Mike Mignola on Hellboy
Conceived in Hell, fueled by folklore, raised in the comic book. This issue we introduce you to a special boy who came from the nether-world to destroy us all, but became a man in spite of his destiny.
On April 9, 1944, he was born to murder the world: a demon created in fire and summoned to Earth by Hitler’s evil scientists in a desperate attempt to win World War II by bringing about the absolute destruction of mankind. Humanity would never know how close it came to extinction when the clandestine experiment known only as Project Ragna Rok was attacked in medias res by a team of specially trained GI’s from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, who narrowly averted the apocalypse by intercepting the furious beast at the moment of its corporeal birth.
Taken back to terra Americana for further examination, the demon conjured from Hell’s fury was a harbinger of doom in its latent state only. To all appearances, in fact, he was a tiny red infant – one that looked curiously like a little boy... a boy from Hell: Hellboy. Could morally responsible people possibly raise him to live a life outside of his nature?
Since 1994, Mike Mignola’s sporadic series, Hellboy, has recounted the worldly exploits of this unlikely hero who has rejected his evil birthright in order to defend the world against things that go bump in the night (typically incarnations of classic supernatural folklore). Or, to quote Mignola, it’s a comic book about “monsters fighting monsters.”
But if you look past Hellboy’s blood-red skin, cloven hoofs and self-mutilated devil horns, you’re left with less a demon out of hell than a fish out of water. In the classic vein of metaphoric mythology, Hellboy doesn’t see himself as a monster. Raised by humans, he thinks he’s human – or he at least wants to be one, despite the fact that he’s built like the Hulk and has an even meaner right hook (given that the hand in question is made out of a mysterious solid stone).
It’s an endearing story, one that doesn’t just facilitate sympathy for the piteous creature, but rather demands it. And it is perhaps Hellboy’s inner humanness – his ability to love, his desire for acceptance, his belief in pure-hearted justice – that has attracted so many readers and led other acclaimed artists to expand upon his universe by taking the World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator to uncharted territory in comics, novels and, this month, as far as the silver screen.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Mimic, The Devil’s Backbone and Blade II), the film version of Hellboy brings to life the comic story that originally introduced the character, Seed of Destruction. Respectfully adapted by del Toro, who is such a fan of the source material that he insisted on having Mignola’s approval at every step, the resulting movie unites the visions of both men: the artist’s two-tone, square-edged, shadows-and-silhouette-style expressionism, and the director’s frighteningly frenetic live action execution.
And while Big Red combats dark and Lovecraftian menaces in multiplexes everywhere, the rest of us mortals will be swept up in an inevitable marketing frenzy of collectibles and movie tie-ins, signalling the globe’s love affair with Hell’s dark hero. But before that happens, we want to take you behind the scenes of Hellboy’s mysterious genesis and introduce you to the man truly responsible for summoning him: Mike Mignola. The creator/writer/illustrator recently spoke to Rue Morgue and offered the following insights about the years he has dedicated not so much to raising hell as to raising a hellion....
Gary Butler: There has always been a nature vs. nurture argument at the heart of your Hellboy comics. Does Hellboy do good because he wants to – or is it more of a case that he just doesn’t want to do bad?
Mike Mignola: These things depend on the model that you had growing up, don’t they? In Hellboy’s case, he was raised by really good people. I always equate it to stories you hear about a cat that grows up among dogs and therefore thinks it’s a dog. Hellboy grew up around people, and therefore just thinks of himself as a person, a regular Joe. So really, he’s got a huge case of denial. In fact, when I originally wrote the comic, my intention was never to deal with his origins at all, other than those first eight pages of the first series [Seed of Destruction], where you saw him appear as a baby. I was just going to treat him like a regular guy – a regular guy who would be much more fun to draw. The idea was, it was going to be hilarious that Hellboy thinks he’s an average Joe when he looks like the stereotypical Devil.
GB:
Why did you deal with his origin, then – fan demand?
MM:
It was more of a case of, some of the bad guys in the comics started talking about this and that and next thing I knew, it had snowballed. Suddenly, it was, “Oh shit – he’s the Beast of the Apocalypse!” He couldn’t just be a middling-level demon – no, I had to go and make him the Beast of the Apocalypse. Once you’ve trotted something like that out, just try to put a lid on it.
GB:
It’s just as well that you wrote the origin; the fans would have demanded it regardless.
MM:
But I’m not sure that I would have given Hellboy an origin just to cave to popular demand. This isn’t to say that I don’t respect my fans – in fact, I respect them profoundly. But if my work isn’t honest to myself first, it won’t be honest to them, either.
GB:
You mentioned Hellboy’s huge case of denial. I’ve always loved the epilogue to Box Full of Evil, where he tells his B.P.R.D. associate, “You know how I live? I never deal with what I am.”
MM:
That was a rare, thoughtful moment for Hellboy. I had purposely stayed away from characters sitting around and talking about their feelings but for whatever reason – I guess, given the story that that is the epilogue to, I had really brought all of this beastly apocalypse crap to the table, and I was really going, “Shit, what have I done? How do I put an end to this subject?” In fact, in Hellboy’s speech at the end of that story, when he says, “I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want to deal with this, I’m not that, I don’t want the crown, I don’t want any of it – that’s it!” – that’s basically what I was saying. It was a really interesting dilemma that I had put this character in – and I should know, because I was raised Catholic. I guess the lighter side of creating this over-arching origin is that I’ll have no shortage of story ideas....
GB:
Hellboy began as a saga comic but has evolved into a short story vehicle, and those latter tales find you plumbing the rich history of folklore – a limitless wellspring.
MM:
That’s certainly where my focus has been going more and more, is to the short stories. The big sagas are kind of like, well, piles of junk – really fun junk, but they don’t have the pure and simple concept backing them that you can use as the backbone for a good short story. Once a story cracks one hundred pages, I just tend to throw everything into the kitchen sink. The short stories I tend to think of as – and treat like – little polished gems where you have one simple idea, or, in the case of probably the best short stories, they’re usually based on a European folk tale. Sometimes it’s a departure point; sometimes it’s almost a straight adaptation.
GB:
The nifty thing about tapping folklore is that you’re in the driver’s seat with a character that can bridge all of these cultures simply by visiting them.
MM:
And that was certainly my idea from day one. From the very start, I wanted to use Hellboy as a device to investigate folklore. The bigger storyline that kicked it all off was just that: a kick-off. I have to add, though, that I never suspected that this thing would go on for ten years. So in my wildest dreams back when I was starting Hellboy, I would’ve been happy just to see him visit a few different parts of the world during his “tour of duty” – because you’ve also got to remember that, the way the comic is structured, there’s fifty years between his origin and the setting of the original storyline, Seed of Destruction. For me as a writer, you have to understand that that was structured to give me fifty years of Hellboy’s life to have him wander the world. And as time permits and my schedule allows, I tackle folklore and essentially fill in the blanks of his life. At the same time, I’ve got all of these other things that I want to deal with. English folklore has always been a favourite for me – there are some big giant English monsters I want to introduce for a visit.
GB:
Do you feel that English folklore loans itself better to the horrific?
MM:
It might seem that way because of gothic literature, and the simple pervasion of English folklore in, go figure, commonwealth countries. But certainly, some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read are oriental and Japanese stories. Thing is, I’m talking about stuff that’s so insanely horrifying that it actually becomes comical. England on the other hand, not just because of the folklore, but the literary tradition, holds a lot of appeal. You’ve got the fairy tales, the folk tales, the ghost stories, the gothic literature. Then again, you can find all of that in Germany. I guess what it boils down to is that England and Europe is the stuff that I understand the best; probably hearkening back to this “nurture” discussion – being brought up with it has caused me to spend time ruminating on it and therefore, in the grand scheme, it makes sense to me. Whereas with the international stuff, this insane stuff… for example, this Malaysian story [new material based on the myth of the Pennangalan], the creature is so out there, so insane, that I might as well be writing a story about an alien.
GB:
There’s more to folklore than horror, but nonetheless, horror often seems to be a linchpin to it.
MM:
There are different kinds of horror, and the kind that always appealed to me is the kind that involves creatures. My start with horror goes back to sixth grade when I read Dracula – I was hooked. I remember making a conscious decision to spend the rest of my life reading and thinking about it, and I pretty much never turned back. It was an easy jump from Dracula to books like Bernhardt J. Hurwood’s anthology Passport to the Supernatural, which not only has vampires and werewolves from all over the world, but all kinds of other kinds of creatures. So with a lifetime of exposing myself to diversity in monsters, making the jump to the “bigger picture” of folklore was a natural move. And as an artist, I’ve always loved the challenge of reading a description of some absurd creature and giving it my best shot to try and make that thing look spooky, or cool, or, which happens all the time, silly.
GB:
Ah, the challenge of describing the indescribable. It reminds me of Stephen King’s IT, where he describes the monster during the final confrontation and says that it was indescribable – but if you had to put it into words, it was a giant spider. Talk about lame!
MM:
I guess that wasn’t one of his strongest descriptions. But if the passage that contains that kind of description is well written, then that kind of approach can work. I mean, look at the pulp guys – Lovecraft, one of my favourites, would write things like, “It was kind of like a goat and kind of like a pig and kind of like a tree…” He would give you things that you couldn’t possibly equate in your mind. Now that’s a challenge as an artist. A giant spider variant is one thing, but just try to imagine what that Lovecraft monstrosity could possibly look like. Of course, the thing with Lovecraft or with any of that kind of stuff, the best thing to do, always, is to not show it. Or show just a piece of it.
GB:
Tell us about a real Lovecraft-level challenge you’ve tackled.
MM:
There have been a few, but the Malaysian vampire is still fresh in my mind, and it was definitely a tough one: it’s made up of guts and intestines that leave the body and fly around – with a human head on top, too. So you go, “Well, that’s… maybe horrific.” Because the thing is, when you try to draw it, it just looks kinda goofy.
GB:
Let’s jump from the indescribable to something that you have never fully described in Hellboy – the Ogdru Jahad, a.k.a. the seven who are one.
MM:
I started out drawing it as a crystalline structure. Over time, I imagined that it would be more like shark eggs – something inside those linked cocoons. And I’ve been very careful not to show what it is. I mean, there have been one or two panels where you sort of see something curled up inside, but that’s all – just a hint. I will show it to you one of these days, but, as is my style, they’ll be morphed with shadow. Of course, that’s one of the more horrific by-products to using a lot of solid black as an artist – you don’t know and I don’t know what the hell is going on in that corner over there… And I don’t mind admitting that subconsciously, there are times when I don’t know what I’m drawing – I just know that it would be spooky if I was to ink such-and-such shape in such-and-such place. I suppose you could say that’s a callback to the characters hijacking the script.
GB:
You have stated that The Conqueror Worm story wraps up the original Hellboy arc – but we still haven’t seen the Ogdru Jahad released. So maybe by “wrapped up,” you mean that we’ve seen the last of the Nazis as a Hellboy nemesis?
MM:
Do us both a favour and don’t hold me to any of that… Conqueror Worm brought a lot of closure, a lot. But yeah, there’s still a lot left to deal with.
GB:
Such as, say, Hellboy’s stone hand.
MM:
I am about to drop a gigantic bomb – a good bomb – in terms of what that hand is. Sorry, not here in this interview, but in my next Hellboy story, which is called The Island. When I was doing thumbnails for it… See, it’s something I’ve plotted and replotted a zillion different times. It always starts the same way. It was going to be a two-issue mini-series and I drew the first eight pages but I didn’t like them, so then it became a three-issue miniseries that was completely different, then it became a one-issue story and now it’s back to being a two-issue story. Every time, the story changes completely. In the latest incarnation, as I was thumbnailing it, someone was talking to me about some stuff, and suddenly this idea of that hellish hand just popped up. It’s going to be pretty cool, I think.
GB:
Can you give us a taste of what it is without spoiling the surprise?
MM:
Um… It’s very old. I’ve always wanted it to be something that could be the worst thing on earth or it could be this divine instrument. It’s like nuclear power – used correctly, it’s great, but in the wrong hands, it’s the most devastating thing there is. (So I guess the question becomes: is Hellboy’s hand in the wrong hand?) His hand is this amazing thing, but like all truly amazing things, most people want it for a bad purpose. It’s been great to not explain it up till now, but for sure, as the series goes along, you will find out aspects of it – it can do this and this and that – and the more you know, it will be all the more reason for Hellboy to hang on to it and make sure that no one else gets it.
GB:
Mike, I won’t be happy if it turns out to be a Swiss Army knife.
MM:
Well, in the movie it almost was! In one of the script treatments, there was a total Swiss Army finale with the hand. That quickly went away. It was actually the only thing in the screenplay where I went, “Whoa! That’s not really working.” And within a couple of minutes, [writer/director] Guillermo del Toro and I had whipped up a much better ending.
GB:
Let’s talk about the movie. Four years ago you said you were 99 per cent sure that there would never be a movie. Even today, long after the filming wrapped, are you still surprised?
MM:
I’m so surprised that I still need to be reassured that it even exists. It takes a lot of getting used to. I spent five or six years telling myself, “Don’t get your hopes up, there’s no way this could happen…” I spent a lot of time on the set, a lot of time in pre-production – you’d think I’d get used to the idea that they made a movie. They sent me the trailer, and when I first saw it, I actually almost threw up, not in any kind of bad way but because I was like, “Oh my God, they actually made a movie out of Hellboy. I thought they were kidding!
GB:
How faithful is the movie to your work?
MM:
Thing is, I had seen Cronos and Mimic, and I really liked both of them. I love that he [del Toro] adds his own personality to his pictures – he has his own unique bag of tricks that he brings to all of his movies. So when I first met him, I said, “Don’t feel like you need to be faithful to my material. I’d rather see a great picture that’s different from the comic than a bad picture that’s real faithful.” He didn’t lose a second before saying, “No, I want to do the comic.” And the result has been a really interesting collaboration because his personality is all over this picture, but so is mine.
GB:
Can you define each of those personalities in a couple of words?
MM:
He is atmosphere and I am shadow. Uh… don’t hold me to that.
GB:
So you complement each other?
MM:
Sure. We speak the same language. You know, when we talk, we reference the same books and movies. It was funny: when we were first getting to know each other, he came over to my apartment – I was living in Portland, Oregon, at the time – and he was looking at my bookcase and he went, “Oh, you put William Hope Hodgson next to Clark Ashton Smith! So do I!!” I mean, how many people have even heard of these two authors, let alone for some weird reason, put them next to each other on a bookcase, where they don’t belong next to each in any real sense in the first place? That’s indicative of the level of compatibility that was going on.
GB:
What were the conditions of your involvement in terms of Hellboy being optioned in the first place? I know that Neil Gaiman optioned The Sandman and washed his hands of it immediately, knowing that Hollywood would very likely fumble the ball.
MM:
Well, that certainly could have happened. There were no conditions in the option saying, “Mignola must be involved.” A different director could have easily come in and said, “Let’s change it 100 per cent. We’ll give Hellboy two gloves, and we’ll grow his horns back, and we don’t want Mignola on the set.” Now, my publisher at Dark Horse, Mike Richardson – I guarantee you that if that had happened – he would have fought to keep me involved. Basically: I wasn’t looking to get in the movie business. It was del Toro who wanted me involved.
GB:
If I understand correctly, the movie quite strictly follows the Seed of Destruction storyline, but the short story The Corpse does seem to be in there too.
MM:
It is, and I wasn’t surprised that it ended up in there, because Guillermo, like a lot of people, thinks it’s the best Hellboy story. Because hey – who doesn’t like a talking corpse?
GB:
How is the story of The Corpse deployed in the movie? I would imagine that it could work like the mini-adventures that James Bond always has before his own opening credits.
MM:
Strangely enough, Peter Briggs, the first guy to write a version of the Hellboy screenplay, did exactly that. But that’s not what Guillermo did – he made it an actual part of the story. So instead of taking place in Ireland, as it does in the comic short, it now occurs in Russia, as part of the exploration arc where they’re trying to catch Rasputin.
GB:
Hellboy has elements of horror but it’s not a horror comic. What do you consider to be its most horrific element?
MM:
Horror is a weird thing. To me, the most horrible thing in Hellboy is the idea that you are pre-destined to do something evil. If you are the Beast of the Apocalypse, then eventually you are going to be forced, by some kind of fate, to bring about this horrible destruction, or unleash this plague or whatever it’s going to be – all of that stuff is going to come out of you. Imagine the personal, psychological implications of that.
GB:
This is the nature/nurture argument again. On the nature side, I think of Wake the Devil, where Hellboy’s horns regrew without his volition – he chopped ‘em right back off, of course, but something made them grow.
MM:
That’s the question of the genetic element: Is there something in a personality that you can’t escape, and is it just going to wear you down over the years? And, even spookier, if you believe in real destiny kind of stuff and say, “I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to go over there, I’m going to go over there…” well, what’s to say that going over there isn’t going to bring about the same thing in a different way? Free will implies control, but is it necessarily the case that you have control? Are some things beyond your control?
GB:
Which brings us to the million-dollar question for Hellboy, the comic character: can he escape his destiny of bringing about the apocalypse?
MM:
I think you understand why I can’t answer that. Maybe it’s because I don’t actually know yet, but maybe it’s because I do...
Reprinted with permission Rue Morgue Magazine Magazine #38
By Gary Butler
Submitted by Jen Vuckovic
Managing Editor
Rue Morgue Magazine
Suicide Girls Member SCREAMQUEEN.
Reprinted with permission Rue Morgue Magazine Magazine #38
By Gary Butler
Submitted by Jen Vuckovic
Managing Editor
Rue Morgue Magazine
Suicide Girls Member SCREAMQUEEN.
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