“B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” is over, and what a devastating ending it was. Later this week “Cometh the Hour” (the final trade collection) comes out, so I thought we’d chat to Laurence Campbell about drawing this momentous ten-issue finale.
For our trade-waiting readers, the first section of this interview covers “End of Days,” but once we start talking about “Cometh the Hour” we go deep into spoiler territory. Just so you know.
(trade collection cover)
Laurence Campbell: Well, I think it was at the start of “End of Days” that I was told “Hell on Earth” was coming to an end and they wanted me to draw it. I was told the ending was going to be big and, from what they told me at the time, I knew this was something special and I wanted to be on board. Anyone who has read “Hellboy” knew with the cover of the first issue of “End of Days” something big was going to happen. John leaving came as a surprise to me, although, again, this was also around the start of the last arc if memory serves me well. Totally understand why John decided it was time to leave and in my opinion he left at the top of his game with people wanting more. I’ve always liked artists who do long arcs on books and I’m so pleased to be involved in this story. To me the best stories have a beginning, middle and end, planned from the start.
The image of the Ogdru Jahad prison has been a part of the series since the first “Hellboy” miniseries, so it’s a major piece of iconography. And you got to break it. It’s irrevocably changed now. Of course, that also means you had to draw one of the seven Ogdru Jahad. Can you talk about the challenges of bringing this god-like creature to the page?
Laurence: Well, I got such a buzz drawing the Ogdru Jahad prison. That’s why I wanted to draw it on the cover. It’s a real ‘Oh crap’ moment. With the Ogdru Jahad, Mike sent me a pencil sketch, which I loved, of what it would look like and I went with that. I also remember John’s description. With the other Hems being as big as buildings and skyscrapers while the Ogdru Jahad was as big as a mountain range.
I love drawing things with a huge scale to them so drawing the Ogdru Jahad was a enjoyable challenge to me. Drawing smaller things in front and playing with scale is all good fun. I guess the tough part was when the giants arrive later. Then you have the giants fighting the Ogdru Jahad and you need small elements, or you need to pull the shot out, to see the scale of these creatures. Double page spreads helped here to give the power of scale. I tried to make it cinematic with certain scenes.
I was especially pleased to see the return of McWhirter, a character we hadn’t seen since the final pages of the “Plague of Frogs” cycle. You also had the task of killing him, and the result was a truly haunting page.
Laurence: Yes, McWhirter turned up in the start of “End of Days” and to me it felt like things were coming to a head—story arcs coming together, something I love—so I was surprised when I later read a script where he gets killed off. A real shame but I also think it shows the direction the whole story. No messing around here, the story is going forward and taking no prisoners. I remember the description John gave of McWhirter floating dead, wires connecting him to the metal outfit.
Continued belowI wanted his death to look beautiful almost fragile, what with all the destruction and heavy machinery around him. Dave’s colors really helped with that. I cannot explain how good it is working with Dave. It’s a delight when the pages arrive.
Laurence: Love doing covers. Think this is because of my graphic design background. Love the idea of trying to sum up a story or doing something which is striking and pulls your eye in. I normally do around four or five different ideas and send these in. Most of the time one gets picked, sometimes elements of one can be added or taken away. Mike’s covers are amazing and it’s therefore a great pleasure, but also a lot of pressure.
I particularly liked your cover for issue four, the one that references one of your “Sledgehammer 44: Lightning War” covers. That was a really nice touch.
Right: “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: End of Days” #4
Laurence: Thanks. Had no idea I’d be drawing the Black Flame later when I was drawing “Sledgehammer 44.” So when I saw they were going to have a rematch it just seemed like the right thing to do. All the elements were there! Just want to say how good I thought good Black Flame is as a villain. A real classic.
“End of Days” features the big rematches: Sledgehammer and the Black Flame originally fought in World War II, and Liz versus the Black Flame had a epic battle New York (drawn by James Harren). You had the challenge of drawing a sequence that was a sequel to both these iconic battles. How did you approach that challenge? Were there any moments you were particularly proud of? Any that you struggled with?
Laurence: Well, I think you can see I have a lot of love for the Black Flame as a villain. James Harren’s redesign is great. This huge muscled menace. He was great fun to draw. I saw him as this huge creature but with some grace in the way he moved and spoke. Again when doing the fight scenes I went with scale but also using the New York backdrop as their playground around them. I like the fact that the fight was brutal and direct. Of course when Liz turns up it ramps up a gear. Two of my favorite scenes are when the Black Flame is sucking the life force out of Sledgehammer like a vampire and Liz wiping her bleeding nose after the event.
Matt Strackbein is a vocal fan in the letters column—he even drew a two-page back-up in an issue of this arc. I think he’d want me to tell you thank you for killing the Black Flame.
Laurence: I enjoy Matt’s letters and thought the two-page story was great. Guess I could get a t-shirt saying, ‘I killed the Black Flame.’
You certainly earned it.
SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read “Cometh the Hour” yet, go no further.
“Cometh the Hour” reaches deep into to the larger mythology of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy Universe, going so far as to actually venture into Hell itself, a realm that had been restricted largely to the pages of “Hellboy in Hell” and drawn almost exclusively up to that point by Mike Mignola himself.
Laurence: Oh yes, I couldn’t believe this when I read it in the script, so it was a real pleasure to draw and also done with real care. Varvara and Iosif pretty much visit all the places we’ve seen in “Hellboy in Hell” before. I wanted the reader to recognize these places so, in a way, the reader is knowing more than Iosif and knows where Varvara is leading him.
Continued belowYou did an excellent job with those sequences, to the point that Varvara and Iosif don’t just walk into Hell, they seem to be walking right into Mike’s pages. And then there’s things like Pandemonium resting on the backs of the watchers, something we never actually saw in Hellboy in Hell, but it almost feels like we did because of the way you approached it.
Laurence: Thanks. Loved the fact that Pandemonium was resting on the backs of the Watchers. Again that was from a sketch Mike sent over. I remember I was ‘whoa’ when I first saw it. It’s shown in just one panel but had a real impact and so visually strong.
Let’s talk about the Director of the Special Sciences Service, Iosif Nichayko. He’s been an incredible ally to the Bureau for a long time, but especially to Johann Kraus. In many ways these two characters mirror each other, but especially so throughout this arc, where both characters escape their realities to a fantasy. But their relationship has always felt a little lopsided to me; Johann means more to Iosif than Iosif does to Johann.
There was a panel you drew, the last time these characters see each other, and I thought it was the perfect visual to sum up their relationship.
Laurence: Iosif’s journey is a great one. For a while I questioned his motives but the more we got to know him and he developed as a character the more I liked him. To the point where I would put my trust more in him than Johann.
Laurence: The whole of Iosif with Varvara in Hell was a pleasure to draw. His whole journey at that point felt sad and the bit with Polina, as you point out, is tragic and at the same time has a real sense of horror to it. I tried to make the scene where Polina appears and goes backwards down the corridor beautiful and tragic. Leading to horror when she turns around. Iosif’s journey in Hell is not a good one.
Iosif’s death was incredibly cruel. It was not just a death, but the utter ruination of his very soul.
Laurence: That issue. Yes I remember reading the script and sending an email to Scott saying, ‘You’ve killed Iosif, Kate, and Panya.’ His reply was, ‘No you’ve killed them.’ Yeah, that script really hit me. John is on top of his game here. Two scenes of death both done in different ways. Iosif is brutal. It’s at the end of the book and a surprise as a lot has already happened in the issue. You see everything; it’s close and it lingers. Iosif has been to Hell and been tormented and yet his death is a surprise and brutal. Deaths in a lot of comics are cheap I feel these days, but done well it can really have an impact and this issue has that. A real credit to John’s writing.
I was very happy with your portrayal of Varvara throughout that sequence and I eagerly anticipate what you do with her in “B.P.R.D. The Devil You Know.”
Laurence: Varvara is a great character and fun to draw. The thing I find scary about her is that you never know how she is going to act. That and she looks like a little girl.
OK, I have to talk about the most painful aspect of this arc for me: the death of Kate. As you know, she’s a character very dear to me—my favorite in the Hellboy Universe. In my head I’d put her in a protective bubble (perhaps because of Liz’s vision of the future in “B.P.R.D.: King of Fear”), so even when the moment of Kate’s death arrived, I didn’t read it as Kate’s death. I picked up the next issue fully expecting Kate to be buried in the rumble of the B.P.R.D. headquarters, wounded badly, but alive.
Continued belowSo I discovered Kate’s death in that two-page opening flashback in the second last issue, with Fenix trying to get Kate to promise to look after Bruiser. The sequence finishes with a startling juxtaposition of the Bureau HQ still standing with its ruins on the following page. Man, that moment hit me so damn hard! Only two and a bit pages into the issue and I had to put it down and recover from that.
Laurence: Again I’m going to credit John here. Like yourself when I first read the script I thought both Panya and Kate or at least one of them would live. You hold on to anything, in some ways like we do in life. It’s only in Hollywood films that people have protective bubbles around them. As much as I disliked Kate dying, I feel it’s a much stronger story for it.
As you mentioned in the following issue, it starts with Kate on the phone. When I first read that script I remember thinking she would survive and by the turn of a page my hopes were once again crushed. Great writing from John. Kate was a wonderful character leading the team, bringing them and trying to hold them together. Much understated. In my eyes she’s one of the best female comic characters we’ve had in years and yet true to her character most people don’t really know who she is. Her death is very different from Iosif—it’s sudden and from a distance, we don’t actually see her die. Because of that we are unsure what happened and hold on to the chance that she has survived. It seems almost pointless.
Doing a double hit in one issue made that one powerful comic in my opinion.
One of the things that I’ve loved about “B.P.R.D.” as long as John Arcudi has been on the book is the way that the characters have been there for each other. When a character is going through shit, there’s another that stands by their side for no other reason than to be there to help them weather it. This was a prominent feature of the “Plague of Frogs” cycle, but something that almost completely vanished in “Hell on Earth,” and for me it was this that truly made it feel like Hell really had come to Earth, more than any number of Ogdru Hem could.
Except for Kate. Kate has always been there for others, and she was the remaining beacon throughout large stretches of “Hell on Earth”. And it was hard for her to be that beacon. So when you and Arcudi broke her, that moment really hurt.
But you guys also gave her Panya. And she got Kate past that moment. For me, that was saying, ‘Even at the end of all things, the heart of “B.P.R.D.” is still beating.’
Laurence: I always saw Kate as the glue that holds B.P.R.D. together. The moment you mentioned in the question and the time when Kate pulls the gun out, I feel are moments when we see Kate losing it. The pressure getting to much. With the page you’ve shown I’ve tried to strip away everything and pull out so Kate is small and vulnerable.
You have a way of drawing painful moments, where you pull back from the character and show them from a distance. I think many artists tend to go the other way, getting closer, showing you all the pain on the character’s face. And that can work, but I think it has a way of looking at their pain in a very literal way; the reader is a witness to the pain. But the way you do it, you emphasize the character’s isolation. You put so much work into the build up, that when you pull back and the character is a tiny figure in the panel, we don’t need to see their face to know what they’re feeling, because we’re feeling it too. We aren’t a witness to the pain, we’re feeling it right along with them.
Laurence: Bang on. You said it better than me! I heard John also talk about this and it’s a cinematic thing, where the viewer is putting their own emotions on the scene. The idea of a monster or a glimpse of the monster is normally more scary than the full reveal, as our minds add more to it. I did the same when drawing the Punisher except I used to put the Punisher’s face in shadow to make him less human and more of a force of nature. The same principle works with violence. If you indicate it rather than show it, again the reader uses their imagination. Sometimes if you show it, it can disappoint.
Continued belowI’m glad you were the one to draw Kate and Panya’s end. For me at least, that sequence was the most powerful of the arc… so powerful in fact that I’m only really revisiting it for this interview right now. The wound is still fresh, you know?
In this case, you pushed in closer rather than pulled back, but instead of pushing in on the characters’ faces, you pushed in on Panya and Kate holding hands. That was a beautiful storytelling choice.
Laurence: Again this has a lot to do with John. We are going closer and closer up but the next page we’ve pulled right out. So we go from two people opening up and getting closer before hitting the reader.
Which brings us to Johann. If there was any character I was certain was going to die in the final arc, it was Johann—I feel like Arcudi’s been building to it for a long time—but that doesn’t make it any less painful. However, in Johann’s case I feel like there’s catharsis in his death. He’d become so disconnected, especially as he changed from his first suit, which was so animated and expressive, to his second suit, which became much more rigid, to his final suit, which literally sealed him inside a hunk of metal, unable to leave. Could you talk about the ways you portrayed Johann’s isolation throughout this arc?
Laurence: Some nice points there. I feel as “Hell on Earth” continued Johann became colder and less human. Not so funny compared to how he was in “Plague of Frogs.” But his death felt very human, almost what we all aspire too. His ending was beautiful to me. He was happy and we were able to see it.
In Johann’s case, I do feel like we experience his death as mere witnesses (How could we possibly comprehend what he was going through in those final moments after all?), but we witness it like witnessing a close friend. We’ve seen him drift away for so long, and in his final moments he comes back. That smile on his face at the end was like a man that has been locked away in the dark, stepping out into the sunlight for the first time in years. He was finally connected and so very human in the most beautiful way.
Laurence: Totally agree. I feel comfortable with the way Johann passed away. He found himself.
OK, let’s talk about the fallout for a bit, because death hurts, but the other characters still have to keep on going. For me, the moment that really hits this home is Liz wrestling with the death of Panya and Kate. The way you visualized Liz’s pain was so perfect, because in that moment, that’s what I was feeling too. You manifested very complicated emotions in images.
Laurence: Loved drawing the quiet scenes with Liz and Tian. It was only a few pages before we were seeing huge battle scenes. The pacing John did here was great. These are some of my favorite pages from this arc.
The way things were left with Fenix, if we never see her again, I think I’m OK with that. I know that’s a strange thing to say about a character that’s been so interesting, and I still feel there’s so many things about her I’d like to see explored… however, the final panel feels like a good place to leave her. It’s a good mix of happy and sad, and I think she deserves a little bit of happiness. Especially since I don’t think things look too happy for the Bureau in the next cycle.
Laurence: You’ve got to the celebrate small victories. I think that’s something the arc left me with.
The final scene shows some hope, new life and yet destruction in the background.
I know you’re busy with “B.P.R.D. The Devil You Know,” so I appreciate you taking the time to do this interview. I’m really looking forward to seeing how you kick off the new cycle.
Laurence: I’m drawing it at this moment. It’s the final cycle. Strap in, it ain’t over yet.
Continued below“B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth – Volume 15: Cometh the Hour” comes out this Wednesday, completing the “Hell on Earth” cycle.
Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Illustrated by Laurence Campbell
Colors by Dave StewartOn sale March 29, 2017
$19.99The BPRD struggles to keep the massive Ogdru Jahad and the dozens of monsters it looses every hour from destroying headquarters and the world, and desperate times lead Russian occult bureau director Nichayko to ask a demon for help. This volume collects B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth #143–#147.
The next cycle, “The Devil You Know,” kicks off later this year. And in December, “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth – Volume 1,” the first of five hardcover omnibus editions, comes out.
Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi
Illustrated by Guy Davis and Tyler Crook
Colors by Dave StewartOn sale December 27, 2017
$34.99The plague of frogs has ended, but Earth will never be the same, and the fractured B.P.R.D. struggles to battle dangerous monsters and humans alike, from a trailer-park cult to a Russian town ravaged by a zombie-like virus. Guy Davis’s final B.P.R.D. story sets the stage for Tyler Crook’s (Harrow County) backwoods-horror debut, as Liz Sherman hides from a world that she helped push toward armageddon, and Abe Sapien is shot down by a girl who’s seen the world to come.
