bprd

After carefully reviewing all of the covers for Dark Horse books published with cover dates between January and December of 2016, we've selected a collection that runs the eye-catching, attention-grabbing gamut.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

When thinking about favorite monsters, I wanted to go to one of the biggest, most uncontrollable and terrifying concepts that have ever hit the comics page. Dinosaurs and demons are all well and good, but they offer a threat that doesn’t dig deep beneath the skin. What really frightens me is unknown, unseen terror that exists in fugue; horrors like the Ogdru Jahad, creatures we've seen only briefly in Mike Mignola-created books including Hellboy and B.P.R.D..

It probably shouldn't come as a surprise given the kind of problems that they usually deal with, but as the BPRD barrels towards the conclusion of John Arcudi's eleven-year run on the title --- coming to an end in a mere nine issues --- Dark Horse's favorite paranormal investigators are having a pretty rough time. The Black Flame, the latest incarnation of an ancient evil, is tearing through New York City, and he's got Liz Sherman and Johann Kraus on the ropes. Or, in Johann's case, at the bottom of the Hudson River, which is not really where you want to be if you're a gaseous spirit in a robot body, and exactly where we pick up in the pages of BPRD: Hell on Earth #138. Check out a preview below to find out if, like so many problems in the Hellboy universe, this is also one that can be solved by punching!

Today is Mike Mignola’s 55th birthday, and that’s the perfect excuse to look back at a comic and illustration career that spans back to the 1980s. There’s a reason Mignola’s art has not only captivated comic readers for years, but also attracted the attention of Hollywood, where his designs and aesthetics have been applied to both animation and live action. Mignola’s style is deceptively simple, but there is a beautiful elegance in that simplicity, even when manifests in the ugliness of some demon or nightmare creature. There is a mastery in every line and scratch he puts on a skull or statue or monster.

This week, Dark Horse announced the plans for the next year of Hellboy and BPRD stories, and while there's something that I think we all expected, there's also one pretty big surprise mixed in there, too.

Hey, have you folks heard about this Hellboy character? It's okay if you haven't -- there's a big #1 on the cover of this comic I just read, so I assume he's pretty new. Trust me, though, he's a character you're going to want to watch, because despite a name that seems pretty lousy the first time you hear it, this is pretty good stuff. Seriously, though, as much as I love Hellboy and the world of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), I'll admit that I haven't been keeping up with the ongoing adventures over the past few years. I'm sure they're good -- I'm sure they're great, because it's rare that Hellboy isn't, and Hellboy In Hell is viewed very favorably here at ComicsAlliance -- but it's one of those situations where I've fallen behind and it's at the point where there's so much I've missed that it's hard to get back into it. And that's exactly why I was looking forward to Hellboy and the BPRD: 1952. On sale now, it tells the story of Hellboy's first assignment with the BPRD, which makes it the perfect jumping-on (or in my case, jumping-back-in) point, and not only is it ridiculously good, but it feels fresh and new in a way that's almost impossible for a 20 year-old franchise to pull off.

A great comic book cover is an advertisement, a work of art, a statement, and an invitation. A great comic book cover is a glimpse of another world through a canvas no bigger than a window pane. In Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month), we look back over some of the most eye-catching, original and exceptional covers of the past month. Fear, passion, beauty, love, and monsters. There's a feast of wonders in the best of October's comic book covers, with exceptional work from Becky Cloonan, Jorge Molina, Megan Hutchison, Kyla Vanderklugt and more -- taking us to some extraordinary places, and showing us some incredible sights.

Dark Horse is getting its Comic-Con 2014 announcements started with some very good news from the realm of Hellboy. The blue collar apocalypse beast's heretofore unseen first mission with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense will finally be depicted in Hellboy & The BPRD, and by none other than Alex Maleev from a story by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi.

Twin Brazilian brothers Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon joined the ranks of our favorite comic book creators when they grabbed the English-speaking audience's attention with highly stylized and frequently innovative artwork on the first two books of multiversal super-spy comic Casanova, written by Matt Fraction. Since then, ...