Ilsa Haupstein

Ilsa Haupstein is a sinister figure within the Hellboy universe, allied with the occult conspirators Grigori Rasputin and Karl Ruprect Kroenen. A human zealot steeped in dark mysticism, she operates among the forces that originally summoned Hellboy into the world.

Ilsa Haupstein made her mark from the very first page of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 in 1994 — the landmark debut issue that launched Mike Mignola and John Byrne's beloved Dark Horse universe. A figure of genuine menace in that opening chapter, she keeps extraordinarily dark company, sharing pages with the likes of Grigori Rasputin, Karl Ruprect Kroenen, and Hellboy himself, which tells you everything about the sinister weight she carries in Mignola's mythology. Her presence threads through the Hellboy and Hellboy Omnibus collections, meaning anyone diving into the essential reading of this celebrated Modern Age saga will encounter her. Twelve catalog appearances across nearly three decades of publishing make her a compact but resonant piece of the Hellboy puzzle — the kind of character that rewards the attentive reader who pays close attention to the shadows at the edges of the story.