Adam Gallardo: What do you cite as your influences, meaning, what did you see or read as a kid that led you to doing the kinds of things you do now?
Mike Mignola: Well, almost everything, that's the beauty of Hellboy -- its made of everything I have ever liked. The biggest influence as a kid -- the first giant influence is Dracula. That's the one that made me say, "Wow, I want to think about this stuff all the time." And then a huge one is the Weird Tales Magazine stuff from the `20s and `30s, even into the `40s -- H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and those kind of guys. And then, folklore and mythology which I got interested in when I was in college, and the Victorian era ghost stories and occult detective stories.
AG: As a kid, how were you getting your hands on pulp magazines from the `20s and `30s?
MM: Well, fortunately, I was in high school in the 70s and a lot of that stuff was being reprinted. The Lovecraft stuff was in print, all the Howard stuff was in print, there were a lot of anthologies that focused on stuff like the Weird Tales stuff. So I didn't see the actual magazines, but I was aware that there was this magazine that all these guys came to work for this magazine and there was a very definite type of literature popular in those magazines. You know, I spent my high school years and college years searching used book stores in Berkeley for that kind of stuff.
AG: At what point did you decide "OK, comics is it!" as opposed to going into filmmaking or writing prose?
MM: Well, I knew what I wanted. I mean, all I could ever do is draw. And all I really wanted to do was draw monsters. And I knew enough to know that there weren't a lot of jobs where you could draw monsters. So I figured comics was the one place where I might get a shot at drawing monsters. It's really stupid sounding and super simplistic but that really has been the goal. My whole life has been, "Gee, if I could just find a way to draw monsters!" It took a while, but I got there. But, even going into comics, I didn't think I was good enough to draw comics. But I thought, "Well, if I get in and work as an inker, then I'll at least be around the business and maybe I can eventually do some pinups for Savage Sword of Conan or whatever." I figured I would find an outlet somewhere to do some creature illustrations.
AG: What were your first jobs in comics?
MM: I started as an inker at Marvel Comics, at which I was horrible! And then I penciled a miniseries called Rocket Raccoon, and that was probably `83, and then I did a little bit of everything. I did superhero stuff at Marvel, I went over to DC and did a bunch of superhero stuff, I did The Chronicles of Corum, a Michael Moorcock adaptation for First Comics. You know, just back and forth, back and forth to all the major publishers until I kind of settled on Hellboy.
AG: Was Hellboy the first creator-owned work you had done?
MM: Yeah, yeah. It never even occurred to me to do creator-owned stuff, and then the Image stuff started happening, and everybody started talking about creator-owned stuff and I had gotten to the point where anything I thought of to do would have been doing stuff I had done before. I could have done another Alien book for Dark Horse, I could have done another Batman book for DC, but it was kind of like, "I've done this before. What else is there?" And I had done a Batman story for DC that I plotted. A Batman ghost story. And I thought, "Wow, that was a fun thing to do! Um, I like that kind of story -- maybe I could make up a character that would allow me to do other stories like that." So rather than having the character of Hellboy, I had come up with a kind of story I wanted to tell. Then it was just a matter of creating a character to base those stories around.
AG: Okay, you had the stories you wanted to tell -- how did you then come up with Hellboy in particular to tell them?
MM: My first thought was I loved the occult detective. Various people over the years have written wonderful occult detective stories, but I know that I have an extremely short attention span, and I thought if I just make this a regular guy who is tracking down creatures and stuff like that, I will get bored with him. But if I make the main character a monster and he goes out and he runs into monsters, then I'm drawing monsters all the time, and I thought that might keep me interested. So it was a case of trying to come up with a main character that I would enjoy drawing all the time.
AG: We are now ten years into Hellboy's run--
MM: Almost.
AG: -- what made you decide now is the time to put together a book like Art of Hellboy?
MM: I didn't decide. I think the fans decided. There was just a lot of talk over the last few years about people wanting to see this stuff, and because of the movie and because I'm busy with other things right now -- I'm not doing a lot of comics. I thought having a book like this might kind of satisfy the audience for a little while. And it is coming up on the ten-year anniversary, so I thought it might be nice. A lot of different things just seemed to dictate that now is the time to do it. I mean, if I had my way, I'd -- well, I don't know that I'd wait, but my feeling with any of these kind of things is I haven't done any good stuff yet, but apparently other people think otherwise. I mean, I'm pretty happy with it. If you take eight years' or nine years' worth of material and you narrow it down to 200 pages, yeah -- you do manage to come up with a pretty nice-looking book.
AG: Right. I was talking to Scott Allie (Hellboy's long-time editor) and he was saying there is just this wealth of stuff. In fact, they are leaving out more than they are putting in, so how do you go through and decide what to put in? Do you just go through and . . .
MM: It was a nightmare! [Laughs] I sent Dark Horse pretty much everything I had. All the original pages I had from this last miniseries (The Third Wish). I had a ton of unpublished covers and half-finished pages, and so I sent them all that stuff. I sent them, I think, six sketchbooks full of material and convention sketches and stuff like that. And then it was just a matter of Scott weeding through it and then sending me what he had distilled out, and then me weeding through that again. We got into a few arguments where he'd say, "Oh, this piece is great!" And I'd say, "You know, that's just too crappy a drawing. I don't want anybody to see that!" We did have a lot of material. I mean, I thought it was important to present all the covers -- I think with maybe one or two exceptions, all the covers are in there. So you get an art book feel, you know. Like full-page illustrations. A lot of sketchbook stuff, a lot of designs for different covers. You'll see the design and then you will see the finished cover. Character designs. Like I said, you know, unfinished pages and things like that. Rejected covers. It shows how much I can't make up my mind what I am doing. You know, it shows all my false starts of things. It's kind of interesting.
AG: Do you look through your old art often? Or is that not something you like to do?
MM: No, I don't -- I don't look at stuff that's too far back. It's funny -- with Hellboy, I actually do enjoy looking back. Not all the way to the beginning, but I do like looking at maybe the last five or six years worth of stuff. For the first time I have actually been happy with a long stretch of my work. So for the most part, this book is not too painful, because it's really only the very early stuff I look at and I go "Eeuuuuu -- I wish I could redo that!" But I'm pretty happy with that stuff.
AG: You mentioned that there are a lot of sketchbook images in this book, are you concerned at all that you might be showing the audience how the trick is done, in that you're showing the process you go through?
MM: No, I don't think there is anything there to show how it's done. It just shows that -- if anything it just shows that a lot of work goes into it. I don't think there is anything that shows how the trick is done. I don't know how the trick is done, so maybe there is something in there. No, I mean, the only thing I was a little nervous about is we do show sketchbook stuff from a miniseries that was never done, so there is a chunk of character design that was never used. But that's - you know - that's actually a kind of fun thing.
AG: Going through all the material for this book, does it give you ideas on where you want to go with Hellboy's future?
MM: I already knew where I wanted to go with Hellboy's future. This book doesn't really have anything to do with that. It just gives me a certain amount of satisfaction seeing that there is what's gotten to be a very big body of work. It covers a lot of my different interests. It's narrow in that it's all supernatural monster stuff, but within that framework, I've actually done a lot of different stuff. So I'm very happy with creating this body of work. I am just very excited to get back to it, and you know, move it further down the line.
AG: Can you give us any hints about what is in Hellboy's future?
MM: Well, in the last Hellboy story I did, it ended with him on the bottom of the ocean, so I've got to get back to him and get him off the bottom of the ocean. And I know where he's going. So there is a two-issue miniseries called The Island that I've got to start on soon. And I keep threatening to do a series called Hellboy in Hell. And I've re-written that thing about five different times, and I'm pretty happy with it now, so that one is in the not-too-distant future.
AG: A few minutes ago you brought up Hollywood -- can you talk about the Hellboy movies, and how it's coming along?
MM: Well, you know, I know less than most. I was out there for two and a half months this summer and I did a bunch of conceptual stuff and I worked on the script. I saw it go from just the script to what's starting to look like a movie. I haven't been directly involved in a while now. I hear reports of what's going on, and I hear things are going very, very smoothly. And through people involved... I thought when I came back from LA I'd go crazy because I wouldn't know what was going on. To be so intimately involved -- seven days a week, we were working on the movie, most of the time directly with Guillermo del Toro so it was great, it was very hands-on. Suddenly I leave LA and I'm completely out of the loop. I didn't go crazy. And I realized I didn't go crazy because I knew all the right people were involved. I spent enough time around all these people to realize everybody got it. Everybody was on the same page with what they were doing and I am very content to sit back and let the people who know how to make a movie make this movie. I don't think I will be involved again until they start filming and then I will go over there.
AG: You sound luckier than most people who sell their ideas to Hollywood.
MM: Well, I am very lucky in that the guy who bought it, or the guy who came on board to direct it -- first off, he fought to get this movie made, it wasn't like a studio said "I want to make this movie, anybody want to do this?" Guillermo was in there fighting for five years to get this movie made. And he loves it, and he understands it, and I can't think of anybody who can do a better job with it. So, it's in very good hands.
AG: So, how do you compare working in Hollywood to working in comics?
MM: Working in Hollywood is still this wonderful novelty thing I have been able to do a few times. I don't take it terribly serious in that I'm not trying to get my vision on the screen. Which sounds weird. I mean, in Hellboy Guillermo is trying to get my vision on the screen and I am helping him do that. But all the things I've done [in Hollywood], I go out there, I throw out my ideas, but there is always the realization that it's a collaborative thing, and somebody else is making the final decisions, and that's fine. Hollywood makes me appreciate coming home to my studio and working all by myself to hammer out exactly what I want. It's kind of like I can take my ideas, put them on paper, and say that's what is going to be in print -- good, bad or otherwise -- that's the whole thing. But movies, you know, it's a lot of people, and a lot of problems, and a lot of realities that have to be dealt with. So it's fascinating It's interesting to watch, but it's somebody else's thing.
AG: So there is no danger that comics is going to lose you to Hollywood?
MM: I don't think so. I can't imagine. I mean, I can't imagine what anybody could offer me that would be more appealing than sitting down and doing whatever I want in comics. At this point with Hellboy, and with some of the other projects I am starting to play with, I really do get to do exactly what I want. And I'm getting a clearer idea of what I want to do all the time. So when you have a very clear idea of what you want to do, what you need is to be left alone to do it. And so far in comics, I am getting left alone to do what I want to do.
The Art of Hellboy, a 200-page full-color book by Mike Mignola will be in comics shops March 26.