Although the Hellboy Universe is an expansive series of titles, it has always drawn from a relatively small group of core writers. This year brought Chris Roberson (“iZombie”) into the fold, and now he’s writing “Witchfinder,” “Rise of the Black Flame,” and “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” Throughout September we’ll be talking to him about each series. This week we’re discussing “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1954—Black Sun” along with artist Stephen Green.



The “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” series has been a surprise and a genuine pleasure for me. Chris, you came aboard for the latter half of “1953” and immediately began laying the groundwork for long-term plotlines. What was it like to take ownership of this series?

Chris Roberson: A mixture of intimidating and exhilarating, to be honest. Mike had some broad ideas for the kinds of stories we could do in the Cold War setting that served as a great springboard, that lined up perfectly with the sorts of story ideas I had in mind. We were so much in synch, in fact, that after I’d been working on the book for about a year I found a document with a bunch of story notes on my hard drive that I thought for several minutes was something that I’d written, but when I checked turned out to be the original notes that Mike had sent over.

“Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” is so detached from the modern-day events of “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” and “Abe Sapien Dark and Terrible,” I think there was a risk of the series feeling inconsequential since (eventually) it has to meet up with “Seed of Destruction” in 1994, not to mention there are a bunch of flashback “Hellboy” stories set between 1954 and then. However, I think it’s a risk the series has already avoided quite deftly with its expanded cast. This series could have easily been like the many “Hellboy” flashbacks we’ve seen before, where the focus is firmly on the big, red half-demon with the stone hand. Instead, in your first story, a short called “Wandering Souls,” the focus on Agent Susan Xiang. Hellboy’s still there, of course, but I think the way you’ve constructed this series, any B.P.R.D. agent could easily be the lead for a story.



Chris: That was very much the intent. One of the things that I loved about “Hellboy” from the beginning was the amazing supporting cast, but so many of the flashback shorts that Mike has done over the years have focused on Hellboy out in the field on his own. But so many fantastic characters have been introduced by John Arcudi and others in the course of the various post-war “B.P.R.D.” miniseries and in “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1952” that I really wanted to get to know them better. In addition, it’s mentioned in the Hellboy Companion that by 1958 the number of agents working with the Bureau had swelled from five to fifty, so I knew that we had the opportunity to introduce a lot of new characters over the course of the next few story lines.

Stephen, this your first time working on a Mignola book, and one of your first major comics jobs. How’d you come aboard this project? And how’s it feel to be a part of the Hellboy Universe? I’ve seen your work on Instagram already, and I think it’s a fair assessment to say that you’re a fan of Mignola’s work.

Stephen Green: They found me on Linkedin! Hahaha! Sean Murphy introduced me to Scott Allie a year or so ago, and Scott gave me a card. I actually held onto it for a long time; I was too scared to reach out to them, too intimidated by the quality of the artists they use. Eventually I decided to send them some work, and they offered me a gig. It’s no secret that I am quite the fan of the Mignolaverse, so I cannot understate how surreal and exciting it is to get to work with these people. Hellboy is probably the most important comics character of the last twenty years, and I’m sincerely honored to get to draw him.

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This story dives head first into the classic “Hellboy” stuff: mutant monsters, strange machines, and, of course, Nazis. I think there’s a bit of The Thing in this story’s DNA too.

Chris: The Thing was certainly a touchstone that came up several times in conversations I had with Mike and Scott Allie about this story. And Mike and I talked a lot about various ‘hollow earth’ and ‘Nazi saucer’ conspiracy theories dating back to Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians, which was the wellspring of so much of that mid-century conspiracy thinking. The thing I wanted to accomplish was to start with a story that felt like one thing, and then veered hard into another kind of story entirely.

I’m obsessed with history, and love finding little details in the research process that end up affecting how a story unfolds. Originally “Black Sun” was going to be set in a generic Arctic research station, but when I stumbled upon a reference to Fletcher’s Ice Island and the drift station that was housed on it at the time of our story, I knew that we had to use that as our setting.



Stephen, was there anything in particular that you drew from for this story?

Stephen: I’ve mostly just tried to be true to the previous “Hellboy” material. I don’t want to regurgitate anything, but I’ve always thought Hellboy/B.P.R.D. stuff rings the truest when maintaining the overall flavor of the previous works. Even down to the types of shots in the issue. Now that I think about it, there probably is some The Thing in there…

While reading this issue I was reminded a little of “Hellboy: Dr. Carp’s Experiment,” which started off as this moody haunted house story and then changed into a whole other animal. In this case, that different animal is a secreted away sect of Nazis.

Chris: That’s one of my favorite “Hellboy” stories, actually, and one that I’ve gone back to often since I started working on these books, so while it wasn’t a conscious influence on “Black Sun” it very well might have been in the back of my head. But the idea of giving the reader at the outset the impression that they were reading one kind of story and then revealing by the end that they’ve been reading an entirely different kind of story all along was definitely something that came up often in the discussions that I had with Mike and Scott about this storyline.

Stephen: Yep. There’s quite a turn in the second issue…

I look forward to seeing the next issue. The cover seems to suggest you got to design some really cool machines for it.

Stephen: Quite a bit of designing. I borrowed pretty heavily from Guy Davis’s machinery. I certainly wanted to use the same visual language for technology in the Mignolaverse.

Yeah, there’s bits in there that remind me of the early arcs of “B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs” when the Bureau first moved into the Colorado facility (which I believe was originally built in the early ’50s, so that certainly makes sense).

Stephen: Like Kirby, Guy Davis developed his own shorthand for stuff. I definitely had my “Plague of Frogs” books out when thinking about some things. I’m really proud to leave my mark on Hellboy/B.P.R.D., but as a fan, I also wanted to quote Guy, Mike, and James (Harren) when I could.

Yeah, I can see the James Harren influence in there as well.

This story introduces Dr. Woodrow Farrier to the mix, further expanding the series’ cast of B.P.R.D. agents. Chris, I have to say I’m very happy with how you’ve chosen to grow the Bureau in the 1950s. This could have easily been a series full of white men, but already you’ve introduced recurring women characters and people of color. This is the kind of Bureau I want to read about.

Chris: I have to give credit to Mike and John Arcudi for introducing Susan Xiang in the 1952 miniseries, who quickly became one of my favorite new characters. But definitely, the notion that the past was populated exclusively by white folks is a failing in far too much entertainment, and I always try to take pains to avoid it. Woodrow Farrier’s backstory is very much inspired by real life African American scientists of the period, far too many of whom have been largely overlooked by popular culture (though the upcoming film Hidden Figures about African-American women working at NASA in the 1960s looks like it’s going to address some of that lack).

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Stephen: I hope we get to see a lot more of Woodrow in the future. If the Bureau was ahead of the curve with working with demons and fish-men, then naturally they would be the first to bring on people of color, women, etc. I LOVE that.

Yeah, me too. I like seeing the cast grow, knowing these are the people Hellboy grew up with. Hellboy was originally taken in by the B.P.R.D. to be studied, but he ended up with a father. Within the organization are people capable of being his friends and family, but there are also people that see him as just another supernatural oddity to be explored. I’m interested in seeing how the character dynamics at the Bureau evolve.

Chris: I’ve always been a fan of big ensemble casts in serialized stories, both in comics and in other media, and I think there are lots of opportunities for interesting relationships and conflicts to emerge as we gradually expand the team roster and get to know the characters a little better.

Stephen: Ditto to what Chris said!

In “Hellboy in the B.P.R.D.” we get to see a side of Hellboy that hadn’t been explored very much at all: his youthful side. It shows up in “Black Sun” right on page one with the way Hellboy jumps out of the aircraft—there’s a youthful energy to that moment that we wouldn’t see in Hellboy a decade later—but when he stands up and lights his cigarette, his body language is recognizably the Hellboy we’ve come to know and love over the past twenty-two years. How do you walk that line?

Chris: I think in a lot of ways Hellboy is still figuring himself out at this stage in his life. He’s not as grown up as he thinks he is, in other words.



Stephen, there’s a lot of visual continuity in the series. Was it difficult to find your version of Hellboy? Were there any past stories in particular you looked at to guide you?

Stephen: I practiced a lot. Hellboy, to me, is like Mickey Mouse, or Thing from Fantastic Four—he has his own specific shape. He’s a cartoon character. I HATE it when people draw him with a V-shaped torso, and a square jaw etc. He’s not Wolverine, he’s a monster!!! There’s a little flex in how to draw him—his legs can be small or super small—but he has his own anatomy. I really love drawing him.

I also loved Hellboy’s attitude, that ‘Yeah, I’m a seasoned pro, I know what’s what’ attitude, when the truth is Hellboy hasn’t seen anything yet. He’s still quite green.

Chris: Yeah, that was something that came out of the early conversations I had with Mike and Scott. By this point Hellboy has been a field agent for all of two years, and he’s already convinced that he’s seen and done it all. He’s wrong, of course, but it’ll be a while before he gains enough experience to realize that.

Stephen: I LOVED that in this book. Chris nailed that attitude, and I certainly tried to preserve it. It’s fun to see cocky Hellboy get beaten up and still get up for more.

The next “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” story has already been announced, “The Unreasoning Beast,” a one-shot with Patric Reynolds (“Joe Golem, Occult Detective”) on art duties.



Chris: I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoiling it, but it’s a standalone story in which Hellboy and Susan Xiang investigate a haunting that has been plaguing a suburban family, and things are not at all what they seem. And even though the story is a single issue standalone, it will set up some stuff that will turn out to be very important a long way down the road.

In Hellmail (the letters column) Scott Allie spoke about the potential for “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.” to continue in a nonlinear fashion. Is there an era of the Bureau you’re especially excited to explore?

Chris: We’re setting up some Cold War era plotlines that will develop over the course of the late ’50s stories and get really interesting once we are in the mid ’60s. Really looking forward to getting to those! (Including the big storyline that will grown from the seeds we’re planting in “Unreasoning Beast”!)

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Hopefully we’ll be seeing you again in the Hellboy Universe, Stephen. Is there any series or character in particular you’d like draw?

Stephen: I don’t know where my career will take me, but this is a GREAT crew to work with, and I will always be excited to play with Mike’s characters again. I wonder what Mike would feel like if Jack Kirby or Frazetta would have asked him to work with them. That’s how I feel drawing for Mike!

You can follow Chris Roberson and Stephen Green on Twitter. “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1954 #2—Black Sun (Part 2)” comes out October 19.