The Comicon Advent Calendar 2022: Day 6 – Hellboy’s Winter Special
by Richard Bruton
Welcome to another day of our Comicon Advent Calendar, a daily countdown to Christmas for you to enjoy – 25 days, 25 Christmas comics. Today, it’s Hellboy day…
Christmas has always been perfect for ghost tales, it’s all to do with the turning of the year and the looking back to the past that the season engenders. So it’s no surprise that Mike Mignola’s Hellboy has a number of seasonal tales throughout its publication history.
We’ve already covered the story ‘A Christmas Underground‘ in the 2020 Advent Collection, but there’s so much more to enjoy in the Hellboy Winter Special 2019, with it’s trilogy of seasonal tales including the tale ‘The Miser’s Gift’ with a story by Mike Mignola, art by Mark Laszlo, and colours by Dave Stewart.
In ‘The Miser’s Gift’, Hellboy’s in a snowy Budapest in 1989, hearing a tale of old ghosts haunting the city…
There’s an encounter with a ghost when the unfamiliar streets of Budapest transform into someplace else with a ghostly presence… the ghost of Old Tobok the Miser, dead 200 years past in a house fire as he tried to save his hoard of coins…
Anyway, after helping Tobok back to his house, a gift of a coin is proffered and taken – but it’s a cursed gift from a cursed man and one that has meant nightmares full of smoke and fire and people screaming.
But it’s more than just one ghostly presence here, the reveal is that the entire street is a ghost street, one that wanders in time and place…
Investigations are made and we end up with Hellboy and the storyteller revisiting the ghost street and the fiery house of Tobok the Miser, who is convinced that the storyteller and Hellboy are here to steal his horde…
Misunderstandings ensue before it’s all made good, the Miser convinced that they’re here merely to return a cursed coin given for a task undertaken without need or want of reward…
And there you have it, another lovely Christmas tale – well, more a seasonal tale with the sort of ghostly overtones that come with the time of year and the moods that the season brings forth.
So, with that moral sometimes, especially at Christmas time, it’s good to do something without expectation, good to be charitable and generous. And with that message in mind – here’s the details for a few organisations that will be grateful for your help or your donations this year…
UK – donate or volunteer – Shelter, Crisis, St Mungos.
USA – donate or volunteer – Covenant House, National Coalition for the Homeless.
