Harry Middleton · 地狱男爵中文维基

Gender	Male
First comic appearance	Darkness Calls #1
Created by	Mike Mignola

Harry H. Middleton^[1] was a private occult investigator. A college friend of Trevor Bruttenholm, Middleton befriended Bruttenholm's adopted son Hellboy in the 1950s. This friendship would last beyond Middleton's death, with his ghost continuing to provide company and aid to Hellboy.

History

Harry Middleton was a friend of Bruttenholm,^[2] meeting him at Eton College in the 1930s. Both members of the school's Ghost Club, the the pair encountered their first ghost near a Scottish monastery while still students.^[3]

Middleton was introduced to Hellboy in 1953, when Broom brought him along on an investigation at St. Albans; he quickly took a liking to Hellboy, in no small part due to the lad's enthusiastic approach to supernatural entities.^[4] Middleton continued to work alongside the duo in the 1950s on a number of cases,[5] including 'The Braunton Burrows Hound'.^[6]

Death

Harry Middleton died in 1984.[7]^[8] Both Bruttenholm and Hellboy traveled to England to attend his funeral, strongly affected by the death of their friend.[9]

Visitation

Following Hellboy's time at sea (as seen in The Island), he stayed with Harry Middleton for one month,^[10] before being taken to a gathering of witches (as seen in Darkness Calls). Harry, along with the ghosts of Sir Albert Lindsay and Lady Celia Radford, played cards with Hellboy two weeks before the events of Darkness Calls.[11] Noticing that Hellboy had lost his gun, Harry gave him a 1941 U.S. Army .45 in a left-handed holster as a parting gift.[12]

Trivia

Mike Mignola originally wrote Darkness Calls with the idea that Middleton was alive. When plotting "The Mole", he instead considered that it would be "cooler" if Hellboy were playing cards with ghosts; therefore, in the epilogue to Darkness Calls, it is established that Middleton was long-dead by the time of the story.^[13]