Father of the Beast: Mike Mignola Interview Part I

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola certainly has had a storied life in comics. Not only did he work at Marvel on such distinguished titles as Daredevil and The Incredible Hulk, he also worked for DC in the late 80’s. His work at DC included covers for Batman and penciling work for the Victorian Batman/Jack The Ripper face off Gotham by Gaslight. He continued working for Marvel and DC through the early 90’s doing art for Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure among others. It was in 1994 when Dark Horse first published Hellboy, a character whose personality Mignola has said was based on his father.

 

 

Q: How proud are you of this incarnation (of Hellboy)?

 

Mike Mignola:  I’m pretty happy! As the reviews come in and as I’ve talked to people who’ve seen it, it’s (he takes a pause) easier. I was always happy with it but there’s always an element of “I know it works for me” but what are regular people going to think? The more I hear that people enjoy the film the more I kind of “unclench” and relax and go “yeah, yeah, it is great!”

 

Q: Compared to other comic book creators, you find yourself in a really good position where you control your property. Does that make it easier when you look at it on the screen?

 

MM: Well, even saying “control” is slightly misleading because once you’ve sold your property to Hollywood you can only control it (so much). One of the questions people always ask me is how much control do I have? Well, I don’t really have any. Once I give up those rights they can do what they want. Where I’m very fortunate is that I have a director who wants me there; who wants me involved.

 

Q: How much input did you have on this one?

 

MM: Quite a lot. Guillermo and I actually sat down originally to do an adaptation of one of the existing stories and after about eight hours we hit a snag and said “Ah, let’s just do fairies instead!” He was preparing Pan’s Labyrinth and I was preparing a major story line in the Hellboy comic both of which involved the kind of fantasy, fairy, elf stuff and so that’s where I think both our heads were so we just decided to abandon the adaptation of what we were going to do and immediately just came up with a brand new story.

 

Q: What (Hellboy) story were you going to do?

 

MM: We were going to do a story called; it would have been a very loose adaptation of something called Almost Colossus.

 

Q: Guillermo’s creatures have such a distinct “Guillermo del Toro” look. How do you feel about the way they fit into the Hellboy creatures?

 

MM:  It was much easier on this film because everything in the film is original. It wasn’t really adapted characters from the comic, other than the character of Johann who is from the comics; there were a lot of design changes to that character bringing him to the film. All the other creatures didn’t have their origins in the film. In the first film we had a lot of characters we had to adapt from the comics but this one, it was just brand new so in a lot of ways, even though I did early designs for some of these characters, for the most part all the signature creature designs in this film are very much del Toro creature designs. The most unique ones are very much from del Toro’s imagination…In a way, as a designer, I had much less to do on this second film; I just tried to stay out of his way.

 

Q: By introducing a lot of B.P.R.D. characters, does that kind of rule out a B.P.R.D. film? Or are we going to see a possibility of a TV series now that Hellboy has quit B.P.R.D.?

 

MM: When he quit B.P.R.D. it looks like Abe went with him, so you kind of go “well who would the B.P.R.D. TV series…or film be? It’s not like the X-Men where we have a billion super powered characters, basically we have these two or three creature characters and most of the B.P.R.D. is human. Certainly I think you could do something with the B.P.R.D especially I think it would be great for TV because you would be doing characters for the most part that need a billion hours of make-up but again that’s for other people to makes those decisions.

 

Q: Is there a reason you decided to add Johann Krauss (the newest addition to the B.P.R.D)

 

MM: It was Guillermo’s idea and when they figured out what it was going to cost to do the clear plastic head he tried to actually substitute Johann with another character of mine which I wouldn’t let him do because I just felt for what Johann needed to do in the film then it needed to be Johann. I said if you just want to lose the clear plastic and just make him a human being who’s a medium, that’s fine but I don’t want you bringing in this other character and change that other character to suit this film. It’d be kind of like saying we want Superman but Batman’s cheaper so we’ll just put in Batman – Different guys! Different powers! But they did solve the Johann problem but I think that was Guillermo’s decision to bring Johann in.

 

Q: Who was the other character (del Toro wanted to bring in to replace Johann)?

 

MM: Lobster Johnson

 

Q: But we’re going to see Lobster Johnson in the third film, if they do it, right?

 

MM: That’s right. Among ten thousand other things Guillermo says are going to be in the third film. He swears that Lobster Johnson is going to be in there.

 

Q: Are you optimistic that there’ll be a Hellboy III?

 

MM: Um, I’m never optimistic; I would have sworn that there would never be a Hellboy 1 so I’ve been wrong a couple of times so I think the best thing I can do for Hellboy III is to say it’ll never happen ‘cause that seems to be helping things get made. At this point there seems to be a lot of interest in a Hellboy III so I’m guardedly optimistic.

 

Q: We have to ask because we know he’s going to be busy for the next four years (making The Hobbit), do we see somebody else directing Hellboy III?

 

MM: That’s certainly going to be an interesting situation because I can’t imagine, if this movie is successful, the studio saying “sure, we’ll wait five years” so I don’t know what’s going to happen there. I can’t imagine it without him but at the same time I can’t imagine people sitting around waiting five years.

 

Q: Now Ron (Perlman) mentioned one thing, which this is really a three story…three movies is what Guillermo really wants. He doesn’t really want to go beyond a third film. How do you feel about that?

 

MM: I think the situation that Guillermo’s built in is a very definite arc. It certainly isn’t James Bond; it isn’t something that’s designed to not advance the character and I think with the Hellboy and Liz Sherman relationship being so central to the story and now the introduction of children, you kind of go “This is clearly going someplace”. It would be hard to do a third picture that’s just more of the same. For me personally, I’d be happy to see Hellboy IV, Hellboy V but the film version of Hellboy is very much his baby so if he wants to wrap it up, so be it. The one thing I’ve gotta be really careful about is that if he does do a third picture and he does do the end of Hellboy I gotta make damn sure he doesn’t make the ending that I’m going to do in the comic because mine is fifteen years away and I don’t want him to give away my ending (laughs)! It would be a very strange situation if he’s doing the life and, whatever, death of Hellboy and I’m still over here doing the comic going “no kids! It’s not over yet!”

 

Q: Does he know what you have planned?

 

MM: He does say I told him. I tried not to tell him but once he and I get talking I tend to tell him everything I’m thinking. Yeah. But what I think he’d do is very different from what I would do and there are so many different layers to my Hellboy and they don’t involve family and children, I just think it would be radically different.