By Zack Quaintance — Artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta will draw a new Hellboy comic, dubbed Hellboy and the B.P.RD.: Old Man Whittier. Written by Mike Mignola with colors by Dave Stewart and letters by Clem Robins, the book is due out June 22 via Dark Horse, usual publisher of all things Hellboy.

It marks Walta’s first work in Mignola’s long-running Hellboy Universe, which is very exciting because Walta’s broody and forboding artwork seems like a natural fit for stories tinged in the supernatural. Squint, and you can almost make a slight Richard Corben comparison with Walta, and as long-time readers of this site (and probably even my Twitter account) know, Richard Corben actually illustrated my all-time favorite Hellboy story, Hellboy in Mexico.

I’m also just generally a fan of Walta’s work, as well as the projects he chooses. In recent years, the artist has done a great job on some landmark comics, including Tom King’s breakout hit, The Vision (back when King was a free agent, writing for both publishers), and more recently the very very good Barbalien: Red Planet, written by Jeff Lemire and Tate Brombal.

This new Hellboy story is actually a continuation of an old Hellboy story, specifically as the title implies of Hellboy: The Whittier Legacy. That story was part of a 2010 promotion in which the national newspaper USA Today published five original 8-page comics stories to its website. As far as I remember, it involves Hellboy going to New England to investigate grave desecrations, where of course bedlam breaks loose, as it tends to do (“aw crap”).

Check out the publisher’s full preview text for the new book below:

In Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Old Man Whittier, trouble runs in the family. When Catherine Whittier learns she’s inherited the house she grew up in, she knows better than to return home alone. And who better to escort her than Hellboy? After all, with a house with a history like this, “plot” can mean more than just a family graveyard.

Annnnd finally, you can also now see Mignola’s own variant cover, colored by Dave Stewart, for the forthcoming issue below…enjoy!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.