Mike Mignola is best known as the artist behind the Hellboy series, but he has also written the mini-series Zombieworld, several Batmans, the Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D., and The Amazing Screw-On Head, among many others.

When Rasputin (Karel Roden) rends the portal to Hell, out pops a crimson-tinted mini-demon, complete with sledgehammer fist, horns a-plenty, a bit more than a tell-tale tail, and an impish humor. Hellboy, as he is dubbed, eventually finds employment as an agent of the U.S. government (the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense), fighting the gooey forces of evil alongside fellow comrades of hellish origin. Director Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) takes artist Mike Mignola's infernal comic creatures and tosses them into a fantastically rendered dire-rama of crepuscular corridors, monstrously mannered settings, and tentacled terrors. Ron Perlman's red-baiting Hellboy is a working-class hero who chomps cigars; swills beer; groans over his latest flame (Selma Blair), a pyro-kinetic operative; and kicks satanic posteriors with a devil-may-care relish. Following Mignola's no-bull bravado, del Toro presents Hellboy as a gruff and sarcastic superhero, busily accomplishing his demonic deeds, but always wishing it was easy being red.