Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense

Fictional organization history

The BPRD was founded in late 1944 by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm to combat various occult threats uncovered in operations against Nazi Germany. It initially had strong links to the USAAF and was based at a military airbase in New Mexico, but later relocated to a custom built facility in Fairfield, Connecticut. It maintains strong links to various branches of the United States Armed Forces to this day. It is a private organization that receives funding from several major governments (mostly the United States and United Kingdom, although other countries including Canada, Japan, France, and Italy have been mentioned).

Professor Bruttenholm served as director until the late 1950s when he stepped down to return to field work. The current Director is Dr. Thomas Manning. Under Manning several "advanced skills agents" were added to the agency including Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien.

The BPRD is a well known and respected organization that has excellent relations with most international governments and United States government agencies, with the exceptions of China and the CIA. The Bureau was the United States' only defense against an onslaught of frog creatures (originally featured in Seed of Destruction). Though the 'frogs' began operating on the East Coast, they spread west on both sides of the US-Canada border. To cut costs, the Bureau moved from its traditional headquarters in Connecticut to an abandoned research facility in Colorado. This facility was last used to house Nazi scientists who defected to America after World War II. As such, the facility contains vast quantities of secret files that the BPRD has yet to explore.

The frog monster invasion reached its peak during the events of The Black Flame during which a Neo-Nazi madman adopted the persona of the World War II era supervillain the Black Flame and insinuated himself as the leader of the frogs. Together they raised the gigantic Katha-Hem (one of the Ogdru Hem, the 369 spawn of the Ogdru Jahad) which ran rampant across the American heartland until Liz Sherman used an ancient artifact to amplify her pyrokinetic powers a thousandfold. After Katha-Hem was destroyed, the frog monsters dragged the Black Flame into a vast pit and the invasion appeared to come to an end.

A series of incidents - The Warning, The Black Goddess, and King of Fear - saw the Bureau threatened by both an alliance of the frogs, The Black Flame, and the Hyperborean underworld, united to bring about an apocalypse and the birth of a new human race; and also the villain Memnan Saa, who abducted Liz in an attempt to use her powers to conquer the Earth so he could prevent the apocalypse. This crisis saw half of Munich destroyed, the Bureau on the outs with the American military, and Abe Sapien revealed to be an example of the next stage of the frog's evolution. Finally, Liz Sherman exhausted all of her powers in destroying the underworld alliance. This inadvertently caused massive volcanic disasters across the world, devastating Malaysia and causing the destruction of Borneo (wiping out the nations of Indonesia and Brunei), and also causing the rise of a large, immobile monster in California, spewing out a gas across America and Mexico that mutates people. In the wake of this new crisis, the United Nations Security Council drafted the Bureau to work directly for them, with "blank cheque" funding. The Bureau has also begun collaborating with the Russian Special Sciences Service to combat the new threats.

A vision of the future shown in King of Fear showed the apocalypse had triumphed over this larger, heavier armed BPRD.

Publication history

The Bureau made its first appearance in the pages of the Hellboy miniseries Seed of Destruction (4 issues, March–June 1994) and was a major part of the comic until Hellboy leaves the B.P.R.D. at the end of Conqueror Worm. At this point the B.P.R.D. series began, following the agents of the B.P.R.D. such as Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, Roger and Johann Krauss.

B.P.R.D. was once considered a "series of miniseries," with each story reading as a stand-alone story easily enough, but overtime an overarching story began to develop. When a new story cycle began, the series was retitled B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth, then two years later when the series hit its 100th issue, it was restructured as an ongoing monthly comic. This was done for many reasons, most notably to make the reading order simpler to the uninitiated.

Stories

B.P.R.D. began as a series of miniseries, but it also had an ongoing numbering on the inside cover of its issues. For the 100th issue the internal numbering shifted to the front cover as the series became a monthly ongoing comic.

B.P.R.D. trade paperbacks

Most of the B.P.R.D. comics have been collected by Dark Horse as trade paperbacks:

B.P.R.D. Vampire trade paperbacks

In all ways this appears to be another regular B.P.R.D. trade save for the details on the spine that indicate it is the first in a new line. Only one has been published so far, but there are plans for more in the future.

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth trade paperbacks

There is also a series of trade paperbacks collecting the Hell on Earth cycle:

Omnibus editions

Dark Horse have also released a series of omnibus editions:

Films

The Bureau appeared in the 2004 film Hellboy and its 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army, both directed by Guillermo del Toro, where it differs from the agency in the comics.

Television

The B.P.R.D. Declassified was a TV special that aired on the FX Network in 2004.

Roleplaying game

The B.P.R.D. appeared in the Hellboy Sourcebook and Role Playing Game.

In popular culture