On Hellboy and his world

Hellboy the film was a bit of a dissappointment, being both a fan of the comics and also of delToro. The beginning was awesome and the players were okay. Technically, the film was good as well and it certainly looked like Mignola's panels. However, I did not dig in the plot. First, the resurrection beast kept resurrecting during 3/4 parts of the film until it became a routine. Also, I did not like the "Beauty&The Beast" twist in Hellboy and Sherman's relationship; I liked him better as a father or elder brother as in the comics. What I liked most were the references to Lovecraft and history that the book also has (basically, every common point with the book). So, what inspired the origin of Hellboy?

Everything starts with a nazi operation to gather supernatural power through operation Ragnarok. In fact, the nazi party was strongly into that stuff. Hitler himself was a member of the Thule society and an SS occult research department, the Ahnernerbe was established in 1935. The key idea is to bring Anung Un Rama to Earth, a demon who would bring the end of the world. In the film and the book, the end comes by the hand of a group of hideous and powerful creatures which are dormant but will be awakened by Anung Un Rama: "It is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with strange aeons even death may die". These beings are very like the Great Old Ones in Lovecraft's books:

"Only when the stars are right might they return to power. At that time, though, an outside force is required to release them, for the spell that preserves them also binds them so they cannot release themselves. The Great Old Ones communicate telepathically with one another and with humans with sensitive minds."



The squid-like Great Old Ones are to be released by Rasputin, a real man who practically ruled Russia after tsar Nikolai II left for the WWI and met an early end because of his excesses. In fact, he had given half his soul to Baba Yaga, (a popular evil witch in slavian folklore) so she would hide it in the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of the world in norse mythology. Thus, he survived his first death and met the Great Old Ones. After that, he was contacted by Himmler and hired from project Ragnarok, which fitted his plans all right. However, the british army spoiled his plans and Anung Un Rama was materialized far from his reach and raised as one of the good guys.



After the Reich was defeated, he reached the Ogdru-Jahad temple by feeding on his companions and, alone, he went into trance at the feet of the living statue of Sadu-Hem. There he slept for decades until he was awaken by a expedition commanded by Bruttenholm in 1994. A similar expedition -to the Anctarctica, rather than to the north- was described in Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness. In Bruttenholm's expedition, the Cavendish men are transformed into amphibians, also very similar to the Deep Ones, as described in Lovecraft's Dagon, which are also known to hibridize with humans in The Shadow Over Innsmouth.



So this is basically what I know about Hellboy's origin. The books, nevertheless, are full with references to history, folklore and horror literature, so this thread could go on and on...

The CCDB entry for Hellboy is here and also includes a list of every paranormal event mentioned in the books. This is the official Hellboy website, which includes an index of Hellboy's comics and books.