DE: Why was your project, Joe Golem,
shelved?
MM: Well, Joe Golem is a project that’s
been floating around for years. The latest incarnation
of Joe Golem was going to be set in New York. I
was about to start on it when I moved back here. The
splash page was going to be the view outside my studio
window. But in the story some disasters in the past
had turned New York into this disaster area. I was
about a week away from starting the book when 9/11
happened. I did not feel like drawing disaster area New York in a partially-destroyed New York. So I just
jumped right into this new Hellboy instead.
There are elements of that story I still want to
do. Whether they will get folded into Hellboy
or another incarnation of Joe Golem we'll see
what happens.
DE: Do you ink all your own work now?
MM: Yes.
DE: Would you ever let anyone else ink your work?
MM: As a novelty. For example, if there was a
guy whose style was radically different and we wanted
to see a combination of our work. But, at this point,
with the way I draw for somebody else to ink it I
would really have to change the way I draw so the
inker would know what the hell to do with them. My
stuff is really easy to ink so it’s easy to do
myself.
DE: Your style is so unique. When did you
recognize it and begin to develop it?
MM: Probably when I was doing the book Cosmic
Odyssey (with writer Jim
Starlin) for DC. I don’t know what it was.
Maybe because I was drawing a lot of Kirby characters
and I was sitting there for months at a time with
Kirby stuff in front of me. That was very liberating
because I had been trying to draw stuff “correctly.”
Having Jack in front of me made me realize that it's
more effective to draw in these exaggerated ways.
Looking at the New Gods stuff of Kirby’s
really makes me redefine what weird is. While I’ll
never be up to what he did, it does free me up to
exaggerate.
DE: I don’t get to talk too many Kirby fans that
are as well known as you and your work. What is it
about Jack Kirby?
MM: Sadly it’s almost impossible for me to
explain. He did so many things so well. He understood
this medium and that beautiful drawing is secondary to
getting your point across. The exaggeration and
gesture is so important. I’ve gone through phases in
my career where I’ve come up with thumbnail drawings
and I try so hard to get muscled arms and legs
perfect. There are guys who are great at that but it’s
not as effective for the stories I was doing. It didn’t
have the power that Jack brought to the page. The fact
that Jack did as many things as he did and went
through so many interesting phases, he really is
unique. Probably nobody has defined as many things
about the medium as Jack. No one will ever touch his volume of work. It’s so frustrating to me to have
all these ideas and not to have the time to do them all.
Jack broke that time barrier. It seemed like he was
putting that stuff on paper as fast as he thought of
it. We will not see his like again. But it’s a
different time and a different business.
One thing I haven’t done with Hellboy that I
really want to do is do a Kirby monster story.
DE: There wasn’t enough arms on the conqueror
worm for a Kirby monster.
MM: I know. The conqueror worm was me but I
would love to do some Hellboy stories in the
future where this one is obviously a Hammer horror
film and here’s one that is a Dr. Strange and
another that is a Kirby monster story. I would love to
do my little tributes to those kind of things. It’s
on the list of things to do.
DE: Your first brush with Hollywood came when you
did the Topps Comics adaptation of the Francis Ford
Coppola movie Bram Stoker's Dracula. Was
Coppola aware of your work and that’s why you came
aboard?
MM: He certainly did not recruit me. Topps had
called me while I was living in New York about doing a
movie adaptation of Dracula. I knew that movie adaptations are
horrible things to do but it was Coppola and Dracula,
so I thought I would stick my neck out and see. Around
that time I moved to San Francisco so I was around the
corner from Zoetrope Pictures (Francis Ford Coppola’s
production company). I went to the set, I met Francis,
and he looked at my work. Then it came up that there
was a model for Castle Dracula that Francis wasn’t a
100% sold on. I’m convinced they called me in
because they had my number, I was drawing the
adaptation and I lived around the corner. They brought
me in to work on this model. It was an interesting
problem because the model was already built. I made
some suggestions but they shot it down with “that’s too
expensive.” But that got me in at Zoetrope. They
were great with giving me reference material as well.
DE: Did you like that design for Dracula with the
buns on his head?
MM: It was weird and interesting. Nothing I
could have ever imagined.
So, after the film was pretty much done, Francis
called me for a screening for the rough cut. I get up
there and the only people at the screening are
Francis, me and George Lucas. Clearly still the
weirdest night of my life. Dinner with these guys,
then the movie and then after it was Francis and
George discussing what the picture needed.
DE: Didn’t you get into an argument with George
Lucas?
MM: Not really. We disagreed on a few things.
DE: Like what?
MM: Cutting Dracula’s head off at the end of
the movie. As George Lucas said, the rules say to kill
a vampire you have to cut off its head off. I know
that, but it was a beautiful romantic scene and
suddenly she [Winona Ryder] just jumps up and cuts his
head off. It’s going to take some of the romance out
of the scene. I didn’t agree with that.
DE: But it ended up staying in the film.
MM: There’s a scene where Anthony Hopkins has
gone in and killed these three vampire women.
Originally you didn’t see him do that. Winona Ryder
wakes up, she looks around and Anthony Hopkins comes
walking out of the castle carrying these women’s
heads. He’s got a big knife in his hand, blood
splashed all over him and the heads. I just thought
“That’s cool.” George thought that the audience
would be confused because you didn’t see Anthony
Hopkins actually cut the women’s heads off. My
argument was, “What are they going to think? He found
them on the kitchen floor, he’s got blood on him and
knife in his hand.” But it was George’s thing that
you needed to see him go in and chop the heads off.
DE: And then you never worked on a Star Wars
comic. [laughs]
MM: Well, that has nothing to do with it. It
was really interesting to be in a room with these
guys. How did I get there? I had never worked in the
film business and suddenly I’m watching a picture
between the guy who made Star Wars and the guy
who made The Godfather. You don’t expect to
ever be in that spot. I know a lot of guys in the film
business, and they’ve never been in that spot. I
stumbled into the movie business, from the top. I did
work on some storyboards on some scenes that they
discussed. There has been some exaggeration as to what
my involvement in Dracula was. It was very brief.
There’s a castle that you see in a flashback and
that was a castle I partly designed. That’s pretty
much it.
DE: You wrote but didn’t illustrate The Doom
That Came to Gotham with a Victorian-age Batman.
What is like not illustrating your writing?
MM: It’s a lot more difficult because I know
what I have in mind but it’s just a pain in the ass
writing it down for somebody. I’m doing the same
thing right now. I’m writing for that same artist,
Troy Nixey, and it's just so much easier to take the
idea from your head and put it on paper yourself.
DE: Does your daughter read comics?
MM: My daughter is aware of them but she doesn’t
read them. She’s actually writing one with me. I
promised Diana [Schutz - senior editor at Dark Horse]
a six-page story for a Maverick anthology. I didn’t
really have an idea and my daughter came up with an
idea. I thought “wow,” there’s something so
visually striking about those images. I wanted to see
if I could take her story idea and translate it into a
comic. It’s a peculiar one.
DE: You drew the first Elseworld before it was even
Elseworlds, (Batman: Gotham By Gaslight). Did
you know you were breaking new ground?
MM: Maybe I did at the time; I don’t remember
that much about it. That was a big one for me because
I was just coming off Cosmic Odyssey where it was all
these superheroes and I never wanted to be a superhero
artist. I liked the dark moody supernatural stuff.
When Gotham By Gaslight came to me I thought,
“Here’s a project where I can establish a
reputation for this kind of work.”
DE: I want to talk about The Amazing Screw-On
Head because I just read it in black and white and
it's wild. It felt like a fever dream. Tell me about
it.
MM: Somebody told me the other day after
reading it, what they liked about it was that
when I make a Hellboy storyline and I tell
people what I am going to do, it's much crazier than
the way it ends up on the page. So Screw-On Head
sounds like the way you tell the story orally. Screw-On
Head is as crazy as I said it would be. It was
just a fun experiment to create this other world and
to do that kind of pacing to the action.
DE: Most of your creator-owned stories are so
humorous but your art isn’t. It’s a great
contrast.
MM: What I originally had in mind for the Screw-On
Head book to look like was that it would be done in an animation style. Certainly it would be drawn a
lot faster, ultimately I ended up doing my art job but
I hopefully kept the humor and the pacing.
DE: One thing I noticed about your art is that
people don’t open their mouths when they talk. Do
you know that?
MM: They probably don’t. Hellboy does
sometimes but his mouth is just a slot.
DE: Or they’re gritting their teeth.
MM: I’m not one of those facial expression
guys. There are some guys who are like that. If you
look at the Adam Hughes school of art with these
wonderful subtle facial expressions, it’s not what I
do. And in a way, Hellboy was created to be the
ultimate Mignola character - he has almost no facial
expression. But yet I can convey everything I want to
with the way that character is put together.
Looking at BPRD by Ryan Sook, there’s so much
more subtly in his drawings, in the little character
stuff. I do my subtly differently, I do it with more
panels to establish mood and things like that. While
he can do a lot more with one panel. I've never claimed
to draw that well.
DE: A lot of creators I talk to seem somewhat
bitter about their place in the industry. As a successful and critically-acclaimed creator, how do you feel about your place in the
industry?
MM: Well I’m certainly not bitter. I’m
thrilled to death. I’m doing exactly what I want to
do and I’m able to make a living from it. I have
nothing to complain about. I do complain but I’m
careful about who I complain to because I realize how
lucky I am. I’m doing so much more than I ever
expected to do in the comic book business. I’m
discounting the Hollywood stuff, which I’ve fallen
ass backwards into. Within the comic business I
thought I would be an inker. The last conscious goal I
had in this business when I was an inker was that maybe someday
before I would die I would pencil a ten-page story,
just so I could say I drew a comic.
DE: Mike, thank you so much.
MM: Thanks, Dan.
Mike Mignola’s website is www.hellboy.com.
Check out Horse Comics website at www.darkhorse.com.
Blade 2 opens on March 22nd.
Hellboy.com
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