Den of Geek: What made you make the jump from work-for-hire to creator-owned work in 1994?
I didnt want to repeat myself too much.
Do you see any similarity in todays market with the Image boom?
Has the cycle repeated?
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I know so little about what is going on in comics.
I certainly do see a lot of creator owned stuff out there.
Well, its certainly a stage set by you and your contemporaries so we thank you for that.
But, you know, what do I know?
You kind of answered why Dark Horse over Image, because your contemporaries were there, correct?
Things likeConcrete, it was certainly much more the kind of stuff I was looking at.
They publishedThe Rocketeer, it was much more my kind of people.
Talk about the genesis ofHellboy.
Where did he start?
Where there any fundamental changes from initial spark to final concept?
It was just a matter of making up a character that visually I wouldnt get bored drawing.
And he just kind of appeared magically one day, that kind of origin.
Originally he was just supposed to be one of the members of a team of guys.
What authors or artists inspired your approach to Hellboy?
Lot of HP Lovecraft in there.
Yeah, you know Lovecraft is a guy that everybody flags and certainly there is that.
I wanted that mythology in there.
So, Lovecraft was big and his contemporaries were big.
Any Robert E. Howard in there?
The Conan stories were written wildly out of chronological order, as far as the characters life goes.
So, yeah, the pulp magazine guys were big on informing the way I built that thing.
You brought up Dracula before.
Did thatDraculaproject informHellboyin any way?
Yeah,Draculawas right before.
There was another component inDracula, which turned into such a weird project.
What was it like to seeHellboyon the big screen for the first time?
Put us in your head at that moment.
Its hard to jump to seeing it on a movie screen because so much led up to that.
I mean, it was such a slow process getting there.
It was six years between (Guillermo) del Toro and I meeting aboutHellboyand it being on the screen.
I had seen bits and pieces.
Ill never be able to look at it objectively.
It was a pretty wild ride.
One of the most impressive things about this run is the world building you did.
You didnt just create a character, you created a complex, shared fictional universe.
What was you approach to constructing Hellboys world?
Again, it was certainly nothing conscious about it.
I mean I was very happy doing Hellboy as just Hellboy.
series, and from then on it snowballed like crazy.
I check in with him to just double-check we are going in the same direction.
Lets go to Abe Sapien, what do you think makes that character work?
What does he mean to you?
I have no idea.
I dont feel I ever had a clear beat on who that guy was.
I can almost say I havent given it too much thought.
Visually is there a littleCreature from the Black Lagoonin there?
Is that your Universal Monster roots coming out?
I like the atmosphere of a guy being underwater.
So there was some Sub-Mariner, and Triton from the Inhumans.
I had never been the biggestCreature From the Black Lagoonfan, he always seemed kind of clunky to me.
Hellboyfrom the very beginning has been me mashing together everything that has been rattling around in my head.
Kirby is always in there kind of supercharging everything.
Want to talk about Liz Sherman?
Again, Liz is a character I didnt know where she was going.
Its one thing to say shes got angst over killing her family and shes got this horrible power.
I did my bit with Liz with her unloading that power, bringing Roger the Homunculus to life.
These kind of broad stroke suggestions of mine, he turns that into personality stuff.
So, thank God for John Arcudi.
Why dont we talk about a little more creator owned stuff?
Its arguable that Hellboy has been one of comics greatest creator owned success stories.
How did you maintain such a degree of control over your property?
Well, there is also theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So, there was never any plan to do all these things with Hellboy.
It never would have occurred to me that they could make a movie, and stuff like this.
I just wanted to make up a book where I got to do what I wanted to do.
The movie certainly helped as far as getting name recognition out there.
Maybe its not going to work, but no one will care.
At the time I had a good relationship at DC.
I could have done other stuff.
I did not have a track record sticking with anything for any length of time.
So, for me, doing something for a year was rare enough.
Well it certainly shows.
Then he pitched it to DC adding Starman without my knowledge (laughter), which is fine.
It just wasnt stuff I grew up with.
There was also, Archie Goodwin was going to edit it.
So when Archie died, the book just kind of went to whomever.
It was hard to maintain any sort of level of enthusiasm for it once Archie was gone.
I would imagine so, thank you for the recollection.
Lets enter the lightning round.
Want to talk about Kroenen for a few seconds?
Yeah, all I got is a couple of seconds on him.
That was just a guy I needed to have standing there.
OK, no matter how badly I draw them, you might tell them apart.
Not much thought really went into who that guy was as a character.
That was fun, to actually come up with back stories for those characters.
The character I was drawing in the comic, he was just, you know, the tall one.
It was quite effective.
Well, thats cool!
Cool, thank you.
Purely by accident, I assure you.
Any characters, not just limited to comics, that you would love to have Hellboy meet?
You mean outside of my world?
Outside of your world, yeah, anything?
No, no, at this point Im so in my world.
I might have answered that question too fast.
Like a Hellboy/ Sherlock Holmes sort of thing…
Yeah, maybe (laughs).
OK, maybe well hear about that in San Diego, possibly, maybe?
Youre not going to hear about any of that stuff.
And finally, twenty years of Hellboy.
You hear those words, what comes to your mind?
Are you able see the scope of your creative accomplishments?
Yeah, the first thing was that, holy shit, that means my daughter is twenty!
I cant wrap my brain around that.
She was born like, in May, she was born a month before Hellboy.
So, if Hellboy is turning twenty, shit, that means she is twenty.
Im really proud of what weve managed to build and the fact that its still growing organically.
Really at no point was it that we need more books.
Dark Horse never came to me and said add more books, the thing is selling.
You know the fact that it just all feels really organic; it is telling just one big story.
Im pretty proud of that.
And well you should be.
From day one, Dark Horse left me alone to do really whatever the hell I wanted.
And were happy youve been doing it.
Mr. Mignola, thank you.
Anything you want to add?
No, I could babble some more, its a good thing you stopped me when you did.
Anything you want to plug?
Weve got this art book to kind of celebrate the twenty years.
ThisHellboy: The First Twenty Years, an obvious title, you know.
Hellboy starting out as this little isolated thing and how it kind of grows and expands.
So, Im very proud of this little book that comes out in March.
It was a pleasure sir, thank you so much.
Hellboy: The First 20 Yearsfrom Dark Horse comics is available on March 19th.
National Hellboy Day is March 22nd!
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