MattBrady
09-03-2006, 10:42 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Dark_Horse/HBYART4_t.jpg" border="0" align="right"><i>by Vaneta Rogers</i>
Mike Mignola's been working more than 10 years on Hellboy, and over that decade, the character has branched out in many different directions. During the Toronto Comic Book Expo, Mignola addressed a room filled with fans about the many facets of Hellboy -- and all the other projects he's got coming up.
- Mignola immediately opened the panel to questions from fans, and one of the first things everyone wanted to know was whether or not Mignola is going to be returning to drawing Hellboy. "I drew one [Hellboy story] that hasn't been published yet. I love drawing this stuff, but I'm getting slower and slower all the time. So what's going to be happening with me drawing-wise is I'll be doing smaller things," he said. "The chance of me doing another 100 page miniseries are pretty slim. I wouldn't survive."
- Fans also wanted to know about the story for second Hellboy movie, which Mignola said is currently titled <i>The Golden Army</i>. "We came up with this story shortly after we finished the first movie. The thing the first movie didn't have at all was the mythology element. So we knew we needed to do a film based on that kind of stuff," he said. The eventual script, he said, "is similar to what I'm doing now in the Hellboy comic that will be out next year. It's that idea of all these folklore characters that have been shoved out of existence and into the shadows. It's some of those characters saying 'we don't want to go. We're not going to go. The world was ours once, and we want to reclaim it.'"
- Will there be a third movie? "I saw an interview recently where [director] Guillermo [del Toro] mentioned a third movie, and I know he wants to do it," he said. "It's got to happen soon. Ron's not getting any younger."
- First time I met Guillermo, the first thing he said was, "I know who should play Hellboy," and I said "so do I." And it turned out, we were both thinking of Ron Perlman. I wouldn't want to do it without him."
- Mignola said other actors were considered for the role of Hellboy. "Nick Cage was going to do it for awhile. What would that have been like?" he said. "But then I think Nick Cage is attached to every comic book movie for awhile."
- Is the continuity of the movie and the comic intertwined? "No," Mignola said. "The comic and movie are meant to be separate. Same with the animated movies we're doing now. They're sort of a third version of Hellboy separate from the movie and the comic."
- Will fans see BPRD characters like Kate in the second movie? "Guillermo never liked Kate for some reason. She's not in the screenplay I've read," he said. "Johan is in the screenplay I read. But things can change radically."
- Mignola announced that Baltimore is a novel he's co-writing with Christopher Golden that is expected to come out in the fall of 2007. "It was supposed to be my giant vampire graphic novel or miniseries. But it got so big that I knew I wouldn't survive," he said. "So a buddy of min, Chris Golden, took all my notes for my miniseries and expanded it into a novel." He's doing 130 illustrations for the book. "The Baltimore book is a real throwback to the old gothic literature where it's a real Catholic version of good and evil," he said.
- He said the <i>Amazing Screw-On Head</I> animated pilot being done for Sci Fi went in a different direction than what he would have done. "I find it impossible to watch. It's too close to my stuff, and the closer to my stuff it is, I find myself thinking things I would have done different. The live action stuff is great because it's a completely different world from what I do," he said. Mignola said the first version of the script that he saw for Screw-On Head, he didn't really like, and he gave them a lot of notes -- some of which they kept and some they didn't. He said they had a different agenda because they wanted something serious. "I thought, 'That's great. You bought the rights. Good luck!'"
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Dark_Horse/HBYART8_t.jpg" border="0" align="left">- Asked about more romance for Hellboy, Mignola said fans will see a book soon called <b>The Hellboy Companion</b> that will have the story of a archaeologist girlfriend named Anastasia that Hellboy had in the late '70s. "It was fun for me to write Hellboy's life story and look at what did that do to the Hellboy character? It's worked out pretty smooth." However, the release of the book has not been scheduled. "It just keeps snowballing and becoming a larger project. This will be the thing that all other writers refer to. I don't want it to be something where fans say 'yeah I know this stuff,'" he said. "It's my chance to fill in a lot of the blanks.
"I'm very uncomfortable doing the whole romance stuff. Even in the movie, I was always like, 'can we tone this down? can we tone this down?'" he said. "I thought it worked great, but that was Guillermo's agenda. It hasn't been addressed that much in the comic."
- One fan asked about Abe Sapien, to which Mignola responded that he is writing an <b>Abe Sapien</b> miniseries now that takes place in the '80s.
- Mignola said he's "not too involved" with the Hellboy video game that is currently in development. "I never played those kind of computer games so I don't know anything about them," he explained. "We had a meeting and we discussed the kind of things they wanted to do. So I pitched different ideas and they came up with various scenarios.
"The last time I knew what was going on with the game, it was set up so that there was a certain storyline that carried through the game, but there were a series of flashbacks. I'm a consultant on the game. But visually it's geared to look more like the movie. It will look more or less like Ron Perlman's Hellboy, but the type of stories are more or less like the comic."
- Will fans see the end of Hellboy anytime soon? "Not for awhile. There's sort of an ending, or two endings or three endings. It's definitely going in a specific direction," Mignola said. "The character has turned a major corner in that he died recently. The repercussions of that are going to be felt for awhile."
- The “Darkness Calls” story in the Hellboy comic is the first of three books that will make "one gigantic story, which deals with Hellboy and his mother's side of the family and the fairies and folktales," Mignola said. "That one's a big one. That's the middle of Hellboy's life."
- Mignola said that fans of the Odd Jobs and Odder Jobs collections that were put together featuring Hellboy stories by other creators may have a sequel someday called <i>Oddest Jobs</i>. "When Joe Lansdale writes a Hellboy story, that's when there will be an ‘Oddest Jobs,’" he said.
- Mignola said the story he wrote with his daughter that is part of the <b>Happy Ending</b> collection published by Dark Horse is a six page story that she told him in the car on the way home from school. "My daughter started telling me this thing about a picture she drew at school," he said. "It turned into this great symbolic story. It was one of those real magic, 'wow that worked' kind of things.
- Will he ever create another universe besides the Hellboy universe? "I don't see doing it. Everything I like, I stuffed into Hellboy. The closest to me creating another universe is this [Baltimore] vampire novel," he said.
- One fan thought maybe he would create a science fiction universe. "I actually do have a science fiction story," he said, adding that he's hoping Guy Davis will be drawing it. "It wouldn't be a gigantic universe like I did on Hellboy."
- Will fans get more of Lobster Johnson? "I've plotted one Lobster Johnson miniseries," he said, announcing that it will be called <b>The Iron Prometheus</b>. "I found an artist to draw it at San Diego [Comic Con]. I think within the next 6 months, we'll be starting the <b>Lobster Jones</b> miniseries... We also may do a series of Lobster Johnson novels. I'm really jazzed to do it."
Mike Mignola's been working more than 10 years on Hellboy, and over that decade, the character has branched out in many different directions. During the Toronto Comic Book Expo, Mignola addressed a room filled with fans about the many facets of Hellboy -- and all the other projects he's got coming up.
- Mignola immediately opened the panel to questions from fans, and one of the first things everyone wanted to know was whether or not Mignola is going to be returning to drawing Hellboy. "I drew one [Hellboy story] that hasn't been published yet. I love drawing this stuff, but I'm getting slower and slower all the time. So what's going to be happening with me drawing-wise is I'll be doing smaller things," he said. "The chance of me doing another 100 page miniseries are pretty slim. I wouldn't survive."
- Fans also wanted to know about the story for second Hellboy movie, which Mignola said is currently titled <i>The Golden Army</i>. "We came up with this story shortly after we finished the first movie. The thing the first movie didn't have at all was the mythology element. So we knew we needed to do a film based on that kind of stuff," he said. The eventual script, he said, "is similar to what I'm doing now in the Hellboy comic that will be out next year. It's that idea of all these folklore characters that have been shoved out of existence and into the shadows. It's some of those characters saying 'we don't want to go. We're not going to go. The world was ours once, and we want to reclaim it.'"
- Will there be a third movie? "I saw an interview recently where [director] Guillermo [del Toro] mentioned a third movie, and I know he wants to do it," he said. "It's got to happen soon. Ron's not getting any younger."
- First time I met Guillermo, the first thing he said was, "I know who should play Hellboy," and I said "so do I." And it turned out, we were both thinking of Ron Perlman. I wouldn't want to do it without him."
- Mignola said other actors were considered for the role of Hellboy. "Nick Cage was going to do it for awhile. What would that have been like?" he said. "But then I think Nick Cage is attached to every comic book movie for awhile."
- Is the continuity of the movie and the comic intertwined? "No," Mignola said. "The comic and movie are meant to be separate. Same with the animated movies we're doing now. They're sort of a third version of Hellboy separate from the movie and the comic."
- Will fans see BPRD characters like Kate in the second movie? "Guillermo never liked Kate for some reason. She's not in the screenplay I've read," he said. "Johan is in the screenplay I read. But things can change radically."
- Mignola announced that Baltimore is a novel he's co-writing with Christopher Golden that is expected to come out in the fall of 2007. "It was supposed to be my giant vampire graphic novel or miniseries. But it got so big that I knew I wouldn't survive," he said. "So a buddy of min, Chris Golden, took all my notes for my miniseries and expanded it into a novel." He's doing 130 illustrations for the book. "The Baltimore book is a real throwback to the old gothic literature where it's a real Catholic version of good and evil," he said.
- He said the <i>Amazing Screw-On Head</I> animated pilot being done for Sci Fi went in a different direction than what he would have done. "I find it impossible to watch. It's too close to my stuff, and the closer to my stuff it is, I find myself thinking things I would have done different. The live action stuff is great because it's a completely different world from what I do," he said. Mignola said the first version of the script that he saw for Screw-On Head, he didn't really like, and he gave them a lot of notes -- some of which they kept and some they didn't. He said they had a different agenda because they wanted something serious. "I thought, 'That's great. You bought the rights. Good luck!'"
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Dark_Horse/HBYART8_t.jpg" border="0" align="left">- Asked about more romance for Hellboy, Mignola said fans will see a book soon called <b>The Hellboy Companion</b> that will have the story of a archaeologist girlfriend named Anastasia that Hellboy had in the late '70s. "It was fun for me to write Hellboy's life story and look at what did that do to the Hellboy character? It's worked out pretty smooth." However, the release of the book has not been scheduled. "It just keeps snowballing and becoming a larger project. This will be the thing that all other writers refer to. I don't want it to be something where fans say 'yeah I know this stuff,'" he said. "It's my chance to fill in a lot of the blanks.
"I'm very uncomfortable doing the whole romance stuff. Even in the movie, I was always like, 'can we tone this down? can we tone this down?'" he said. "I thought it worked great, but that was Guillermo's agenda. It hasn't been addressed that much in the comic."
- One fan asked about Abe Sapien, to which Mignola responded that he is writing an <b>Abe Sapien</b> miniseries now that takes place in the '80s.
- Mignola said he's "not too involved" with the Hellboy video game that is currently in development. "I never played those kind of computer games so I don't know anything about them," he explained. "We had a meeting and we discussed the kind of things they wanted to do. So I pitched different ideas and they came up with various scenarios.
"The last time I knew what was going on with the game, it was set up so that there was a certain storyline that carried through the game, but there were a series of flashbacks. I'm a consultant on the game. But visually it's geared to look more like the movie. It will look more or less like Ron Perlman's Hellboy, but the type of stories are more or less like the comic."
- Will fans see the end of Hellboy anytime soon? "Not for awhile. There's sort of an ending, or two endings or three endings. It's definitely going in a specific direction," Mignola said. "The character has turned a major corner in that he died recently. The repercussions of that are going to be felt for awhile."
- The “Darkness Calls” story in the Hellboy comic is the first of three books that will make "one gigantic story, which deals with Hellboy and his mother's side of the family and the fairies and folktales," Mignola said. "That one's a big one. That's the middle of Hellboy's life."
- Mignola said that fans of the Odd Jobs and Odder Jobs collections that were put together featuring Hellboy stories by other creators may have a sequel someday called <i>Oddest Jobs</i>. "When Joe Lansdale writes a Hellboy story, that's when there will be an ‘Oddest Jobs,’" he said.
- Mignola said the story he wrote with his daughter that is part of the <b>Happy Ending</b> collection published by Dark Horse is a six page story that she told him in the car on the way home from school. "My daughter started telling me this thing about a picture she drew at school," he said. "It turned into this great symbolic story. It was one of those real magic, 'wow that worked' kind of things.
- Will he ever create another universe besides the Hellboy universe? "I don't see doing it. Everything I like, I stuffed into Hellboy. The closest to me creating another universe is this [Baltimore] vampire novel," he said.
- One fan thought maybe he would create a science fiction universe. "I actually do have a science fiction story," he said, adding that he's hoping Guy Davis will be drawing it. "It wouldn't be a gigantic universe like I did on Hellboy."
- Will fans get more of Lobster Johnson? "I've plotted one Lobster Johnson miniseries," he said, announcing that it will be called <b>The Iron Prometheus</b>. "I found an artist to draw it at San Diego [Comic Con]. I think within the next 6 months, we'll be starting the <b>Lobster Jones</b> miniseries... We also may do a series of Lobster Johnson novels. I'm really jazzed to do it."