The Hellboy Story Chronology

I've recently fallen in love with Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic book series. After watching Guillermo del Toro's movies (first one: meh, second one: wow!) I decided to read the first collection, Seed of Destruction (co-written by John Byrne), and I wasn't overly enthusiastic at first, but I decided to persevere and discovered I was wrong: Hellboy was, infact, awesome.

Alan Moore's introduction to the second collection (Wake the Devil) points out exactly what makes it such a brilliant and unique series: It captures all the fun and brevity of Golden Age comics like Spider-Man but also has an interesting modern edge (and I don't just mean being filled with post-modern references; refreshingly there are none). It manages to be dark and subversive while always remaining sweet, innocent and fun.

The storyline leaps all over the place, in a very fun and effortless way, but you may wonder how they all fit together into a single chronology. No? Well, I did :)

The following lists the individual stories of Hellboy and the trade-paperbacks where they can be found. It is based on the excellent work of Kid Cthulu and Mist the Soul-Gatherer and features only canon works (so no Hellboy: Weird Tales, Hellboy: Odd/Odder/Oddest Jobs or Hellboy Jr.)

If you think I've missed something, please leave a comment! (The items in grey are ones that I'm not sure if they're canonical of not.)

Pre-Hellboy:
1937: Lobster Johnson #1: The Iron Prometheus
1938: Lobster Johnson: The Killer in my Skull (collected in BPRD #1: Hollow Earth & Other Stories)
Hellboy appears (1944):
1946: BPRD: 1946 (collected in BPRD #9: 1946)
1947: Pancakes (collected in Hellboy #4: The Right Hand of Doom)
1954: The Nature of the Beast (collected in Hellboy #4)
1956: King Vold (collected in Hellboy #4)
1958: The Penanggalan (collected in Hellboy #7: The Troll Witch and Others)
1959: The Corpse (collected in Hellboy #3: The Chained Coffin and Others)
1961: The Iron Shoes (collected in Hellboy #3)
1961: The Hydra and the Lion (collected in Hellboy #7)
1963: The Troll Witch (collected in Hellboy #7)
1964: The Baba Yaga (collected in Hellboy #3)
1967: Heads (collected in Hellboy #4)
1979: Goodbye, Mr. Tod (collected in Hellboy #4)
1981: Ape Sapien #1: The Drowning
1982: The Vampire of Prague (collected in Hellboy #7)
1982: The Vârcolac (collected in Hellboy #4 (redrawn and expanded))
1986: The Lost Army (novel by Christopher Golden)
1989: A Christmas Underground (collected in Hellboy #3)
1990: The Kabandha (from the Hellboy Sourcebook (only 4 pages) - not yet collected)
1991: Dr. Carp's Experiment (collected in Hellboy #7)
1992: The Ghoul (collected in Hellboy #7)
1993: Makoma (collected in Hellboy #7)
The original series begins:
1994: Hellboy #1: Seed of Destruction
1994: The Wolves of Saint August (collected in Hellboy #3)
1995: The Chained Coffin (collected in Hellboy #3)
1996: Hellboy #2: Wake the Devil
1996: Almost Colossus (collected in Hellboy #3)
1997: Abe Sapien vs Science (collected in BPRD #1)
1997: The Bones of Giants (novel by Christopher Golden)
1998: The Right Hand of Doom (collected in Hellboy #4)
1998: Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead (collected in BPRD #1)
1999: Box Full of Evil (collected in Hellboy #4)
2001: The Dakini (prose) (from the Hellboy Sourcebook - not yet collected)
2001: Conqueror Worm (collected in Hellboy #5: Conqueror Worm)
2002: BPRD: Hollow Earth (collected in BPRD #1)
2002: The Third Wish (collected in Hellboy #6: Strange Places)
2003: BPRD: The Soul of Venice (collected in BPRD #2: The Soul of Venice & Other Stories)
2003: BPRD: Dark Waters (collected in BPRD #2)
2003: BPRD: Night Train (collected in BPRD #2)
2003: BPRD: There's Something Under My Bed (collected in BPRD #2)
2004: BRPD: Another Day at the Office (collected in BPRD #2)
2004: BPRD: Born Again (collected in BPRD #4: The Dead)
2004: BRPRD #3: Plague of Frogs
2004: BPRD: The Dead (collected in BPRD #4)
2005: The Island (collected in Hellboy #6)
2005: BPRD #5: The Black Flame
2006: BPRD #6: The Universal Machine
2006: BPRD #7: Garden of Souls
2006: Hellboy #8: Darkness Calls
2007: BPRD #8: Killing Ground

Note 1: If there's no story name it's because it's the same name as the collected edition (with no other short stories).
Note 2: The full name is only given once, after that it's just the volume number.