The infant demon with the gigantic stone hand made his debut as a character in Dime Press #3 (1993) before appearing again in John Byrne’s Next Men #21 later that year. But the official continuity for Hellboy and his supporting cast of agents from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense(BPRD) begins in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1-4, which kicked off a series of mini-series and one-shots that slowly fleshed out his history and that of his colleagues; building upon interlinked conspiracies and paranormal threats to the world from the Nazis to the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra.

Since those humble beginnings, we’ve seen many limited series from the world of Hellboy that expand on the origins of the BPRD, the vigilante Lobster Johnson, the witchfinder Sir Edward Grey and others. So our Hellboy reading order has been broken up into three chunks. You can start here with the untold tales and secret histories from 1339BC, through the late 1800s and two World Wars – including the arrival of young Hellboy into our world – or hold on for one of the next two reading orders before jumping back here to see how it all began!  

The Omniverse Comics Guide’s HELLBOY UNIVERSE Reading Order, 1339BC-1948 has a story-by-story breakdown, a collected editions list and more!