Hellboy, the Corpse and the Iron Shoes

In this 1996 one-shot from Dark Horse, Mike Mignola crafts a compact, eerie Hellboy tale that finds the B.P.R.D. agent investigating a strange corpse and a pair of iron shoes in an Irish bog. The story distills Mignola’s signature blend of folklore, gothic atmosphere, and deadpan humor into a single, self-contained issue. It’s a quintessential early example of the creator’s ability to build a haunting, mythic world in just a few pages.