Hellhunters #3
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeHellhunters #3 marks the dramatic midpoint of the five-issue limited series and delivers the issue's central creative coup: the recruitment of a 15-year-old Bucky Barnes into the Hellhunters after Captain America objects to the team's brutal methods. Writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson draws consciously on Ed Brubaker's landmark retcon of Bucky as a skilled wartime operative — not a mere mascot — using that framework to layer the character with both dark humor and quiet tragedy, as the sorcerer Soldier Supreme effectively foreshadows Bucky's eventual fate as the Winter Soldier. The issue also resolves a deliberate ambiguity sustained across the first two chapters by finally revealing the true supernatural nature of the demonic force the team is facing, shifting the series from pulpy atmospheric horror into full-scale cosmic-threat territory. Together with the debut of the newly created villain Calphael, this makes issue #3 the narrative and thematic hinge on which the entire miniseries turns.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Ghost Rider '44 — Sergeant Sal Romero — was created by writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Nic Klein and first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #6 during Johnson's acclaimed ongoing run on that title. The fan response to the character was strong enough that Johnson developed a fully conceived origin story into a standalone limited series, describing Hellhunters as his first Marvel project that would not have existed without his personal creative drive. Marvel paired him with artist Adam Gorham, known for his work on Immortal Hulk and Star Wars: Darth Vader, with covers by Jonas Scharf; the series was edited by Jordan D. White under editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski. Bucky Barnes's appearance in issue #3 was telegraphed in early series promotion and reflects Johnson's stated affection for the character.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Released February 26, 2025; cover-dated April 2025; issue #3 of a five-issue limited series.
- Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson; interior art by Adam Gorham; colors by Frank Martin; cover by Jonas Scharf (with a Rod Reis variant).
- First in-story appearance of 15-year-old Bucky Barnes as a member of the Hellhunters — recruited after Captain America refuses to sanction the team's methods.
- Introduces and foregrounds the villain Calphael, a newly created cosmic Nazi Hellspawn and the primary antagonist of the series.
- The Soldier Supreme (Sebastian Szardos) delivers dialogue in this issue that foreshadows Bucky's eventual fate as the Winter Soldier, embedding the series within established Marvel continuity.
- Issue #3 is the midpoint of the series and the chapter in which the supernatural nature of the enemy force (the Unhallowed and Calphael) is explicitly revealed for the first time, escalating the threat from atmospheric horror to cosmic stakes.
- The Hellhunters roster across the series includes Ghost Rider '44 (Sal Romero), Wolverine (Logan), Nick Fury, Peggy Carter, Soldier Supreme (Sebastian Szardos), and Bucky Barnes — all depicted in their WWII-era incarnations.
- The series carries a Parental Advisory (T+) rating and is set in 1944 Nazi-occupied Europe, spinning directly out of Johnson's run on The Incredible Hulk.
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Reprinted in Hellhunters #[nn] (2025), Hellhunters - La vengeance en marche #[nn] (2025)
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