The Playboy Conversation: Hellboy Creator Mike Mignola
 
By Douglas Wolk

Mike Mignola's most famous comic-book creation, Hellboy, first appeared in 1993: a demon from Hell raised from infancy on Earth, who's grown up to become an investigator of the supernatural. Twenty years later, Hellboy is the cornerstone of a sprawling comics franchise, known as the “Mignolaverse,” and has been adapted into four films (two live-action, two animated). Mignola, after a long sabbatical from drawing much more than covers, has returned to writing and drawing with the sporadic Hellboy in Hell series, following Hellboy's adventures after his death. There are ongoing B.P.R.D. and Abe Sapien series, both Hellboy spinoffs co-written by Mignola, as well as occasional miniseries set in the Mignolaverse: Witchfinder, Lobster Johnson and Sledgehammer 44.

December 3 sees the first issue of another new project: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D., a series of miniseries that will follow the group's "lost" adventures year by year. Mignola and Arcudi are writing the initial sequence, 1952, which is being drawn by Daredevil and Moon Knight artist Alex Maleev. And yet another Hellboy spinoff is planned for next year: Mignola is writing, and Ben Stenbeck is drawing, Frankenstein Underground, starring the version of the monster introduced in the Hellboy: House of the Living Dead graphic novel. I spoke to Mignola by phone about the history and future of the world he's created.

When you drew the first Hellboy stories in the early '90s, "creator-owned comics" were kind of the hot new thing. Twenty years later, Hellboy is one of the very few from that period that are still going strong with their creators' direct involvement. What's kept you interested in this particular project?

It's my thing! It's a chance to do everything I've ever wanted to do. When I created Hellboy, I didn't imagine that I'd do it for 20 years, but I thought it was the only thing I was ever going to make up. So I had to make it something I wouldn't get tired of. I wanted to create a world where you could do Victorian-era ghost stories, and do Nazi robots, and leave room for a Western if you decide to do a Western. I wanted everything in there. Which is why I'm still excited about doing it 20 years later, because it's still drawing on everything I love. If I was going to be around, I could imagine doing it for another 30, 40, 50 years.

What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it's a dead body — you're just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, "Oh, that's his pitch for a TV show. That's his pitch for a movie. That's him saying oh, this kind of thing sells." I didn't do that. My one piece of advice to people who are saying "I wanna do it, but DC and Marvel pay so well..." is that in between your big paying gigs, just find time just to do one comic! It doesn't have to be a 6000-page epic! It doesn't have to be Hellboy! Ten years down the road, when you're scrambling for work or drawing some book you hate, at least you did something when you had fire in your belly that's really you.
How did you end up making Frankenstein a part of your universe?
The shambling monster with bolts sticking out of him is such an iconic type of monster. When I first wrote that character — I designed him also — for [artist] Richard Corben in House of the Living Dead, it wasn't meant to be the Frankenstein monster. It was just a Frankenstein-type monster. But when I wrote the back cover copy for that book, it was just funnier to say "the Frankenstein monster." And somewhere along the line, the title "Frankenstein Underground" popped into my head before there was a story to go with it. Even though I read Mary Shelley's novel and I love what she did, the Frankenstein monster to me is always going to be Boris Karloff — specifically Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein. So I've got some flashback sequences lifted from the novel, and a character who visually, at least, is much more like Karloff's Frankenstein. Finding a voice for this thing that's sort of in between the two — they're not even close! — trying to get them to meet in the middle is quite a stretch.

How did you end up making Frankenstein a part of your universe?

The shambling monster with bolts sticking out of him is such an iconic type of monster. When I first wrote that character — I designed him also — for [artist] Richard Corben in House of the Living Dead, it wasn't meant to be the Frankenstein monster. It was just a Frankenstein-type monster. But when I wrote the back cover copy for that book, it was just funnier to say "the Frankenstein monster." And somewhere along the line, the title "Frankenstein Underground" popped into my head before there was a story to go with it. Even though I read Mary Shelley's novel and I love what she did, the Frankenstein monster to me is always going to be Boris Karloff — specifically Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein. So I've got some flashback sequences lifted from the novel, and a character who visually, at least, is much more like Karloff's Frankenstein. Finding a voice for this thing that's sort of in between the two — they're not even close! — trying to get them to meet in the middle is quite a stretch.

Check out the full interview and see previews of Frankenstein Underground at Playboy!