Hellboy and BPRD by RYAN SOOK and MIKE MIGNOLA

      Mike Mignola's Hellboy and its BPRD offshoot is one of the big successes of creator-owned comics starting from the Dark Horse Legends imprint as the back up story to Art Adams' Monkeyman and O'Brien. Mike, with a writing assist from John Byrne on the first story arc, wrote and drew the main Hellboy story for the early years before bringing in additional creators and expanding the Hellboy universe. At WonderCon 1998 in Oakland, I was ready to buy Hellboy art and nearly bought the Almost Colossus page where Hellboy arrives at the Wauer Institute and the doctor declares Liz is already dead, but Hellboy brings Roger the homunculus to revive her. I ended up buying a Hellboy Christmas special page with Hellboy fighting the monster, but should have bought both, of course. It still bothers me that I passed on such an important page.

      Ryan Sook was one of the first artists picked by Mike to work on Hellboy. I first met Ryan at Treasure Island Comics in my hometown Fremont, CA in 2003. I've gotten a couple convention sketches of Zatanna (in my DC gallery) and a girl wearing a Chinese cheongsam, but most of my purchases have been his wonderful prelims. These are arranged in my various galleries where appropriate. Ryan's art is available from Felix Comic Art.