Of the many exemplary tales of Hellboy, Mike Mignola and Richard Corben’s The Crooked Man stands out as one of the most memorable. This February, Mignola and artist Zach Howard will return to the Appalachian mountains for the two part mini-series: Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.: The Return Of Effie Kolb.
According to the official press release, the story continues when Hellboy returns “Years after he banished the infamous backwoods demon known as the Crooked Man, Hellboy returns to Appalachia when a young psychic warns Tom Ferrell of looming danger. But the Crooked Man’s house is no longer empty, and threats both new and old simmer in the Virginia woods.”
Mignola is excited to return to the infamous villain, stating that “Sometimes you create a character, they perform their function, and that’s it. Other times you finish with them and they just refuse to get back in their box. Tom Ferrell is one of those characters. Even as I was writing The Crooked Man I knew there was a whole lot more to that guy. And Effie Kolb… It turns out there are worse things you can do to a character than turn them into a horse.”
Zach Howard steps into the legendary shoes of Corben and calls the opportunity “…an honor, Mignola asking me to draw the sequel is an opportunity I have not taken likely, and I’ve given my absolute best to live up to his wonderful creation. This will be my final sequential art as a freelance comic book artist, and I couldn’t ask for a better end to this chapter of my career.”
Dark Horse Comics will publish the debut issue of the new series on February 19, 2020 with two covers, including the Mignola variant below.
