And we’re back. Welcome to Mignolaversity in 2015. Oh, what a year this is going to be! The are some very big things in store… But of course, if we were to tell you about them, Dark Horse would have us all executed. So in the interest of self preservation, in December we interviewed the only people that have immunity from such measures: Mike Mignola and his fellow writers and artists. This is the final one, but we’ve been running interviews all week, so if there’s any you’ve missed, check out the links below:
FRANKENSTEIN UNDERGROUND
Mark my words, this is going to be one of the defining books for 2015. Frankenstein Underground is a unique title in the Hellboy universe, the only one based around an existing literary character. Although it isn’t the first time the Frankenstein monster has appeared. He previously fought with Hellboy in 1950’s Mexico in the original graphic novel Hellboy: House of the Living Dead, then the pair swung round to a bar for drinks afterwards.
This new tale will take place after those events, as the Frankenstein monster ventures underground and discovers a whole other world. On board to draw this journey is former Baltimore artist, Ben Stenbeck.
“I loved Baltimore. I had a chance to do a lot of cool stuff,” said Stenbeck. “But I just hit a point where I wanted to take a shot at something new. Mike had mentioned doing this book at some point. And there was a good logical spot there for me to leave Baltimore and do this. Frankenstein is so different to Baltimore, I guess the real attraction is just doing something completely different to what I’ve done for the last five or six years. I’ve got a pretty short attention span so five or six years on one thing is a pretty good run for me.”
“This series touches on a whole lot of threads, not just from Witchfinder, but a few books,” said Stenbeck. “So yeah, I got to draw some old characters again, nothing too big, but it is fun to revisit that stuff. One character I just really wanted, as a fan, to see him turn up again. So I slipped him into a panel, because it fit to have him there. That stuff’s cool.”
“Mike told me a long time ago how this book connects to other things,” Stenbeck continued, “but when I read the last issue I got kind of emotional. I love this comic so much that my enthusiasm for it makes me want to explain things about it that won’t become clear for years. But it’s better if I don’t. Anyway if you like Hellboy and you like B.P.R.D. then you should read this. But even if you don’t follow those books this should still hold up on its own. Also if you like Edgar Rice Burroughs and people fighting monsters then you should get this book. If you don’t like people fighting monsters then there’s absolutely no hope for you.”
“There’s been a little bit of design stuff I’ve been nervous about,” admitted Stenbeck. “With Baltimore, for most things I could find some sort of real world analog for whatever I had to draw, and maybe just skew the look of it a little, or usually I could find something so weird it looked like I’d done a clever design. But now I actually have to design some stuff, and when you’re doing that under the same banner as Mignola and Guy Davis and Duncan Fegredo and James Harren and all those guys, it’s hard not to feel intimidated. But then I get to stress out about whether or not I’ve done a cool monster design, and as troubles go, that’s a pretty good problem to have at the office.”
Continued belowAs I said before, this book is unique, and it seems Mignola wants it to stay so. Frankenstein Underground is intended to be just the one story, with no further arcs. “I really wanted to keep drawing more books of Frankenstein,” said Stenbeck. “Initially Mike talked about it as a series of books. But this will stand alone really well.”
Don’t feel too bad for him though. He has other irons in the fire. “I know what I get to do next,” said Stenbeck. “I’m very happy to move on from Frankenstein. There’s a few short things over the next couple months and then there’s this other thing I’ll be doing which I only heard about last week.”
You’ll have to wait for future announcements to hear more about these other projects though. He wouldn’t say more than that. As for Frankenstein Underground, the five-issue miniseries will begin in late March.
HELLBOY IN HELL
“I did do a little bit of an experiment in issue seven,” said Mignola. “It turned out okay, but it was scary and I don’t plan on doing anything like it again.”
“Well, the art experiment…” adds Allie. “Oh, Mike says that all the time—He always talks about stripping down his style, going more graphic or something, but those differences are sometimes imperceptible to other people. But then I remembered—YEAH, there is a difference in #7. It’s something he’s sort of done before, although he took a much bolder approach to it here. Dave hasn’t colored it yet, so it remains to be seen just how this is gonna work out, but the original art is gorgeous…”
“I think Hellboy lives with loss every day,” said Allie. “I think Hellboy is very aware of loss in his life. I think he deals with it bravely, but maybe not in an entirely healthy way. I don’t know that he’ll come to confront it more emotionally, although he will have a chance to say goodbye to some people.”
In 2012’s The Midnight Circus readers were introduced to Gamori, Hellboy’s sister, and in last year’s Hellboy Gets Married we were introduced to Hellboy’s wife and a serpentine wedding ring. He’s bound to run into them in Hell sooner or later, and perhaps others as well…
“We’ll definitely see more familiar faces as Hellboy in Hell continues,” said Allie. “Some that might surprise you…”
You may begin speculating now. Hellboy in Hell will return in 2015 with a two-part arc.
AND MORE…
“This next Lobster story I’m working on is my favorite already,” said artist Tonci Zonjic. “There’s literally not a single thing I can say about it that isn’t a spoiler of some kind, but John has managed to up both the crazy and the fun, which seemed impossible after Get the Lobster, so that’s saying something!”
Continued belowOn the topic of Witchfinder everyone was very tight lipped, but in one way or another, I’m sure the cliffhanger in last year’s The Mysteries of Unland will be addressed, though maybe not in Witchfinder. Perhaps in one of the upcoming Abe Sapien flashback stories though…
Another topic that wasn’t discussed was the prospect of more Ashley Strode stories. This is a character that has been in the background of a few stories, (B.P.R.D.: War on Frogs, Abe Sapien: Lost Lives) but really caught our attention here at Mignolaversity in 2012 when Cameron Stewart took up the character in B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Exorcism. Since then we’ve all been patiently (actually impatiently) waiting for him to return for more since the character has been set aside for him alone. 2015 appears promising in this regard, as Stewart has mentioned in passing that it’s on his schedule. Fingers crossed.
“We love that format,” said Dark Horse editor-in-chief Scott Allie. “Expect to see more of that.”
Some fans will note the absence of B.P.R.D.: Vampire (which was also set in the 1940s) from the collection. This is no accident.
“We’ve left the door open to the Twins [writers and artists, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá] to continue Simon’s story. So rather than the fourth part of the story that started in 1946, I see Vampire as the beginning of a story the Twins will tell, focused on Simon,” explained Scott Allie. “We loved doing 1947 with them. Working with them is one of the great joys in comics. So we wanted to do more, and we gave them somewhat carte blanche on Vampire—Mike told them some beats he wanted hit, told them some of the secret history of vampires, and worked with them on how the mythology and the magic worked in his world, but then we gave them a lot of room to do their thing. And they know they have an open door to do more with Simon anytime.”
As for Hell on Earth omnibuses, they will eventually happen, but don’t expect them any time soon.
“Just like Plague of Frogs, after Hell on Earth concludes, we’ll start the hardcovers,” said Allie. While it may still be a long way off, the day it ends is drawing nearer. “It’s a good thing we’ll have Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. or my job would stop being fun. It’s strange knowing that everyone’s gonna be dead. You don’t get this working on The Avengers. I just want to make sure we end it all well. We know basically what happens, but a lot of details remain to be figured out. We’re pulling out all the stops for the end of Hell on Earth. We’ll need to go even bigger for the end of everything.
“But this has given us more focus,” continued Allie. “Both the fact that we know the end is coming, quickly, and the way we came up with Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. We’re not going to jump around the way we always have. “Aw, what the hell, let’s do a story in 1986!” We won’t be doing that, aside for a couple more one shots in Abe Sapien, and even those are pretty strategic in terms of the big story. Lobster Johnson—the very first book of LoJo, The Iron Prometheus, is actually set very late in his career. But for the most part now, John [Arcudi] is moving chronologically. Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. will do that, the normal B.P.R.D. is obviously doing that… We have such a complex and climactic story to tell that it only makes sense to keep moving it straight ahead. Don’t expect another Hellboy: House of the Living Dead graphic novel to pop in at random. There’s a momentum at work in the world now that is going to move us straightforward, even in our retro stories…”
Continued below“It’s time to stop doing scattered Hellboy stories and focus just on the earlier stories in chronological order in Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. and Hellboy in Hell stories,” added Mike Mignola.
That covers everything we can talk about. There are many other things in the works, of course, but we don’t want to spoil the surprises in store. However, if you’ll permit me, here’s one final tease. In November’s “Horse Power” (found in the back of most print issues of any Dark Horse comic) Mignola hinted at something else…
“…we have another series, on another non-Hellboy Earth, coming next year. It’s too early to talk about that one yet, but it’s a safe bet that it too will have monsters.”
Sounds like fun to me. I hope you’ve enjoyed our peek ahead at 2015. It’s going to be a good year.
I just want to thank everyone that participated in these interviews. It was the holidays, and everyone was already busy, but they were all fantastically generous with their time. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank David Hyde too. He helped organize these, and it wouldn’t have happened without him.
