15-year-old Kurosaki Ichigo is not your everyday high school student. He has from as far he can remember always had the ability to see ghosts and spirits. A fateful day arrives as Ichigo encounters the shinigami Kuchiki Rukia, who saves him and his family from a Hollow at the cost of injuring herself. During this encounter, with Rukia unable to defeat the hollow she transfers her shinigami powers into Ichigo. In the aftermath, unable to continue with her job, Rukia allows Ichigo to take on the role of a shinigami in her place as they together defeat the Hollows plaguing Ichigo's town.

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (the B.P.R.D. or BPRD) is a fictional organization in the comic book work of Mike Mignola, founded by the United States and United Kingdom governments, charged with researching the occult, paranormal and supernatural, and defending against their dangers. The B.P.R.D. originally appeared in the Hellboy comics and has since been a major part of its expanded universe. In 2002, Dark Horse Comics launched the B.P.R.D. comic series, and in 2014 the Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. series.

Hellboy is not an easy comic to put into a reading order, there is a chronological order, an original publishing order, and more recently the trade paper back order and also the library edition order, as well as BPRD Trades and Weird Tales Trades and guest appearances in other titles. My point is their is no perfect reading order, and so therefor i placed the comics into what i feel is a good reading order. It is the one i recommend to friends of mine just getting into Hellboy, and it is my current reading order of choice. it avoids spoilers and keeps the story flowing. Basically start with 01 (Seed of destruction) then go all the way through 27 then read through the other material section.