Karl Kroenen

Karl Kroenen is a Nazi occultist and assassin who serves as one of Hellboy's most chilling adversaries. A master swordsman kept alive through surgical obsession and dark science, he is a near-mute, masked figure whose fanatical devotion to the Third Reich's supernatural ambitions makes him uniquely terrifying.

Few villains in Mike Mignola's dark and masterful Hellboy universe carry quite the same unsettling presence as Karl Kroenen, who slithered onto the page in 1997 alongside such iconic company as Hellboy himself, Liz Sherman, and the sinister Grigori Rasputin. A creature of Dark Horse's modern era, Kroenen has haunted the margins of the Hellboy mythos across nearly two decades, turning up in titles like B.P.R.D. and even the delightfully offbeat Itty Bitty Hellboy. His catalog footprint may be modest, but in Mignola's world, a small number of appearances can leave a very long shadow — and Kroenen is exactly the kind of figure that rewards the collector who pays close attention to the corners of this richly layered universe.