Hellboy: Conqueror Worm

Hellboy:
Conqueror Worm
Hellboy:; Conqueror Worm
	Cover to the trade paperback; Art by Mike Mignola
Publication information
Publisher	Dark Horse Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Limited series
Genre	adventure, horror;
Publication date	May–August ISBN 1-56971-699-4

Hellboy: Conqueror Worm is a Hellboy comic book mini-series, written and drawn by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics.

This work was inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name.

Plot

In 2000,

Roger that a satellite photo has captured a space capsule with a Nazi symbol reentering the atmosphere on course towards Hunte Castle in Austria

, from which it was launched in 1939. A local police officer, Laura Karnstein, has offered to guide them there. In private, Manning reveals to an appalled Hellboy that Roger has been fitted with a bomb, just powerful enough to destroy him, and gives Hellboy the detonator in case the worst should happen.

Reaching the castle, Hellboy and Roger are separated and ambushed by

Herman von Klempt and one of his cybernetic

Kriegaffen ("war apes"). Hellboy awakes in a torture chamber, where "Karnstein" stands at von Klempt's side, revealing herself to be his granddaughter, Inger.

Roger is guided to the castle's power plant by

ancient evil beings

in space, and sent the capsule carrying a dead body for one of them to inhabit. Roger reunites with Hellboy just as the capsule lands.

Gas streams out of the capsule and transforms Inger's men into mindless frog monsters. The monstrous

Third Reich, and the failure of his multiple projects to bring about the Nazis

' planned conquest of the world, Herman no longer cares about causes, or his family, and simply wants to watch the end of the world. Inger removes her mask to realize that it has not protected her from the gas, only minimized the transformative effects, leaving her a humanoid frog creature who is just barely able to think and speak.

Von Klempt attacks Hellboy and Roger, but Roger destroys his robotic body and sends his preserved head falling off a cliff to his death. Roger initially urges Hellboy to let him get close to the Worm and then detonate the bomb, but Hellboy refuses, and instead they use Roger's body as a conductor to deliver a massive electrical shock to the Worm via a lightning rod, destroying it.

Inger is tempted by the ghost of Grigori Rasputin, who says she cannot prevent the end of the world, but can play a pivotal role in the world that will follow. Before she can act, however, she is shot dead by Lobster Johnson.

Hellboy, disgusted by the Bureau's actions toward Roger, gives the detonator back to Manning and announces that he's quitting, telling Kate Corrigan that he plans to travel to Africa, and after that "wherever the wind blows."

In an

Ogdru Jahad is Hellboy's stone right hand, and Rasputin will never control him. Rasputin screams in defiance at this with such force that his spirit shatters into bone splinters. Baba Yaga

takes one of these splinters and puts it into an acorn, to wear around her neck.