Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 (1997)

The comic opens in 1944, with a report from a U.S Army official named George Whitman, who has been ordered to lead a team of commandos to the (fictional) village of East Bromwich in the English Midlands. The army group (accompanied by a Nazi-fighting superhero named The Torch of Liberty) is under the guidance of three paranormal officials, one of whom is a young Trevor Bruttenholm. According to the group psychic, one Lady Cynthia Eden-Jones, a terrible event is to take place in a local ruined church; a doomsday project orchestrated by the Nazis, which could herald the end of the world. However, the actual rite is taking place at Tarmagant Island, a small island off the coast of Scotland. The Nazis have set up an array of strange machines around a stone circle, in the center of which stands the fabled Russian psychic Grigori Rasputin. The wizard, armed with a pair of powerful gauntlets, attempts to summon the Ogdru Jahad from their prisons to the earth; although unseen, the beasts are referred to as "knowing no care" and "heralds of pestilence", marking them out as amoral, dangerous entities. Although the Ogdru Jahad are not summoned, a boy-like, red-skinned demon appears at the Church in East Bromwich, and is soon dubbed "Hellboy" by Professor Bruttenholm. Whilst the leader of the Nazi operation, Klaus Werner von Krupt, is dismayed at Rasputin's apparent lack of success, the mad monk knows otherwise and proclaims he has set into motion the world's ending. The scene then changes to 1994, at the headquarters of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in New York. A much older Bruttenholm is recounting the incident of Hellboy's "birth", when the demon himself enters the office. It is revealed that Bruttenholm has been missing for two years, having disappeared after a polar expedition. He tells Hellboy the story of his recent disappearance, informing him of his trip to the Arctic circle with "the two Cavendish boys", and a man named Sven Olafssen, who is a "renowned Arctic explorer". The quartet entered a cave at the top of the world, which bore a strange Lovecraftian statue of a tentacled creature, and a human meditating at its feet. When Bruttenholm touched the relic, it seemed to come alive, and he can barely remember the events that followed. Before he can continue, he is interrupted by a plague of frogs, and runs from the office, giving his adopted son the final words of "Save yourself!". Before Hellboy can react, Bruttenholm is killed by a huge amphibioid monster, leaving him with hole-like markings around his dried-out corpse. The creature attempts to kill Hellboy, but he proves too strong for the frog-monster and is able to shoot it as it attempts to escape. After killing the creature, Hellboy telephones the B.P.R.D Director Tom Manning, informing him of Bruttenholm's death. As Manning arranges things with his fellow officials, the scene changes to the interior of an old Victorian house, whilst a dark, shadowed figure discusses Bruttenholm's death with a stately old woman. As the comic ends, a frog is seen in her teacup...