San Diego Comic Con Comics #2

History

The book was edited by Kris Young and published by Dark Horse Comics as a free giveaway at the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con, distributed on August 19, 1993, in a print run of approximately 1,500 copies. Mike Mignola, who had never previously written a comic script, conceived the four-page black-and-white Hellboy story and worked with veteran writer John Byrne to produce the finished script — a creative partnership that would carry through Hellboy's first full miniseries, Seed of Destruction; the story title itself was not made official until it appeared in the bibliography of Hellboy: The Companion. The Hellboy story was later reprinted in color in the first issue of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) and has since been collected in multiple international Hellboy omnibus editions, while the 25th anniversary of the story's publication was marked in 2018 when the San Diego Comic-Con International included it — newly colored by Dave Stewart — in their official Souvenir Book.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First published comic-book story appearance of Hellboy (Mike Mignola, script co-written with John Byrne): a four-page, black-and-white short in which Hellboy fights the Egyptian god Anubis at a deserted gas station.
• First published appearance of Monkeyman and O'Brien (Ann O'Brien and Axwell Tiberius), the creator-owned duo conceived and drawn by Art Adams.
• Distributed as a free promotional giveaway at the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con on August 19, 1993, with a print run of approximately 1,500 copies; editor Kris Young.
• The issue is a multi-creator anthology also featuring segments spotlighting Concrete (Paul Chadwick), Sin City (Frank Miller), The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (Frank Miller/Geof Darrow), Danger Unlimited (John Byrne), Martha Washington (Dave Gibbons), Madman (Mike Allred pinup), and a Grendel pinup (Matt Wagner/Hunter Rose).
• The Hellboy story was reprinted in color in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 (October 1994) and has been collected in the Hellboy Library Edition Vol. 1, the Hellboy Omnibus Vol. 1, and numerous international editions.
• A Sin City story in this issue was later collected in Sin City: The Babe Wore Red and Other Stories (Dark Horse, November 1994); the Martha Washington story was later collected in The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century.
• John Byrne is credited for lettering the Hellboy dialogue using a font based on his own hand lettering, though neither Byrne nor Mignola received formal lettering credits in the printed issue.
• The Hellboy story served as a promotional preview for the character's first full miniseries, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, which launched in March 1994 and kicked off the broader Mignolaverse continuity.

Cast · 14 characters

Full credits

Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers