Comic book artist and writer Mike Mignola has come a long way from the days of trying to figure out how to draw monsters for a living and wanting to create his own characters. Mignola's career can be looked at from two distinct viewpoints - life before his popular heroic creation Hellboy and life after. After working for both DC and Marvel Comics, Mignola created Hellboy in 1994, which propelled him to the top of the industry as one of the comic book world's elite artists and creators. Fourteen years later, Mignola's Hellboy has become one of the most popular comics on the past decade and has also spawned two live action feature films, the second of which, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, hits theaters on July 11.

With director Guillermo del Toro back behind the camera for Hellboy II and the film about the take its own piece of the super hero box-office pie, we were on hand at the film's press junket as Mike Mignola sat down to talk all things Hellboy and the exploding popularity of comic book movies.

Mike Mignola on working with Guillermo de Toro on the writing of the second movie:

"Well, it’s always a blurry thing how our working relationship works. We sat down and roughed out a real rough idea of what the story was going to be and then Guillermo went off and did the screenplay, which was radically different than what we came up with. But then I work with him in preproduction and he’s constantly rewriting. So, as he was rewriting in preproduction, I was in the next office so we were always talking and there are a few lines in the screenplay that I put in and a few thing I begged him to take out. So there was a lot of give and take on the screenplay, but it was mostly him. There was no "official" me working with him on the screenplay. But, as I say, he was rewriting up until probably filming."

Mignola on the major differences between the original idea and the shooting script:

"It was much simpler, very simply, and Guillermo is a much more Baroque writer and filmmaker than I am. The Golden Army wasn’t in it was probably the biggest difference. According to him, he just came up with the title, The Golden Army, one day and then decided, 'Well, the film probably needed a golden army.' Originally there was going to be just four giants who represented the elements, and the whole idea would be that this Prince character would wake up these things to reclaim the earth."

On what the first movie did for the comic books and his career:

"The film certainly shined a big light on the comic and I’m sure brought new readers. I mean, in the short term it bumped book sales radically, but it didn’t - It focused more attention on the book, it didn’t cause me to change the way I do the book. I didn’t alter the story I’ve been telling at all to take the movie into account. They’re still separate entities, but it certainly did make Hellboy much more of a known thing."

Mignola on the original conception of Hellboy:

"When I created it, all I was thinking was I want to draw monsters for a living. I’d been doing comics for ten years and in '94 I finally decided the only way I was going to get to draw exactly what I wanted was to make my own book. It wasn’t a character I wanted to do for a million years. I just wanted to do a particular kind of story with particular kinds of images. I had drawn a character in '92, just once I had done a drawing of a big monster and written Hellboy on it, and I thought it was a funny name. So in '94, when I sat down to seriously create this thing, the only name I’d ever come up with that I liked, that I thought was funny, was Hellboy. So I knew the kinds of stories I wanted. Then it was just a matter of making up a character that was fun to draw. I was certainly ever thinking of a movie. So I was never thinking of actors or anything like that."

On the increasing popularity of comic book films:

"I think they’ve been increasing as they continue to make money. So I think it’s a case of when something does well, a lot more things get greenlit. And maybe next summer, because of the success of this summer, next summer will be even stronger and the summer after that. I mean, I’m sure right now, based on Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, a lot of projects are getting greenlit and pushed to come out in a couple of years. So it may be in two or three years we’re going see twice as many comic book films. It’s hard to imagine a summer that will accommodate this many more comic book films because this summer is huge. I benefit - There’s pros and cons. Certainly coming out the week before Batman means that - Everybody is going to go see Batman when that comes out. But the big advantage I think for me and for Hellboy is Hellboy is associated with all of these big super hero films. It’s not as well known as - maybe to the general public it’s as well known as Iron Man, but to me as a comic book guy, Iron Man is a real comic book character. That’s something I grew up reading. So it legitimizes Hellboy when there are articles that say, 'Oh, the summer comic book films - Batman, Iron Man, Hellboy.' You know, it puts me in standing with the characters I grew up reading, so I think it’s good."

Mignola on Ron Pealman playing Hellboy:

"The beauty of Ron as Hellboy - When I first met Guillermo, I think I was still standing up, we were meeting for breakfast - I think he was sitting down I was standing up - and before I even had a chance to sit down, he said, ‘Who should play Hellboy?’ Clearly he knew who should play Hellboy, he just wanted to see what I was thinking. A friend had suggested to me that Ron should play Hellboy. As soon as I heard that I went, ‘Oh yeah, that’d be perfect.’ So I was hoping that del Toro was thinking the same thing I was. We were, we both said Ron at the same time and we knew that he was already the guy. When I met Ron, they were doing some - I think they were casting him to do some make-up tests. It wasn’t even a make-up test yet. This guy’s outing plaster on him and Ron was just sitting there talking and telling stories and Guillermo and I kept laughing because he was already Hellboy. It was exactly the right tone for this guy. As a matter of fact, the only acting notes I ever heard on the first picture, the only acting notes I ever heard del Toro give Ron was, ‘Stop acting, you’re already him. You’re already Hellboy, just be you.’

Mike Mignola on the reaction from fans to the Liz/Hellboy relationship and a future family:

"It is probably the one point that the fans - if there’s anything they’re going to take issue with, that might be it, because the relationship between Hellboy and Liz Sherman doesn’t exist in the comic. It never has. They have much more of a brother - sister relationship in the comic and, in fact, the way the comic is now, Liz Sherman is in a completely different comic. There’s a BPRD comic and there’s a Hellboy comic. So there is no relationship between those two characters and Hellboy has no current love interest and no plans for children in his future. He’s dealing more with being the Beast of the Apocalypse and not a dad."

-- Jordan Riefe

       

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