of what it might be like in the 2011 three-issue miniseries “B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered,” but there’s still a wealth of material to explore with her.

In 1973, at age eleven, she accidentally killed her whole family and several of her neighbors. Aterward, she became a ward of the B.P.R.D., and spent most of her time cooped up in B.P.R.D. headquarters. In 1978, Abe Sapien was brought to the Bureau, and just like her, he was didn’t really get out much. Then in 1980, at age eighteen, Liz became a Bureau agent. At this point, she had control of her pyrokinesis, but it was limited control, and so she was assigned to quieter cases, which were less likely to trigger an incident.

In “Hellboy: Wake the Devil,” Liz mentions that from 1974 to 1997 she left the Bureau thirteen times, but she always came back because what else could she do? This strikes me as fertile ground for a Liz Sherman series. And there are other periods we could explore too. From 1997 to 2000 Liz left the Bureau in search of a way to control her powers, a search that ended in 2000 when she found Agartha (see “B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth”). And during “B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth” there are several years where Liz is on her own that went largely unexplored.

For me, the key component for getting a Liz Sherman series to work is for it to stand distinct from the “Abe Sapien” series. Abe’s series was also about him running away from the Bureau, but more than that it was about him dealing with his own denial about what he is and actively avoiding asking bigger questions. Certainly Liz has a period like that, especially as we near the jaded version of her we see in “Hellboy: Wake the Devil.” Liz’s sabbaticals were framed as pretty hopeless affairs, and I think there’s too much similarity to the “Abe Sapien: Dark and Terrible” series to make this an avenue worth pursuing.

But I can’t imagine that every time Liz ran away, it was like that. Back in “B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered” we got to see a different Liz. She’s younger and starting to believe she could actually be a pretty damn good Bureau agent. This Liz, the younger, driven Liz, is one that isn’t running from the Bureau, but rather one that’s actively wanting to be involved more. However, the Bureau keeps putting up barriers. A Liz that runs away because she thinks she can handle more than the quieter cases she’s given, one that runs toward dangerous cases, determined to prove herself, is something I’d love to see.

Another key element with any series is going to be the creative team, and in the case of a Liz Sherman series, I think it would benefit from having women as its lead writer and artist. Personally, I’d love to see Maura McHugh on the book, not just because she and Kim Newman did such a fantastic job on “Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland,” but because it was a book that created complex women characters like Ada Morse and Anna Poole. That and McHugh’s own work leans toward fairy tales and myths. She clearly has a love for the subject matter and for the Hellboy Universe as a whole.

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There are so many talented women artists out there that could handle a Liz Sherman series, so these recommendations skew heavily to my own personal biases. Emma Ríos has a real flair for fantasy and horror, especially in her “Pretty Deadly” work. Bilquis Evely’s work is gorgeous, but her Sandman Universe stuff especially shows an excellent sense of haunting imagery that would feel very comfortable in the Hellboy Universe. For now A.C. Zamudio is very busy with “Shadow Roads,” but I’d love to see her work in the Hellboy Universe someday—her entire bibliography to date shows her love for supernatural stories, and she’s getting better all the time.

Liz is one of the best characters in the Hellboy Universe and she deserves her own series.

THE WORLD OF GALL DENNAR

Ted Howards is one of those characters that fans just love. It shows in the fan art, cosplay, and the constant requests to Skelton Crew Studio to make a replica of his sword. We’ve been getting more of him in “B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know” lately, and that’s great, but we’re not seeing much of his prehistoric counterpart Gall Dennar anymore.

What we’ve seen of Gall Dennar’s world is fascinating. Set thousands of years (or maybe more) after the fall of the Hyperborean Empire, Gall’s world is one in which the Ogdru Hem spirits seek to gain a foothold in the physical world once more, to regain their lost bodies. There are Ogdru cults that worship these dark spirits, “the cold people” (which appear to be precursors to vampires), and the T’shethuan shamans (the human disciples of the Hyperborean priests that follow the Path of the Right Hand)… It’s a rich world to explore, and we’ve barely scraped the surface.

But so far, this world has been largely centered around Gall Dennar, and while that worked for those old stories, I think in order for a prehistoric series to work, it would have to focus on others. Gall Dennar’s a character anchored to both the past and the future. For the series to stand alone, that element would have to take a back seat.

Given how heavily tied to the grand lore of the Hellboy Universe this era is, it would benefit greatly from Mike Mignola’s direct involvement. And I think he’s got a passion for this world, as you can see from the design sketches he did for “B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth—The Abyss of Time.” There were many.

And given that Gall’s blade eventually travels all the way from North America to the Sahara, I think there’s an incredible story there of Gall or one of his descendants voyaging into the Hollow Earth à la “Frankenstein Underground.” As for art duties, James Harren or Ben Stenbeck would be very obvious picks for this series, but at the same time it’s so distant from the rest of the Hellboy Universe, it may be a great series for an entirely new artist to define.

SARAH JEWELL MYSTERIES

This one’s a no brainer, and honestly, I suspect this one’s already in the works. Sarah Jewell was first introduced in 2017’s “Rise of the Black Flame” as a paranormal investigator that worked with with Sir Edward Grey in the 1890s and on into the 1900s. However, Sarah isn’t just some tag-along. Even before she met Sir Edward, she was quite an adventurer in her own right, with a career that began in girlhood when she taught herself to be an exorcist so she could deal with a poltergeist haunting an asylum. As a young woman she killed a Persian manticore. Later she joined Sir Edward Grey’s Silver Lantern Club and the pair had many adventures together.

In her later years she teamed up with Marie-Thérèse LaFleur, a young woman from Louisiana and then… well, we don’t really know how her career played out after that. In fact we know very little about Sarah Jewell beyond the broad strokes at this point. But she’s clearly a major character in the Hellboy Universe. Like Lobster Johnson and Sir Edward Grey, she exists as a character in popular fiction. The Lobster was very much a real character, but the general public thinks he’s a myth, knowing him primarily from the 1940s comics, a pair of 1945 film serials, and several poorly made lucha libre horror films. Likewise, Sir Edward Grey is a real character, but he’s also well known for the penny dreadfuls that were written about him. Sarah Jewell is also remembered for fictionalized accounts of her adventures in a series of novels about her as a teenager called Sarah Jewell Mysteries (see “The other Side of Summer” in Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors).

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Given Sarah Jewell is a character that’s been largely defined by prose and comicbook writer Chris Roberson, this is a series that presents a rather fun opportunity to explore the character in both comics and prose. I’d love to see issues of the comic come with serialized installments of a prose short story as a backup feature (paired with the occasional illustration, of course). At this point the character has been exclusively drawn by Christopher Mitten, and for now he seems very happy to continue working in the Hellboy Universe, so he’d be my first pick for the ongoing artist for a Sarah Jewell series.

MORGAN KALER

The best Hellboy Universe titles don’t follow in the footsteps of existing titles, but forge their own path, exploring the universe from a whole new point of view. “Lobster Johnson” is vastly different from “Koshchei the Deathless” and that’s a good thing. It’s part of the reason the spin-offs work.

In “Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever,” we got a glimpse of what a Hellboy Universe western would look like, and I’ve been craving more ever since. In ‘Lost and Gone Forever,’ Kaler’s an old man, and he’s clearly seen some stuff. He rejects Sir Edward Grey’s notions of evil witchcraft and sees the supernatural as something that can be the source of good in the world. He is not afraid to ally himself with supernatural forces or even to use them himself, but he is very careful to maintain respect for these powers.

It’s Kaler’s point of view that I think justifies the existence of a series, rather than the paranormal-western aspect. That said, the setting does lend itself to some gorgeous visuals. We saw a bit of that in John Severin’s work, and I feel like this is an essential element for any artist on a Morgan Kaler book. Only last year I was introduced to the work of Zé Burnay, and I haven’t been able to shake the idea of him teaming up with John Arcudi for a Morgan Kaler book ever since.

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR VAMPIRES

Here’s one that Mike Mignola himself suggested in an interview last year: a story about the Revolutionary War vampires glimpsed briefly in “B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth—The Pickens County Horror.” Vampires are a major thread woven through various Hellboy Universe titles, and yet there’s still so much more to explore. Personally, I think this would make a great backdrop for a story, but for it to work, it’d have to find an interesting point of view to access it through. This is something we see time and again with the one-shot Hellboy Universe titles, especially the ones focused on its villains. “Rasputin: The Voice of the Dragon” works because Trevor Bruttenholm is our point-of-view character. “Crimson Lotus” works because Arcudi developed Agents Dai and Shengli as our point-of-view characters.

The Revolutionary War vampire scenario works as a primary source of conflict, but without a personal angle, there’s no story there. “The Visitor: How & Why He Stayed” was a story Mignola had kicking around in various forms ever since the alien character showed up in “Hellboy: Conqueror Worm,” but until Chris Roberson figured out a way to tell that story from a personal angle, it didn’t work. That’s the big question about a Revolutionary War Vampire series: who is the viewpoint character? Considering Mignola’s already done some plotting on this one, I’m guessing he’s got something interesting in mind already…

THE KNIGHTS OF SAINT HAGAN

This one’s on here for only one reason. Back before Mike Mignola created Hellboy, he flirted with the idea of adapting King Arthur to comics, and while that project never developed beyond the initial spark, Mignola’s love of Arthurian lore pops up in the Hellboy Universe from time to time, most notably in “Hellboy: The Wild Hunt.”

The Knights of Saint Hagan are an interesting access point to the era. Originally, they were a part of the crusades. Their Captain, Hagan Douglas, was beheaded, and yet his headless corpse fought beside them in the siege of Acre in 1291. They lost the city, but the survivors formed the Order of the Knights of Saint Hagan.

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What I find interesting about the Order is that they never clearly recognized the difference between good and evil. At one point they found the demon Asmodeus and drove him from his home in the desert. They hunted witches too, but indiscriminately. A “kill-’em-all-ask-questions-later approach” as Hellboy called it. In 1307 they began to hunt the Knights Templar. Most of the Order would continue to act as inquisitors for the pope, but not all. Some, led by William Fitzroy, renounced violence and became monks.

The central conflict of the Order seeing the world in black and white terms, then gradually falling apart as they see the world in shades of gray, makes for an interesting access point to this era. And not all knights are spoken for. There were forty-seven in the order, but I doubt all became either inquisitors or monks. If Mignola ever decides to explore this era, the Order of the Knights of Saint Hagan comes with a clear point of view and evolving understanding of the supernatural, witchcraft, and demons. That makes a pretty good foundation for a story.

BEFORE THEY WERE AGENTS

I’m shamelessly pilfering this idea someone posted in a reddit thread (I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find the original post, otherwise I’d link to it). The idea is simply to see a regular person become a B.P.R.D. agent. What experiences did they have with the supernatural before they joined the Bureau? What does the B.P.R.D. look like from the point of view of an outsider? In a way, this is picking up on ideas already introduced in the Ashley Strode stories, but from an earlier point in time.

This doesn’t even need to be tied to any one particular character or era. It’d be fun to see a “War on Frogs” style series, which are shorter stories connected thematically. We could see how a psychic gets drafted into the psychic division by Dr. Hoffman, a division that’s often been talked about in “Hellboy” and “B.P.R.D.,” but very rarely seen. (It’d also be a nice opportunity to show there are two Dr. Izar Hoffmans at the Bureau, one significantly younger than the other, potentially a son of the older one.) It’d also be interesting to see what drives a regular person to pursue this as a career—a young Tom Manning would be an excellent candidate for such a story, since we’ve only really seen him later in his career when he’s stuck behind a desk.

In a way, we’ve already got a blueprint for this story, the one-shot “B.P.R.D.: The Ectoplasmic Man,” where we see Johann Kraus take his first tentative steps from civilian to B.P.R.D. agent. It’d be nice to see this one-shot gain some companions.

Frankly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many corners for the Hellboy Universe to explore. So I open the floor to you, readers. What other directions would you like to see the Hellboy Universe go?