Part of Series
This 368-page volume covers Hellboy's adventures from 1961 to 1993, leading up to Seed of Destruction. It includes stories from the Hellboy collections The Troll Witch, The Chained Coffin, The Bride of Hell, The Right Hand of Doom, and The Crooked Man, including "Heads," "Buster Oakley Gets His Wish," and "A Christmas Underground" With over 100 pages drawn by Mignola himself, The Complete Short Stories Vol. 2 features an incredible roster of artists! The two Short Stories volumes, along with the four-volume Hellboy Omnibus series, collect all of Mignola's award-winning Hellboy stories in chronological order for a definitive reading experience. Unaware of his role as Beast of the Apocalypse, Hellboy travels the world to find his first brushes with the royalty of Hell and the otherworldly Ogdru Hem, while shooting out the Baba Yaga's eye and getting a glimpse of his possible fate in the epic African adventure "Makoma."
Author
Mike Mignola was born September 16, 1960 in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading Dracula at age 13 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered. In 1982, hoping to find a way to draw monsters for a living, he moved to New York City and began working for Marvel Comics, first as a (very terrible) inker and then as an artist on comics like Rocket Raccoon, Alpha Flight and The Hulk. By the late 80s he had begun to develop his signature style (thin lines, clunky shapes and lots of black) and moved onto higher profile commercial projects like Cosmic Odyssey (1988) and Gotham by Gaslight (1989) for DC Comics, and the not-so-commercial Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (1990) for Marvel. In 1992, he drew the comic book adaptation of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics. In 1993, Mike moved to Dark Horse comics and created Hellboy, a half-demon occult detective who may or may not be the Beast of the Apocalypse. While the first story line (Seed of Destruction, 1994) was co-written by John Byrne, Mike has continued writing the series himself. There are, at this moment, 13 Hellboy graphic novel collections (with more on the way), several spin-off titles (B.P.R.D., Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and Witchfinder), three anthologies of prose stories, several novels, two animated films and two live-action films staring Ron Perlman. Hellboy has earned numerous comic industry awards and is published in a great many countries. Mike also created the award-winning comic book The Amazing Screw-on Head and has co-written two novels (Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and Joe Golem and the Drowning City) with best-selling author Christopher Golden. Mike worked (very briefly) with Francis Ford Coppola on his film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), was a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). He lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter, a lot of books and a cat.
