BRIEFLY

HELLBOY SEQUEL: Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, artist Zach Howard, colorist Dave Stewart and letterer Clem Robbins are collaborating on a sequel to the iconic Hellboy story The Crooked Man from Dark Horse Comics.

In Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb, years after he banished the infamous backwoods demon known as the Crooked Man, Hellboy returns to Appalachia when a young psychic warns Tom Ferrell of looming danger. But the Crooked Man's house is no longer empty, and threats both new and old simmer in the Virginia woods.

"Sometimes you create a character, they perform their function, and that"s it,�h Mignola said. "Other times you finish with them and they just refuse to get back in their box. Tom Ferrell is one of those characters. Even as I was writing The Crooked Man I knew there was a whole lot more to that guy. And Effie Kolb... It turns out there are worse things you can do to a character than turn them into a horse."

"Getting to stand in the shadows of the two legends that made The Crooked Man is an honor," Howard said. "Mignola asking me to draw the sequel is an opportunity I have not taken likely, and I've given my absolute best to live up to his wonderful creation. This will be my final sequential art as a freelance comic book artist, and I couldn't ask for a better end to this chapter of my career."

The two-part series kicks off on Feb. 19.

CLASSIFIED X: Marvel Comics has sent out a teaser image for "the most dysfunctional X-Men team you could possibly imagine."

The publisher will reveal the team members starting on Tuesday.

STRANGE SKIES VARIANT: BOOM! Studios has unveiled Matias Bergara's variant cover for Strange Skies Over East Berlin #4, in stores on Jan. 8.

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