Exclusive: Mignola Welcomes New Writers to "Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland"

By Kiel Phegley

The world of Mike Mignola's Hellboy stretches back millennia in story terms, but perhaps the most important figure on the road to the B.P.R.D. is the mysterious Sir Edward Grey. The Victorian occult detective remains a shadowy part of Hellboy's world thanks to repeated appearances by his ghost in "Hellboy In Hell," but the original weird investigator has also found life in his own run of Dark Horse Comics miniseries under the "Witchfinder" banner.
This June, the publisher follows up the first two Ed Grey series with "Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland," a miniseries drawn by frequent B.P.R.D. artist Tyler Crook and co-written by Mignola and the writing duo of Kim Newman and Maura McHugh. Newman is an award-winning novelist of science fiction and fantasy including the "Anno Dracula" series which shares come Victorian revisionist DNA with Mignola. His writing partner McHugh is an accomplished Irish comics scribe herself, with work appearing, among other places, in the well-known "Womanthology" project.
CBR spoke exclusively with Newman and McHugh about their own path to the world of the B.P.R.D., and the pair describe their comics histories, their connection to Mignola and company, how they view Sir Edward Grey when alive and dead and what creeping monsters await in Crook's art as the shadows of "Unland" draw near.
The world of Mike Mignola's Hellboy stretches back millennia in story terms, but perhaps the most important figure on the road to the B.P.R.D. is the mysterious Sir Edward Grey. The Victorian occult detective remains a shadowy part of Hellboy's world thanks to repeated appearances by his ghost in "Hellboy In Hell," but the original weird investigator has also found life in his own run of Dark Horse Comics miniseries under the "Witchfinder" banner.

This June, the publisher follows up the first two Ed Grey series with "Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland," a miniseries drawn by frequent B.P.R.D. artist Tyler Crook and co-written by Mignola and the writing duo of Kim Newman and Maura McHugh. Newman is an award-winning novelist of science fiction and fantasy including the "Anno Dracula" series which shares come Victorian revisionist DNA with Mignola. His writing partner McHugh is an accomplished Irish comics scribe herself, with work appearing, among other places, in the well-known "Womanthology" project.

CBR spoke exclusively with Newman and McHugh about their own path to the world of the B.P.R.D., and the pair describe their comics histories, their connection to Mignola and company, how they view Sir Edward Grey when alive and dead and what creeping monsters await in Crook's art as the shadows of "Unland" draw near.

CBR News: I know Kim's "Anno Dracula" novels have crossed my path before, but for those who follow the work in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. world and may not be familiar with each of your works, what about your writing DNA do you feel mixes well with the world Mike Mignola and company have built over the years?

Kim Newman: I assume that it was the Anno Dracula novels -- and, specifically, Anno Dracula, which has a Victorian setting -- that led the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. gang to ask me to work on this series. Chris Roberson, of MonkeyBrain books/comics -- who published my three Diogenes Club collections -- made the introduction. I'm interested in a lot of the things that have influenced the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. series over the years, and have written quite a few 'occult investigator'-type stories. When I was starting out, I did some commissioned work (as Jack Yeovil) in other people's wholly-owned worlds, so I'm familiar with the set-up of staying within boundaries while still trying to be surprising and shaking things up. I've read Hellboy since the beginning, and am a Mignola fan -- I met Mike at a con some years ago, and we got on well. So it seemed like a nice fit.

See the rest of the interview at Comic Book Resources!