About HBDB

HBDB (the Hellboy Database) is a story-first reference archive and collection tracker for the Hellboy Universe — Mike Mignola's corner of comics spanning Hellboy, B.P.R.D., Abe Sapien, Lobster Johnson, Witchfinder, Frankenstein Underground, Koshchei, and the rest.

It exists to answer the questions readers and collectors actually have: which Publications contain a given Story, which Stories appear in a given Publication, what exists (including variants and future releases), what to buy to read a story, what order to read it all in, and how much of it you've read so far.

The Archive

Everything is catalogued as discrete, cross-linked entities. Start anywhere in the navigation and follow the connections.

Stories

The unit of the archive — one comics story, with its creators, characters, and appearances, plus every Publication it's collected in, with notes on anything particular about a given printing.

Publications

Issues, trades, omnibuses and library editions — what you actually hold in your hands. Each lists its Editions by format, its contents, and, where there is one, a Gallery of extra pictures.

Series

The Series and Cycles stories belong to.

Characters

Every named character, their first and last known appearances and full appearance history.

Groups

B.P.R.D., the Osiris Club, the Heliopic Brotherhood — agencies, societies, cults and families.

Locations

Recurring places across the Universe, linked to the stories set there.

Artifacts

Objects of special importance — weapons, relics, books — each with a gallery and every story it turns up in.

Creators

Writers, artists, colorists, letterers and cover artists, credited per story and per publication, and ranked by their total credits in each role.

Events

In-universe events, placed on the Timeline rather than a page of their own.

Exceptional Publications

Odds and ends that don't quite fit the database: art books, foreign editions, and publications with Hellboy art or information that aren't about Hellboy, each with photos and a short write-up.

Cover CameosComing soon

Covers from outside the Hellboy line where Hellboy turns up — other comics, convention booklets, magazines — gathered into a wall of covers by year.

On a Story's page

Versions — when a story was printed in more than one form (black and white or color, extra pages), each version is listed, and Appears In shows which printings carry which.
Length — in pages, words, or running time for audio dramas and adaptations.
Who and what appears — Characters, Groups, Locations and Artifacts, grouped into sections such as “Main Characters”, with labels like Mentioned or Deceased, and a Character's first, last known or only appearance marked. One-off characters who exist only in that story are included too; tap one for its picture and notes.
Spoilers — anyone or anything whose appearance would give the story away waits behind a Spoilers bar until you open it, and opens by itself once you've marked the story read.

Reading the Universe

Two tools sit on top of the archive for readers trying to make sense of the whole thing.

Timeline: Every story event placed in in-universe chronological order. Signed-in readers can narrow it to only story events from stories they've read.
Reading Orders: Curated and community reading paths. Longer orders are split into chapters you can jump between from the Index. Each Story points at a specific Publication and Edition (shown with the cover of the printing it means, variants included), so an order doubles as a shopping list. Signed in, you can tick Stories off as you go, or mark everything on a Publication's card read in one go; switch an order to "This order only" to track your progress there without touching your overall Read marks. Favorite an order to keep it on a Your Favorites shelf with your progress. You can also build your own in the board editor, auto-fill the Publications (or pick them from your own Library), share the order by link, and print it as a checklist.
Reading TreesComing soon: Reading orders drawn as a map: colored columns of stories joined by arrows, so you can see where each line branches off. Start at any starred story; the rest stay locked until you've read what leads to them. Zoom in and out, go full screen, and drag to move around. Signed in, tick stories off as you go — against your Read status or this tree only. Print it, with or without a checkbox beside each story.
Annotated GuidesComing soon: Story-by-story walkthroughs written by HBDB's contributors — the panels worth a second look, the folklore behind them, and footnoted sources, with links out to podcasts and articles. Sections are tagged by topic so you can filter to what interests you, and anything that gives away the ending stays blurred until you choose to read it.

Track Your Collection

Sign in and HBDB becomes a personal checklist. Ownership is tracked at the Edition level — a Publication can have a Hardcover, a Softcover, a Digital release and more, each with its own release date and identifiers.

My Library: Everything you've marked as owned, filterable by format and physical-only. Switch to Still reading or Finished to see which Publications have Stories left to read, with a badge on each cover.
My Wishlist: Editions you want but don't have yet — independent of what you own. Its "What am I missing?" tab shows the gaps in each Series you collect, with a switch to include Publications you only partly own.
My Stories: Every story you can reach through a Publication you own, with your reading progress shown next to your collection progress.
Collection Plan: A set-cover planner: the fewest Publications to buy to read everything — or to finish what you've started. When two choices would add the same number of stories, it picks the preferred publication type and labels that pick "Preferred format". When finishing your collection, a variant you own counts as owning the book it's a variant of.

You set status with the format chips — one per Edition, tapped to cycle through the three states — on a Publication's page, on a Story's Appears In list, and on Reading Order cards:

Owned — this format is in your Library.

Wishlisted — you want it; it shows on your Wishlist.

Not tracked — the resting state; the dashed chip is still a plain format label.

Own / Wishlist is per Edition and per format. Owning the Omnibus and wishlisting the single issues of the same story is a perfectly normal state, and the Collection Plan's "physical only" filter reads the format's medium to respect it.

Reading progress

Separately from what you own, you can mark any Story as read from its page, the Stories list, or a Reading Order. Audio dramas and screen adaptations say Listened or Watched instead of Read. Your progress feeds My Stories, the Stories list's Progress column, and the Timeline's "only stories I've read" filter.

Stay Current

News: Hand-picked links to interviews, announcements and articles about the Universe, with the most recent on the landing page and the full run on the News page.
Upcoming Releases: Editions with a release date still in the future, soonest first — solicited issues, announced collections, pending digital drops. This week's releases stay on the list, highlighted, until the week is out.
Random Story: A door into a corner of the Universe you haven't read.
Recent Updates: What's changed in the archive lately — new and edited entries.
RSS Feeds: Follow the site in a feed reader: News as it's posted, and a weekly Upcoming Releases digest every Sunday with that week's releases and anything newly announced.
FAQ: Answers to the questions that come up most, about the Universe and about using the site.

There's also a Community card on the landing page linking out to the subreddit, Discord, wikis and the publisher.

Finding Things

Search from anywhere with Ctrl + K (⌘ + K on a Mac).
Accents don't matter, and if nothing matches exactly, list searches fall back to close spellings and say so.
Story searches also match the Series and Cycle; Publication searches match the volume, type, Series and Cycle.
List pages can remember your filters between visits — switch it on from the page's Filters menu.

Accounts

Browsing needs no account — Stories, Publications, Series, Characters, Timeline and Reading Orders are all open. Signing in is optional and uses Sign in with Discord; HBDB only ever receives your Discord ID, username and avatar. It's used to recognize your account and hold your collection state, the stories you've read, saved reading orders and remembered filters. No email, no posting on your behalf, no third-party sharing. See the Privacy Policy for the details.

A Fan Project

HBDB is a small, fan-run site with no affiliation with Dark Horse Comics, Mike Mignola, or any rights holder. Cover images and bibliographic data are used for reference and identification. Corrections, missing entries and suggestions are welcome. Find me on the Mignolaverse Discord: SalvMan.

It's also grown with help from other volunteers — see who's pitched in, and how to join them, on the Contributors page.