Dark Horse Cover Reveals: Hellboy Winter Special, Lobster Johnson: Garden of Bones

For the record, Hellboy architect Mike Mignola may be responsible for the best holiday/winter-themed comic of all time. Part of 2008’s Myspace Dark Horse Presents (shoosh—it was a different time) series, “The Christmas Spirit” saw Mignola, illustrator Guy Davis and colorist Dave Stewart narrate the story of a lumbering St. Nick as he frees a small child from a dapper demon in eight sublime pages. The story is a masterclass in aesthetic, offering a seamless parade of moods that ebb from icy Victorian squalor to hellish terror before landing on nostalgic Yuletide bliss. This comic is well worth mentioning because Mignola and his orbit of comic creators do just as well a job portraying the sweltering bowels of hell as the icy extremities of winter, which makes this next announcement so exciting.

Following last year’s Hellboy Winter Special 2016, this year’s entry unfolds three tales respectively featuring Witchfinder’s Edward Grey, an ‘80s incarnation of the monster-hunting crew the B.P.R.D. with Hellboy, Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman and, lastly, something far more nebulous: a new story from Jack Staff cartoonist Paul Grist that stars Hellboy circa 1950. This latter piece is also a gander at the next big Mignolaverse title.

In addition, Mignola and Dark Horse are also bringing another Hellboy player out from the cold with another one-shot—Lobster Johnson: Garden of Bones. The ghostly pulp adventurer sets his pistols and steely attitude on an undead hit-man in this adventure written by Mignola and John Arcudi with illustrations from Stephen Green and colors from Stewart. Garden of Bones releases on January 11th.