NYCC '08: MIKE MIGNOLA SPOTLIGHT

[MichaelDoran]

Report by Michael C Lorah

With the room completely maxed out, Mike Mignola addressed an enthusiastic audience at the New York Comic Con Saturday. After a strong cheer, he admitted that he’d prepared nothing for the hour-long panel, telling the crowd, “It’s your hour” and opening himself up for fans’ questions.

The first question was about the humor in the first Hellboy movie, which the fan felt wasn’t depicted as strongly as it should have been in the movie’s trailers. Mignola said that the tone was taken from the humor in the comics, and told the audience that [director Guillermo del Toro describes the second movie as “funnier, and darker.” That mixing of styles, he admitted, was hard to convey in the movie’s advance material.

At age thirteen, Mignola read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and became excited by the folklore underpinning the story. His favorite comic as a child was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Thor run in the 1960s, crediting those two sources as two of his initial introductions to folklore and mythology.

Asked about the continuities of the various Hellboy incarnations, Mignola said that he considers each version – the movie, the animated films, the comics, and the novels – to exist unto itself and does not affect the other version in any way. However, he acknowledged, a character from one of Chris Golden’s novels will be brought into the comics, and then amended his statement to say that the novels draw on the comics, but he doesn’t want to be hung up trying to figure out which comic stories they might occur between. The prose short stories are “not in the regular Hellboy universe,” he added.

Speaking about his novel Baltimore, co-written with Chris Golden, Mignola said the writing was fun. Golden and he have finished a screenplay based on the novel and he has notes for another novel, but that is not a priority right now. He drew 150 illustrations for Baltimore, although he intended only 40, and right now he is “itching to draw some comics again.”

Hellboy has no redeeming social value, he admitted, to much laughter, when a fan asked. Mignola remarked that he just wanted to draw “big stuff smashing into each other” and continued to note that there is a “talking hedgehog” in a future story that he’s very excited about.

The crowd groaned in disappointment when Mignola informed that there will be no more Amazing Screw-On Head animated work.

An audience member asked Mignola how he liked collaborating with Frank Miller “because that guy’s crazy.” After some initial confusion, Mignola told the crowd that although he did form the "Legend" publishing line at Dark Horse Comics with Miller in the mid-90s, they have never actually collaborated on anything. "Legend", he joked, was about several creators getting together to make sure that “I got paid as much as he did.” He has received advice from Miller, but guessed that “it would be very intimidating to work with him.”

Asked about drawing a long-form, multi-part story, Mignola said that he doesn’t see himself drawing any long stories any more. There is one graphic novel planned, but will be done as a graphic novel, not a miniseries. There are “so many different things I want to do,” he said. “I’m much more interested in doing short stories.” Amazing Screw-On Head is one of his favorite things he’s done, he said, and he wants to “do more stories in that vein – not that character – but in the vein,” so that he can collect Screw-On Head in a book of similar styled stories.

He started in comics because that’s all he wanted to do, he told a questioner. “I just wanted to draw monsters and folklore, and not too many places that allow you to do that.” He broke into comics as an inker, but admitted that he was “horrible at that.” As a terrible inker with no other skills, he took the suggestion of a Marvel editor to draw his own comics. He estimated that it took him “six to eight years until I started to figure out what I was doing.”

His style, he said, was developed “by trying to be less horrible.” He also acknowledged that having his work colored horribly made him want to use more blacks on the page. Because his style is open and blocky, sometimes colorists didn’t know that he’d drawn a hand reaching around a person, and they’d color the fingers orange because they didn’t know what it was. He decided to fill in the blacks wherever possible to make the drawing as concrete as he could.

When asked if his design illustrations for the Disney animated film Atlantis will be collected, Mignola explained to the audience that he worked as a production designer on film and told the fan that there is an Art of Atlantis book that shows much of his art created for the movie.

A man asked if Mignola ever wants a break from the Hellboy epic, to perhaps draw a “story about a man and woman on a beach, talking about their feelings.” “If they were monsters,” Mignola laughed. Calling it a weakness, Mignola said that he has no interest in writing about regular people. However, he does “lots of character stuff, but with these odd creatures.”

It was purely coincidental that David Hyde Pierce provided the voice of Abe Sapien and the Amazing Screw-On Head. Guillermo del Toro always wanted Pierce for the voice of Abe. Mignola said that he never expected the Amazing Screw-On Head animation to happen, and was completely surprised when the production company called to tell him that they’d cast Pierce and Paul Giamatti.

Mignola then related a story of seeing David Hyde Pierce on the street and debating if he could approach him to thank Pierce for his work as Abe. He couldn’t figure out how to introduce himself before Pierce ran away, he told the audience, which laughed. Fortunately, he was able to meet and speak with Pierce during the recording of Screw-On Head, and he told the actor how much he enjoyed his work on both characters.

The Hellboy Companion, he answered when asked about good sources for folklore and mythology, will have a listing of some of his favorite sources. However, any reader can go to their local chain bookstore and take out an interesting book from the mythology section. “My entire studio is full of that stuff,” he said.

Mignola admitted that he does not read many contemporary writers, preferring the gothic work of the 1800s. He did enjoy David Wellington’s novel 99 Coffins, but mostly reads “old, weird stuff.” He also read comic author Mike Carey’s first novel, he said when asked about his pull quote for that book. However, he concluded, he prefers older stuff to modern contexts, which is “why I dropped Hellboy off the face of he Earth, so I can write about different places.”

A fan said, “We all know about the turmoil in the Marvel Universe.” “I don’t,” Mignola answered. Undaunted, the fan pressed on, “Are you Skrull?” “Not to my knowledge,” Mignola smiled.

Despite Guillermo del Toro’s desire to cast Bruce Campbell as Lobster Johnson in the Hellboy movies, they haven’t been able to fit Lobster into the stories so far. Mignola hopes to get Lobster Johnson into the third movie. He said that because of the expense in creating Johan in the second movie, del Toro suggested using Lobster Johnson instead, but Mignola felt that Johan was the right character and made the story stronger.

The Lobster Johnson miniseries takes places two years before he dies, Mignola told everyone, and events from it will tie heavily into upcoming stories in BPRD. He is also planning to co-write a Lobster Johnson series of miniseries that will start at day one in the character’s story. “One of a million stories on my list,” he added.

Was it hard to transition to writing for other artists? In second volume of the Hellboy Library edition, Mignola said that he wrote a text piece about not setting out to be a writer. In high school, he wrote a piece that was read aloud, which embarrassed him into not writing for a long time, “until John Byrne told me I was ready write Hellboy myself.”

He still approaches stories as an artist first, noting that “Guy Davis and Duncan Fegredo are ten times the artist I am.” He said he likes the freedom of writing “32 guys on horseback” and not having to worry about drawing it himself. “They can do it because they’re so good.” He loves writing and drawing, but finds that just concentrating on writing has made him a better writer. On the novel he wrote, he loved co-plotting with another writer because it enabled him to focus only on the art and not have to dwell on the dialogue.

Mignola could not name a favorite H.P. Lovecraft story, claiming that “I’ll change my mind tomorrow.” He hasn’t read them all, and those that he has read, he read many years ago, but he loves the “big unknowable universe” and “gigantic cosmic things” that don’t even notice humanity. Almost like sci-fi, but because the beings are so remote from humanity, they’re beyond comprehension. He likes there to be a “certain logic to the supernatural, but nobody can quite put the pieces together.” He clarified that “as soon as 2+2=4, it becomes sci-fi. Supernatural creatures can do whatever I need them to do for the sake of the story.”

Already a fan of del Toro’s films Chronos and Mimic, he says that he was not a hard sell when told that del Toro was interested in making a Hellboy movie. “Okay. That’s cool,” was his recollection of his reaction, to the crowd’s pleasure. He recalled their first conversation as del Toro saying that he knew who had to play Hellboy. Mignola replied that he knew as well. When they both said the same name, Ron Perlman, he knew that Del Toro was the right person to make the movie.

He continued by revealinh that he first met del Toro in Portland, Oregon, and they were introduced by Dark Horse Comics publisher Mike Richardson. Because Richardson was so nervous about their first meeting, del Toro and Mignola decided to prank him. With del Toro’s coaching (“I can’t act,” Mignola pleaded), Mignola called Richardson and shouted, “How the hell can you put me together with this guy?” Richardson asked what had happened and where del Toro had gone, and Mignola replied, “He’s gone, he went to the airport.” He called del Toro “a riot, so much fun to work with.”

Baltimore was planned as a graphic novel, but as the story got bigger and bigger – it’s about a World War I-era guy who hunts vampires, he mentioned, saying that it channeled a little Frankenstein, a little Dracula, a little Moby Dick, “all the old fashioned, gothic stuff that I really like” – he found that he could never find the time to sit down and do it. “I’d told Chris Golden about it a million times,” he said, before saying that he “sheepishly” called Golden and asked about turning Baltimore over to him, which is how it became a novel.

The genesis of the story goes back at least eight or nine year to Portland (he could recall only be remembering where he lived a stages of its development), but the final puzzle pieces came together on the subway in New York. He added that he has a “separate file for that stuff in my head,” as he tried not to cannibalize it for Hellboy stories.

“I doubt it,” he laughed when asked if he thinks the Pope, who was performing a mass only thirty-odd blocks away at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, has read Hellboy. “I like to think he’ll see the movies.”

Beneath the Planet of the Apes “lit my head on fire,” he said of his movie influences. He also cited John Huston’s Moby Dick, which is “for whatever reason the greatest movie ever,” Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Bride of Frankenstein. “I watch a lot of movies,” he admitted.

There will not be a third Hellboy animated movie, he told the crowd, unless the next live-action movie generates some more interest. There is a screenplay for a third animated movie, which includes Lobster Johnson, and would’ve been the animated universe origin of Hellboy, but it is not going to happen now. The crowd’s displeasure with this announcement was audible.

Asked if Duncan Fegredo will be drawing the next miniseries, Mignola laughed. “Not a bad idea, I should promote my upcoming work.” Fegredo has nearly finished the first issue of the next series, which is “already better than all of Darkness Calls.” He’s also working with Richard Corben on a three-issue Hellboy mini titled Crooked Man, which will be set in the back woods and have lots about witchcraft. Crooked Man is coming out before the next series with Fegredo.

Speaking about his favorite mythologies and folklores, Mignola said that “Asian stuff is too complicated for me” and he loves to work with Scandinavian and Russian folklore. The next miniseries, not counting Crooked Man, will have back-up features that “will be pseudo-adaptations of folklore tales.” He also really enjoys the American stuff, but “I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet” in a story. He’s also trying to crack the code of the Egyptian mythology, but it’s very complicated.

Ultimately, he wants Hellboy to touch on all of these mythologies. Ideally, there will be Hellboy stories set in South America and, after a fan called out, Tel Aviv. He got a laugh from the crowd when he said that it’s just a matter of finding stories “that I can rip off.”

“By the time I finished The Island, I knew I was not going to be able to tackle a long series,” he admitted. Finding another artist to draw Hellboy was the toughest decision for him. The original artist didn’t quite work out, but he was “very happy” when they found out that Fegredo was available. He’s too much a perfectionist to work on longer stories.

“The longer I go between miniseries, the more people anticipate it,” he said, which makes it harder for him to work on things because of his perfectionist nature. He likes short stories because there is less expectation. Of The Amazing Screw-On Head he said it was freeing to work on because, “No danger of anybody caring about this.”

Mignola doesn’t really love monkeys or Nazis, though he did acknowledge the coolness of tentacles. He said that those elements “just work.” Monkeys are “not that easy to draw, but they’re funny.”

“I’m very comfortable working with guys I’m comfortable with,” he said, responding to a question about if there are any other artists he’d like to work with. “So much of what I do I do over the phone,” he said, which narrows the list of guys he’ll work with. “I need to have a good back-and-forth. [Richard] Corben is not a good communicator, but he’s so good that it’s worth it. Guy Davis and I talk all the time.” He also talks to all of his co-writers frequently.

There will not be any more Hellboy inter-crossovers. “I don’t think I would do it again. I have so much stuff of my own that I want to do, that I just don’t have the time to do Ant-Man vs. Abe Sapien.”

Asked what creature he’d like to be, Mignola had to admit, “I kind of like being a person, it’s worked out pretty well. I see a lot of drawbacks to being another animal.”

The name Lobster Johnson came to him in a hotel room in Italy. He woke up and told his wife that he’d come up with the greatest name ever: Lobster Johnson. She was not impressed, he laughed. He described naming characters as “two words banged together, and Oh, that’s perfect.” “I had the name for a long tie before I had the guy,” he said before saying that he could only take one more question.

Mignola seemed slightly perplexed when the final question pertained to whether or not he’d been a fan of Hot Stuff as a child. “I remember it from when I was a kid, but I can’t say it was an influence,” he said, before considering and admitting that Hellboy is reminiscent, as he’s “red and the devil, but a good guy.”

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[Chuck Fiala]

I think the time is right for a Hellboy/Hot Stuff team-up book! Personally, I'd love to see it!

[jmcl89]

Personally, I think a Buffy/Hellboy story would be a natural for Dark Horse. But of course, I'm even happier with more just plain Hellboy, and all his related titles.

[ripclaw923]

anyone else want to see Hellboy rejoin the BPRD?