**MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND GRAPHIC CONTENT**
Here’s something you might not know.
Hellboy, of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) fame, has left the BPRD for quite a while. In comics at least. He’s been off doing other stuff and fighting other world ending events.
Except, uh… the End is Nigh.
(No, not Bill Nye, but if I was forced to create my own destroyer, he wouldn’t be a bad way to go).
Basically, the BPRD has had to deal with the end of the world, and its been messy. Wars with death cults, reanimated monsters, and creatures straight out of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares.
I won’t go into the details of how the End started. What I’m focusing on is a character that came out of all of this that is both completely understated, yet so ridiculously epic, it constantly surprises me that he isn’t getting more of the spotlight.
Haaaaaaaave you met Ted?
Agent Ted Howards, to be precise. A regular Engineer working for the BPRD, just doing his part to keep the world safe from threats from the stranger parts of the world.
His story appears to begin in Chicago, when he and two other agents are sent to investigate a rumor of an old cache of occult materials. And as is the case in this world, things do not go well. After finding a mysterious sword that sends Howards into a coma, his teammates are killed, and he is left to be discovered months later by the BPRD.
But wait! There’s more! The “coma” is much more than that. The sword sends Howards’ mind into the past, and into the body of his possible ancestor, Gall Dennar. How far into the past? Uh, pretty far.
Gall is the third of his family to wield the sword, after inheriting it from his father, and his father before him. The sword is one of the last remnants from a long destroyed Hyperborean kingdom, found by Gall’s grandfather. The sword was laying near an ancient dead warrior, surrounded by twenty dead foes.
After hastily assembling a handle for the sword, Gall’s grandfather was bestowed power and knowledge by the spirit of the dead Hyperborean warrior, unlocking the full potential of the sword.
Not much is known about the history of this ancient blade before Gall’s grandfather found it, though swords like it have appeared in a few other past stories in the Hellboy universe. A sword very much like this one was wielded by a major badass.
And speaking of badasses, Agent Howards is definitely on that list now. I mean this is a dude who has engineer level training in technology and munitions, who then had what must have been an entire lifetime fighting as a barbarian chieftan AND a lifetime of knowledge on how to wield the magic of the Hyperborean sword! And another perk of being the swordbearer? It gives you super strength and speed!
That is a lethal combination and I cannot get enough of this mysterious character from BPRD. I’m totally Team Howards!
Pick up all the trade paperback volumes of BPRD: Hell on Earth at your local comic store to know more about Agent Howards.