As part of my revisiting the larger Hellboy universe, I am now going to revisit the main B.P.R.D. series with more details on the stories themselves.
I had planned on doing these later on, hoping to complete my look at the Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. series, but that’s not yet done. And due to the amount of material, I will be doing this in five postings using the new omnibus volumes, two per posting.
One thing I realized as I re-read these is how much I had forgotten since I read it, and how there were allusions and introductions of concepts and characters long before I had thought. And I really enjoyed the sketchbook stuff at the end as we see the creation of characters and other things and ideas that really didn’t go anywhere.
The original B.P.R.D. series kicked off around the time Hellboy left the group. It gave the group solo stories before starting the long storyline of the approaching Ragna Rok with the return of the Ogdru Jahad and their spawn the Ogdru Hem, and the emergence of the “frog men” who may replace us as the next human race.
Then the series was replaced by the B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth series, and then the final B.P.R.D.: The Devil You Know series. These comics were first reprinted in five- to six-issue collections, then later in omnibus volumes containing three trade paperbacks. Then they reprinted the omnis in paperback and have now re-reprinted all the omnis in a 10-volume series (the original four omnis of the B.P.R.D. series, then the five omnis for Hell on Earth, and then the one omni for Devil). Though these do leave out a few volumes.
So the B.P.R.D. is the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, a fictional organization founded by the United States and United Kingdom governments, charged with researching the occult, paranormal, and supernatural, and defending against their dangers. It was established in 1945 by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm to combat various occult threats uncovered in operations against Nazi Germany, which lead to his presence at the summoning of Hellboy, whom Bruttenholm took in as a sort of a foster son. B.P.R.D. had ties to the U.S. military, so at first, it was based in New Mexico before getting a custom-built facility in Fairfield, Conn., in 1947.
In its early years, many of its agents were military or ex-military before they broadened their pool of agents as we saw in the Hellboy and B.P.R.D. series. They would have several with psychic abilities, and later we would see more “enhanced” agents like Hellboy (who joined in 1952): Liz Sherman (a pyrokinetic), Abe Sapien, Roger the Homunculus, and Johann Krauss. And joining later were agents like Captain Daimo, Ted Howards, Ashley Strode, Panya the Mummy, and Fenix.
B.P.R.D. is a private organization that receives funding from several major governments, though we learn later the Russians have their own equivalent group. Much later in the series B.P.R.D. would be taken over by the U.N. as it led the fight against the rising threat from the Ogdru Hem and associated creatures.
As someone who read H.P. Lovecraft‘s works and others, I see a theme behind some of those works: the Great Old Ones, et al, want to “break through” and take over (or take back) the world. And so there is the element of people on their own trying to push back. So why not a more concerted effort by a government or quasi-government agency? This is kind of the basis for the Delta Green role-playing game and similar in other works of fiction. And thus that is the purpose of the B.P.R.D. in the Hellboy Universe.
Omnibus Vol. 1
“Hollow Earth” has Liz now joining a monastery in the Arctic Circle run by monks who have a tie to the Hyperboreans, learning to control her flame. Back in the B.P.R.D., Roger has joined and Johann has appeared for the first time. But due to what happened in the Hellboy series with Roger, Abe and Roger are planning on leaving. But Liz sends out a distress signal to Abe. And the team head to help her.
They find the monastery attacked, all the monks dead, and Liz is in a strange coma. It appears that the monks were killed by the servitor race created by the Hyperboreans. Or more precisely, they were created by those who followed the left-hand path, for the purpose of maintaining their machines, which we see here for the first time. And the servitor race was told to do so by someone or something called “the King of Fear.” So the team needs to follow them to be able to help free Liz’s spirit being kept by this king.
Then we get some stories focused on Johann, and then Abe.
In “The Soul of Venice,” there are strange goings-on in, of course, Venice. The team heads there and deals with a vampire, the spirit or soul of Venice, and even a demon. Roger, to be honest, saves the day.
In “Dark Waters,” the team heads to a small town in Massachusetts. They drained a pond in the town, only to find three bodies of women accused of witchcraft centuries ago and had been thrown in the pond. But a town minster goes insane and strange things happen. As the three were innocent, they need some way of giving them peace to settle it all.
In “Night Train,” Liz and Roger deal with a ghost train, which was one of Lobster Johnson’s last cases, and one where his final assistant was killed. Roger, with the help of the Lobster’s ghost again, is able to put an end to things.
“There’s Something Under the Bed” has monsters kidnapping children, and the team has to figure it all out. Abe gets grabbed along with the kids and is able to put an end to it all. The final ending was actually pretty nice.
“Plague of Frogs” kicks off the whole, well, “plague of frogs,” where people are either killed or transformed into frog monsters like we saw in earlier Hellboy stories. A madman caused the escape of the main creator of them. This was created by Sadu-Hem. This starts the growing war with the frog monsters that is the main theme of most of the rest of the series, but with various side stories.
We meet for the first time Professor O’Donnell, who will be a source of wild information. We learn that various cults are emerging to support the frog plague, under the guidance of Rasputin and The Dragon. And we start learning the origin of Abe Sapien as Langdon Everett Caul, a member of the Oannes Society back in the 1800s who used a Victorian-era submarine to search for an undersea temple. There he found an egg that became some kind of jellyfish creature that transformed him into Abe Sapien. Though we wouldn’t learn the full story until much later. I still don’t fully get it.
Omnibus Vol. 2
In “The Dead,” the plague is spreading. Abe is looking into Caul, learning that as a young man he sailed under Elihu Cavendish, the man who built the house where they first encountered the frog monsters in the first Hellboy story. And Caul had a wife who threw herself into the sea after he disappeared in 1865.
We also have Captain Benjamin Daimio joining, and the B.P.R.D. moving to their new headquarters in Colorado, the former home of the now-defunct “Center for Defense Research and Development”. Of course, when they get there they discover some of the weird things that happened there. Especially when they discover a strange guy who has been living trapped in the lower levels! And while the team is dealing with what he causes, Abe is confronting the ghost of his wife.
And what is that strange monkey-thing with the white mask that Captain Daimio finds in a jar?
“War on Frogs” has several standalone stories dealing with the war. We get the finale on Cavendish Hall and the boys turned into frog monsters. We see the growing cults that are tied in with the frog monsters. We see Johann deal with a spirit left over from some frog monsters they killed. And we get a hint that our friends over at ZinCo are doing their own thing with frog monsters. ZinCo is the high-tech company that Rasputin got the guy heading it to help out his people in earlier Hellboy stories.
When “The Black Flame” came out, this was our first hint at the Black Flame. We later learned more about the Black Flame who was created before WWII and later helped the Nazis before being destroyed. Now we meet the current head of ZinCo, a Mr. Pope, who is backing Marsten who is doing research on the frog monsters. Pope has a huge collection of weird Nazi stuff. More the occult/super science things, as you’ll see. Including the corpse of the original Black Flame!
And Liz starts having visions of Memna Saa, the weird Fu Manchu-like villain from the Lobster Johnson story dealing with the Vril suit. He’ll be back, and we’ll learn his origin. And we see Daimio being treated by a mysterious Chinaman.
We learn that Pope has created himself as the new Black Flame, hoping to control the frog monsters. And he may be calling in Katha-Hem who follows Sadu-Hem. Liz finds a Hyperborean item that can help her increase her flame. Can she burn Katha-Hem? And sadly, Roger gets killed. Can they restore him?
In an epilogue, we get our first meeting of Agent Ashley Strode, who will become more important later in the series. And, yes, our new Black Flame will return.
And don’t forget to go over the sketchbook sections. There’s a lot of fun stuff in them. I don’t think we ever got Steel Hawk in a comic story. And it will be a while before we learned more about the Crimson Lotus, more in the Lobster Johnson series and her own.
Next time we’ll move on to Omnis #3 and #4.
