Mike Mignola Raises Hell in Baltimore

Day two of the Baltimore Comic-Con started for me (and for many others) with a Mike Mignola Q&A in which the writer/artist engaged in an hour-long exchange with his fans that was as thoughtful as it was personable.

Not surprisingly, many of the questions centered around the Hellboy 2 movie, with Mignola explaining that the sequel was a tough sell until writer/director Guillermo del Toro's Q-rating went through the roof with the runaway success of Pan's Labyrinth. Mignola mentioned that he did a series of very rough production sketches for the movie which were then handed over to another artist to "del Toro them up." Regarding the differences from the comic in the movies, particularly regarding the love interest that was added in the first movie, Mignola said, "the first movie was very much the comic, but in the second the comic goes this way and the movie goes that way ... if we do the third picture, it would be the death of Hellboy."

Yes, you read that correctly. Mignola imagines his Hellboy mythology very much as encompassing a "lifespan," and says that he just has "to not tell [del Toro] my idea for the death of Hellboy because I don't want him to shoot it 15 years before I draw it. Mignola also teased that "Hellboy is definitely going someplace," and that there is a certain point coming after which there won't be room for any more "fun" stories.
Regarding the year ahead in his comics work, Mignola said that he wants to "do things more in the vein of The Amazing Screw-On Head," explaining that such a project would "be very folklore and mythology inspired, but cast into that [same] world." And yes, the artist side of the writer/artist will be returning for this project. "I've spent the last few years writing and now I've got the itch to draw again," Mignola told the audience.

While Mignola won't be drawing the next Hellboy series proper, he allows for the possibility of stepping in to draw certain important sequences, explaining that he "will get back to [drawing] Hellboy, but it will be in small doses ... there are certain moments in the Hellboy series where I think I need to draw that." In addition, Mignola envisions the next Hellboy series as including "a back-up feature that will be Guy Davis drawing these insane stories that I'll write."

Needless to say, with a new Hellboy movie, a new Hellboy comic series, and a new project in the vein of ...Screw-On Head to be both written and drawn by Mignola, fans have a great deal of Mignola goodies to look forward to in the coming year.