I re-read the Hellboy Trade Paperbacks v1 to v12 which span from his origin to the end of the first phase of his life. Mike Mignola did a great job with simple, stark, and evocative art. Hellboy himself is somewhat interesting — a demon raised by humans with a destiny to conquer mankind though he is dead-set against it.

Spanning 18 years there is no actual end plan until towards the end. A lot of self contained short stories which I like the most. The bigger stories that span two to five issues tend to have this drawn out pacing. Lots of sections with little dialogue, lots of small drawings to set atmosphere, and yet after you read an issue it feels like little happened (though first and last issues tend to have more story).

Even though I read a lot of Pulp Mythos stories because of Call of Cthulhu I'm not sure I love that genre. Hellboy is very much in the same style. I do like the earlier stories which had more Nazis with retro-tech and that's cool. Later on it's more fairy/magic sort of opponents which I'm less interested in. Overall I don't think I would have read these stories on my own.