Mignola's got a lot on his plate right now. Blade 2 director Guillermo del Toro has written the script for Hellboy and is currently shooting it as we speak in the Czech Republic and Mike is intimately involved with the project. I got a chance to talk with Mike about sex, hell and Selma.
Check out Dark Horse Comics' website for Art of Hellboy.
Check out Mike Mignola's site at hellboy.com.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Ok so you've been to Prague. How is Hellboy going over there?
Mike Mignola: Last I checked it was going all right. I realized I had no clear expectations. I knew abstractly that [director] Guillermo [del Toro] would do a great job but I never imagined what it would look like. I was so amazed. It was so far beyond anything that I imagined. It was the difference between theory and reality. I knew it sounded great but to see it and see that he was doing what were discussing for five years was amazing.
DRE: I know you've seen your work up on screen before like with Disney's Atlantis. But is this weird?
MM: It is weird. There's this ongoing process over years of getting used to weird things. When we were doing preproduction the first couple of days you'd say, wow we're actually in the Hellboy office doing the Hellboy movie. Then you get used to that and more things happen again. Then you're talking about stuff and you go, holy crap I'm talking about the Hellboy movie or I'm talking about what Abe Sapien is going to look like or Hellboy's gun. Then you get used to that. The same with walking onto the set. There's John Hurt looking exactly like the character from the comic [Professor Bruttenholm]. Then you get used to that to that too. Seeing [Hellboy star] Ron [Perlman] in makeup for the first time you think that's weird. But then you don't notice it after a little while.
What happened was that shooting particular scenes Ron would be in a particular position or lit a certain way then I would get these flashes of holy crap it really looks just like the comic. I was constantly amazed. There was this one point where Ron was going into this jumping pose and just the way his body went and the way he put his hands up in front of him in this strange clunky pose and that really feels just like the comic.
DRE: I've seen a few photos of Ron as Hellboy. Is that a good depiction of how he is going to look?
MM: That's him.
DRE: I know you thought of Ron as Hellboy a long time ago and Guillermo thought the same thing. What made Ron so perfect for the role?
MM: When Guillermo and I first sat down probably the first conversation we had was who is going to play Hellboy. Going into it I knew Ron had to play Hellboy. A friend of mine had suggested him. I never really gave it that much thought and when he said that I thought it was perfect. When Guillermo and I sat down we put our cards on the table at the same time and we both said Ron Perlman. That was a huge relief to be on the same wavelength from day one.
What appealed to me about Ron was that he's got this been there done that working stiff persona. He's always kind of a busted up guy. He's not some slick action hero kind of guy. He's not a guy that's posing and coughing out these horrible one liners. He's a guy who I could easily imagine dropping though the roof of a building and him going, uh. That comes from movies like Name of the Rose and City of Lost Children. Also he's one of the best guys at working under makeup which is a huge skill because you've got to be able to convey emotion under heavy makeup.
Another real concern was, do you get a big name actor and put him under all that stuff. Hellboy's got a tail. People are going to laugh if they recognize the actor. Ron, while he is a known actor, is under heavy makeup half the time. He had the experience and that whole known but unknown thing going on.
DRE: In the last Star Trek movie he was unrecognizable.
MM: I didn't see it but I saw some clips from it and as unrecognizable as he was in it, he was still recognizable to me. Even under the heaviest makeup jobs there's a certain personality he has that comes through. But he has that attitude that comes through.
DRE: When did you first find out Guillermo was a fan of yours?
MM: I guess when I heard he was interested in dong Hellboy the movie. We had no contact before that. The first time we ever spoke was when Mike Richardson [Hellboy producer and founder, president, and publisher of Dark Horse Comics] arranged a meeting between Guillermo and me in Portland. At the time I had seen Mimic and Chronos.
DRE: I interviewed Seth Green recently [for The Italian Job] and he said he was still a big fan of Hellboy.
MM: I know. He came up to me a couple of years ago at the San Diego Comicon and I didn't realize who he was. It's my wife who pointed out who he was to me and I said holy shit so I had to run out and thank him.
DRE: It's amazing how much people love Hellboy. If it isn't an iconic character now then it will be certainly after the movie comes out.
MM: I have no idea how I managed to do that. It is very nice. I just took everything I liked and stuck it into one package. Really I wanted to do a comic that I wanted to see. I figured that the only guy to like this comic was going to be me.
DRE: Selma Blair is very sexy. How is she doing over there?
MM: She's great. Liz Sherman just looked like a beautiful girl or as much as I could pull that off. That's not my specialty. Selma is terrific for the part. Guillermo made her personality kind of different than she is in the comic. She didn't really have much of a personality in the comic. Guillermo like he did with most of the characters really turned her into something. I couldn't be happier with the cast we got.
DRE: You've really defined the gothic look in mainstream comics. Does that period really interest you?
MM: I do like old stuff. I read gothic literature and Victorian ghost stories. I've always been attracted to that kind of architecture. I'm very happy to bring that into mainstream comics. I have had a lot of people say they like Hellboy because it's gothic. Well I'm afraid these people have not really seen gothic excess. So I want to do a non Hellboy project where I'll really wallow in that gothic subject matter. So I've got some things on the back burner.
DRE: Have you ever encountered your Goth fans?
MM: I don't, it's very strange. The audience doesn't appear to be the stereotypical Neil Gaiman type Goth fans. I don't see that. They might be out there. The fans I meet for the most part seem like college students. I don't get a uniform the way Neil gets.
DRE: Anyone surprised to see how normal you look?
MM: Not that they've mentioned.
DRE: Were you ever into the Goth scene?
MM: I don't think they had that scene when I was younger. I've been into the horror stuff since I was in sixth grade when I read Dracula. I remember making the conscious decision after that to think about that stuff forever. I found my calling. I never really was around a group of people who had similar interests other than my brothers. I didn't know anyone else who was into that stuff so it's always been something I've been pursuing on my own.
DRE: Do you work a lot from reference photos?
MM: I do have a gigantic library of extensive research material. Old churches and there are certain stories that designed as an excuse for me to draw certain things I've got reference for. Like I have to do scenes where I use this church or this altar.
DRE: Did you take a lot of photos when you were in Prague?
MM: I took a lot of photos when I was there because it's an amazing city. I've been there about four times now. The last time I was there I took a couple of days and just shot reference photos.
DRE: For future stories?
MM: For whatever. It all goes into the files.
DRE: When we spoke last year you spoke about how Disney was teaching classes to its animators on how to draw like you. I recently spoke to Jim Steranko and even he loves your work. All these professionals that many would call geniuses love your work and you don't know how you do it.
MM: I've got to say, to hear that is great. I did have a moment with Steranko a couple of years ago at San Diego. It was really amazing. I don't know him. We met a couple of times over the years but he sat down and was going over Xeroxes of a job I just finished. He was going through them and asking me real specific questions like why is that panel border here instead of there? Things like that. It was weird because its all stuff that I'm thinking about as I'm working but to have somebody else go through and actually understand what I was doing. It felt great because he certainly is the master of comic storytelling. It is great that so many artists seem to like what I am doing.
DRE: When did your deep blacks first start coming into your work?
MM: I thought I was always doing that. I look back at jobs from not too long ago and I wasn't doing it. So I think they've been in there a long time but they've been spotty. Now I think they've pretty much taken over I guess right around a year before I started Hellboy. It started to become a black comic with highlights as opposed to a white comic with lots of black in it. More and more it's threatening to take over the comic.
DRE: Do you ever blacken the page then work over that?
MM: Nah. I did a Hellboy cover the other day. I did it and I kept adding more and more black and I had to take it away otherwise I would ended up with a silhouette.
DRE: Sex has never been a huge part of your work. Is that a result of starting in mainstream comics?
MM: It's probably just me being really shy about certain subject matters. Certainly there are a lot of guys coming from mainstream comics and they can't wait to do sex stuff. I don't have much to say about it and I don't want to be silly. So much of the work I see that deals with overtly sexual things handle it in a really silly way. It's just not a focus. I haven't had a story that revolved around that. Also I'm really crappy at drawing women.
DRE: Will Hellboy finally get laid in the movie?
MM: That would be telling. But it is Ron playing Hellboy so I get the impression that if the movie Hellboy doesn't have a sex life then he certainly has a great potential for one.
DRE: The Art of Hellboy is a beautiful book. Did you design it?
MM: I co-designed. It was mostly a case of having so much material that it was a nightmare sifting through all the crap and coming up with the right balance. We did it because a lot of people complain that there isn't enough sketchbook stuff. I can understand them wanting that stuff so I went through the stuff I had and pulled out what I was happiest with. I didn't want a book of just stuff people hadn't seen before. I wanted a book of the best stuff. It was a lot of work but I'm happy with it.
DRE: Is the reason you released it now because we're not going to see any of your work for a while?
MM: That was the idea. Originally I was supposed to be in Prague in six months so there would have been no work from me at all. People have wanted this book for a long time.
DRE: I was just flipping through it and you draw a great Concrete [created by Paul Chadwick].
MM: He's a big lump. That's my strength.
DRE: When is the next Hellboy miniseries coming out?
MM: It's called The Island and I have no idea. I think its going to be three issues and its taking forever. A lot of it is the stopping and starting because of the movie. I did the first eight pages and I wasn't happy with them so I ended up chucking the whole thing and starting from scratch. It'll be done when it's done. Ideally I would like to have it out in time for the movie's release next summer. But I have no idea. I'm going back to Prague for a few weeks then the summer is shot because of all the comic book conventions. Then when Hellboy goes into post-production I'm supposed to be involved with that too. So I really have no idea but The Island is the main non movie project I'm working on.
DRE: Are you going to be adapting the movie?
MM: I think movie adaptations for the most part are silly. I've done that story. Whether Dark Horse or Revolution Studios wants someone to do it that would be fine but I have no interest.
DRE: What was the reception for Screw on Head like?
MM: Screw on Head was something I did entirely for me. Screw on Head was something I really didn't think anyone would like. I didn't care. I just needed to do something to just entertain myself. After so many years of doing Hellboy where I knew I had an audience, I wanted people to see that I was willing to do something different. Like Hellboy was ten years ago here is everything I like. I was coming out of mainstream comics and the book had a mainstream thing to it. Screw on Head was not mainstream. The fact that people bought it and liked it was nice.
DRE: Did you hear anything negative from your fans about it?
MM: I did. I got two or three comments where people said the plot was awfully thin. I thought, wow they don't get it. It's not even supposed to have a plot, its just silly. Its not a crime drama, its just some goofy thing.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
Check out Dark Horse Comics' website for Art of Hellboy.
Check out Mike Mignola's site at hellboy.com.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Ok so you've been to Prague. How is Hellboy going over there?
Mike Mignola: Last I checked it was going all right. I realized I had no clear expectations. I knew abstractly that [director] Guillermo [del Toro] would do a great job but I never imagined what it would look like. I was so amazed. It was so far beyond anything that I imagined. It was the difference between theory and reality. I knew it sounded great but to see it and see that he was doing what were discussing for five years was amazing.
DRE: I know you've seen your work up on screen before like with Disney's Atlantis. But is this weird?
MM: It is weird. There's this ongoing process over years of getting used to weird things. When we were doing preproduction the first couple of days you'd say, wow we're actually in the Hellboy office doing the Hellboy movie. Then you get used to that and more things happen again. Then you're talking about stuff and you go, holy crap I'm talking about the Hellboy movie or I'm talking about what Abe Sapien is going to look like or Hellboy's gun. Then you get used to that. The same with walking onto the set. There's John Hurt looking exactly like the character from the comic [Professor Bruttenholm]. Then you get used to that to that too. Seeing [Hellboy star] Ron [Perlman] in makeup for the first time you think that's weird. But then you don't notice it after a little while.
What happened was that shooting particular scenes Ron would be in a particular position or lit a certain way then I would get these flashes of holy crap it really looks just like the comic. I was constantly amazed. There was this one point where Ron was going into this jumping pose and just the way his body went and the way he put his hands up in front of him in this strange clunky pose and that really feels just like the comic.
DRE: I've seen a few photos of Ron as Hellboy. Is that a good depiction of how he is going to look?
MM: That's him.
DRE: I know you thought of Ron as Hellboy a long time ago and Guillermo thought the same thing. What made Ron so perfect for the role?
MM: When Guillermo and I first sat down probably the first conversation we had was who is going to play Hellboy. Going into it I knew Ron had to play Hellboy. A friend of mine had suggested him. I never really gave it that much thought and when he said that I thought it was perfect. When Guillermo and I sat down we put our cards on the table at the same time and we both said Ron Perlman. That was a huge relief to be on the same wavelength from day one.
What appealed to me about Ron was that he's got this been there done that working stiff persona. He's always kind of a busted up guy. He's not some slick action hero kind of guy. He's not a guy that's posing and coughing out these horrible one liners. He's a guy who I could easily imagine dropping though the roof of a building and him going, uh. That comes from movies like Name of the Rose and City of Lost Children. Also he's one of the best guys at working under makeup which is a huge skill because you've got to be able to convey emotion under heavy makeup.
Another real concern was, do you get a big name actor and put him under all that stuff. Hellboy's got a tail. People are going to laugh if they recognize the actor. Ron, while he is a known actor, is under heavy makeup half the time. He had the experience and that whole known but unknown thing going on.
DRE: In the last Star Trek movie he was unrecognizable.
MM: I didn't see it but I saw some clips from it and as unrecognizable as he was in it, he was still recognizable to me. Even under the heaviest makeup jobs there's a certain personality he has that comes through. But he has that attitude that comes through.
DRE: When did you first find out Guillermo was a fan of yours?
MM: I guess when I heard he was interested in dong Hellboy the movie. We had no contact before that. The first time we ever spoke was when Mike Richardson [Hellboy producer and founder, president, and publisher of Dark Horse Comics] arranged a meeting between Guillermo and me in Portland. At the time I had seen Mimic and Chronos.
DRE: I interviewed Seth Green recently [for The Italian Job] and he said he was still a big fan of Hellboy.
MM: I know. He came up to me a couple of years ago at the San Diego Comicon and I didn't realize who he was. It's my wife who pointed out who he was to me and I said holy shit so I had to run out and thank him.
DRE: It's amazing how much people love Hellboy. If it isn't an iconic character now then it will be certainly after the movie comes out.
MM: I have no idea how I managed to do that. It is very nice. I just took everything I liked and stuck it into one package. Really I wanted to do a comic that I wanted to see. I figured that the only guy to like this comic was going to be me.
DRE: Selma Blair is very sexy. How is she doing over there?
MM: She's great. Liz Sherman just looked like a beautiful girl or as much as I could pull that off. That's not my specialty. Selma is terrific for the part. Guillermo made her personality kind of different than she is in the comic. She didn't really have much of a personality in the comic. Guillermo like he did with most of the characters really turned her into something. I couldn't be happier with the cast we got.
DRE: You've really defined the gothic look in mainstream comics. Does that period really interest you?
MM: I do like old stuff. I read gothic literature and Victorian ghost stories. I've always been attracted to that kind of architecture. I'm very happy to bring that into mainstream comics. I have had a lot of people say they like Hellboy because it's gothic. Well I'm afraid these people have not really seen gothic excess. So I want to do a non Hellboy project where I'll really wallow in that gothic subject matter. So I've got some things on the back burner.
DRE: Have you ever encountered your Goth fans?
MM: I don't, it's very strange. The audience doesn't appear to be the stereotypical Neil Gaiman type Goth fans. I don't see that. They might be out there. The fans I meet for the most part seem like college students. I don't get a uniform the way Neil gets.
DRE: Anyone surprised to see how normal you look?
MM: Not that they've mentioned.
DRE: Were you ever into the Goth scene?
MM: I don't think they had that scene when I was younger. I've been into the horror stuff since I was in sixth grade when I read Dracula. I remember making the conscious decision after that to think about that stuff forever. I found my calling. I never really was around a group of people who had similar interests other than my brothers. I didn't know anyone else who was into that stuff so it's always been something I've been pursuing on my own.
DRE: Do you work a lot from reference photos?
MM: I do have a gigantic library of extensive research material. Old churches and there are certain stories that designed as an excuse for me to draw certain things I've got reference for. Like I have to do scenes where I use this church or this altar.
DRE: Did you take a lot of photos when you were in Prague?
MM: I took a lot of photos when I was there because it's an amazing city. I've been there about four times now. The last time I was there I took a couple of days and just shot reference photos.
DRE: For future stories?
MM: For whatever. It all goes into the files.
DRE: When we spoke last year you spoke about how Disney was teaching classes to its animators on how to draw like you. I recently spoke to Jim Steranko and even he loves your work. All these professionals that many would call geniuses love your work and you don't know how you do it.
MM: I've got to say, to hear that is great. I did have a moment with Steranko a couple of years ago at San Diego. It was really amazing. I don't know him. We met a couple of times over the years but he sat down and was going over Xeroxes of a job I just finished. He was going through them and asking me real specific questions like why is that panel border here instead of there? Things like that. It was weird because its all stuff that I'm thinking about as I'm working but to have somebody else go through and actually understand what I was doing. It felt great because he certainly is the master of comic storytelling. It is great that so many artists seem to like what I am doing.
DRE: When did your deep blacks first start coming into your work?
MM: I thought I was always doing that. I look back at jobs from not too long ago and I wasn't doing it. So I think they've been in there a long time but they've been spotty. Now I think they've pretty much taken over I guess right around a year before I started Hellboy. It started to become a black comic with highlights as opposed to a white comic with lots of black in it. More and more it's threatening to take over the comic.
DRE: Do you ever blacken the page then work over that?
MM: Nah. I did a Hellboy cover the other day. I did it and I kept adding more and more black and I had to take it away otherwise I would ended up with a silhouette.
DRE: Sex has never been a huge part of your work. Is that a result of starting in mainstream comics?
MM: It's probably just me being really shy about certain subject matters. Certainly there are a lot of guys coming from mainstream comics and they can't wait to do sex stuff. I don't have much to say about it and I don't want to be silly. So much of the work I see that deals with overtly sexual things handle it in a really silly way. It's just not a focus. I haven't had a story that revolved around that. Also I'm really crappy at drawing women.
DRE: Will Hellboy finally get laid in the movie?
MM: That would be telling. But it is Ron playing Hellboy so I get the impression that if the movie Hellboy doesn't have a sex life then he certainly has a great potential for one.
DRE: The Art of Hellboy is a beautiful book. Did you design it?
MM: I co-designed. It was mostly a case of having so much material that it was a nightmare sifting through all the crap and coming up with the right balance. We did it because a lot of people complain that there isn't enough sketchbook stuff. I can understand them wanting that stuff so I went through the stuff I had and pulled out what I was happiest with. I didn't want a book of just stuff people hadn't seen before. I wanted a book of the best stuff. It was a lot of work but I'm happy with it.
DRE: Is the reason you released it now because we're not going to see any of your work for a while?
MM: That was the idea. Originally I was supposed to be in Prague in six months so there would have been no work from me at all. People have wanted this book for a long time.
DRE: I was just flipping through it and you draw a great Concrete [created by Paul Chadwick].
MM: He's a big lump. That's my strength.
DRE: When is the next Hellboy miniseries coming out?
MM: It's called The Island and I have no idea. I think its going to be three issues and its taking forever. A lot of it is the stopping and starting because of the movie. I did the first eight pages and I wasn't happy with them so I ended up chucking the whole thing and starting from scratch. It'll be done when it's done. Ideally I would like to have it out in time for the movie's release next summer. But I have no idea. I'm going back to Prague for a few weeks then the summer is shot because of all the comic book conventions. Then when Hellboy goes into post-production I'm supposed to be involved with that too. So I really have no idea but The Island is the main non movie project I'm working on.
DRE: Are you going to be adapting the movie?
MM: I think movie adaptations for the most part are silly. I've done that story. Whether Dark Horse or Revolution Studios wants someone to do it that would be fine but I have no interest.
DRE: What was the reception for Screw on Head like?
MM: Screw on Head was something I did entirely for me. Screw on Head was something I really didn't think anyone would like. I didn't care. I just needed to do something to just entertain myself. After so many years of doing Hellboy where I knew I had an audience, I wanted people to see that I was willing to do something different. Like Hellboy was ten years ago here is everything I like. I was coming out of mainstream comics and the book had a mainstream thing to it. Screw on Head was not mainstream. The fact that people bought it and liked it was nice.
DRE: Did you hear anything negative from your fans about it?
MM: I did. I got two or three comments where people said the plot was awfully thin. I thought, wow they don't get it. It's not even supposed to have a plot, its just silly. Its not a crime drama, its just some goofy thing.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
eurolymius:
Hellboy owns, but I am really not down with the sudden thrust of comic-genre movies. A major let down is the new Batman coming out which was supposed to be based of Year One (I think by Frank Miller?) and now it's not, let down yes, but I guess it's better than having some Hollywood bigshot ruin something good. Spiderman luckily had Sam Raimi (and his loveably recurrent cast members, go Bruce Cambell!) Anyways, Hellboy, we'll see, in fact, I don't know anything about who's directing it or what. I'm going to go look that up right now!
eurolymius:
Ps, Ron Perlman. ;D