'Hellboy in Hell' offers proof you CAN go home again

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY | USATODAY

Hellboy is not your everyday comic-book character, so it stands to reason that his creator wouldn't take him to a typical version of hell.

Mike Mignola's ornery half-horned hero has a homecoming of sorts in Dark Horse Comics' Hellboy in Hell as the third issue hits stores and the Dark Horse app Wednesday. The series also marks Mignola's return to drawing and writing the ongoing adventures of the cult occult character for the first time in seven years.

"Hellboy always more or less took place on Earth, so I was dealing with certain realities as far as landscape and things like that,'' he says. "But having this complete freedom to completely create a world, it's just fired everything up so much."

Hellboy, the spawn of the demon Azzael and the human witch Sarah Hughes, first appeared in 1993. He was featured in two Hellboy movies, directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman as the gruff, crimson guy with a Right Hand of Doom.

As an agent in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense as well as solo in the comics, Hellboy has tussled with werewolves, vampires, Nazi mad scientists, demonic cults and various other monsters to help save the world. But he also has been prophesied to end it as the future Beast of the Apocalypse. Along the way he found out he was a descendant of King Arthur and the rightful king of England — which ended up with him being killed by a dragon.

Where would a guy named Hellboy go in the afterlife? Well, that's obvious. But what's out of the ordinary is that Mignola's hell isn't all fire pits, crazy demons and gnashing of teeth.

When Hellboy arrives, he finds the gray, gothic place is rundown and decrepit, and the capital city of Pandemonium now is shabbily run by middle-of-the-road demons after the upper class learned Hellboy was coming and scattered to their private estates.

"These guys have their separate places," Mignola says. "And they all just went, 'Screw this, I'm going home.' "

Longtime Hellboy editor Scott Allie loves the crumbling houses and worn, depressed world of hell. "Mike says that this is the world he wants to live in, and I have to remind him, 'No, this is the world you want to draw for the rest of your life, but I think you'll stick with running water.' "

This is hell, though, so the damned are there — in the form of creepy little fish — and so is Satan, who makes his first appearance in Hellboy in Hell No. 3.

Mignola says he initially didn't want to tackle him, but Hellboy's "uncle" had to make an appearance because of the hierarchy of hell going to, well, hell.

He's depicted as an old man who has been existing in a basement with his throne for 2,000 years. His status as a ruler is almost an honorary position.

"It's like the king or queen of England at this point — they're not really running the show but it's important for everybody to know they're there," Mignola says. "There is that thing of, if nobody's running the show, the slot is open for somebody to take over. What I'm playing with is, what if nobody took over?"

The fact that Hellboy's not that closely related to Satan is a major plot point that will become important later, but in the meantime he's going to meet some members of his extended family who want to take his impressive stone hand from him so they can run hell themselves.

After that Shakespearean drama, though, Mignola wants to take Hellboy to all corners of hell that will be the creator's own take on various old fairy tales and folk stories from all over the globe.

"When Hellboy was a B.P.R.D. agent, there were always scenes Mike 'had to' have: board meetings, debriefings, helicopter rides, etc. Mike doesn't have to do any of that anymore," Allie says.

In getting to this place that he's looked forward to for years, Mignola figures he'll have Hellboy take his time, aimlessly wander Hell for a while and see the sights.

"I always have in mind that Hellboy would be his happiest as a hobo, just sitting on a train car, telling stories with a couple of old guys, eating beans out of a can," he says.

There are "two or three big things" Hellboy still has to do before Mignola lets him walk off into the sunset for good, he adds, but until then, "I just want to have him hang out and bang around and get into trouble."