A more accurate title for this book would be The Visitor: Why???
An alien race of watchers is unnecessarily introduced to the Hellboy universe for no reason other than to sell more comics to Hellboy fans. One of them is there when Hellboy first appears during World War 2 and his orders are to kill him because of that cliched literary trope, a “prophecy” - but the Visitor instead decides to give Hellboy a chance. From then on, he watches Hellboy’s adventures over the decades in the background, occasionally saving his ass in secret, and fighting some monsters/frog worshippers.
Really: why?? This was such a pointless addition to Hellboy! I kept waiting for a reason to explain this book’s existence and it never materialised. It’s entirely superfluous!
There’s almost no story, the Visitor has a contrived magic green card that does whatever it needs to in the moment - weapon, communicator, disguise, door unlocker - and his wife is included to show us how kind the alien is... except we already got that from his initial actions in sparing Hellboy’s life so she’s basically just filler. Paul Grist was brought onboard because he can sorta draw like Mike Mignola so if you want a pale Mignola-imitation, here it is?
Boring and needless, The Visitor: How & Why He Stayed is completely disposable - don’t bother.
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