What's the path of least resistance for checking this series out? I have always been curious, but it's confusing trying to figure out what's what.
What's the path of least resistance for checking this series out? I have always been curious, but it's confusing trying to figure out what's what.
Read the Hellboy series. The trades (or Library Editions*) are numbered. Read them in that order.
After that you can read BPRD or any of the other spin off books. Hellboy shows up in early BPRD, and sporadically in other stories. You don't need to read any of that to enjoy Hellboy on its own.
*The Library Editions contain two trades worth of material, but the stories run in a slightly different order. Hellboy isn't told chronologically, so either order is fine.
The Library Editions are not only cheap and the simplest way of starting but probably the best quality collected comic book out there. Even if you don't love it you'll still have a beautiful book that you didn't pay too much for.
The Library Editions are amazing quality and an incredible price for what you get.
However, buying the trades used is probably the cheapest entry way, and they're not hard to find.
If you want to try the book out, I'd recommend the conqueror worm book. Can be read as a great stand alone story with lots of humour, mystic, action, scares as well as big character moments. That or the first library edition book.
I read Conq worm years ago, and bought all six library eds just a week ago. Love them. Really hope there'll be another one collecting House of the living dead, Midnight circus as well as Hellboy in Hell