It’s 2017, and though a lot of Mike Mignola’s books wrapped up in 2016, there’s still much more to come this year. This week Mignolaversity is talking to various creators about what’s ahead. Kicking things off we have Scott Allie, editor of Mike Mignola’s works from Dark Horse Comics.
2016 saw the end of “Hellboy in Hell,” “Abe Sapien,” and “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth.” You’ve been heavily involved in all of these projects as the editor of the entire Hellboy Universe, but also as the writer on “Abe Sapien.” What was last year like, bringing all these stories to an end, especially your journey on “Abe Sapien” with the Max and Sebastián Fiumara?
Scott Allie: Sometime around 2012, I think, Mike said, ‘We’re breaking things that can’t be fixed.’ As these titles closed, we took that notion much higher. These endings feel to me like payoffs, though, and Mike and I have been getting increasingly excited about it. Abe was originally going to be fifty issues, and I decided to cut it back to get the end to coincide better with the end of “Hell on Earth.” We’re reaching the fruition of something that was in the making for a long time, that we didn’t even begin to really see the shape of until “Plague of Frogs” was concluding. Mike always knew the directions things were going in, he knew how this ends, but it was pretty abstract back in 2005 or 2008. The acceleration has been exhilarating. There have been a lot of moments of, ‘Hey, we got there.’ We’d reached a turning point.
“Abe Sapien” really ended on a cliffhanger as he was brought back to the B.P.R.D. We talked before about how the Hellboy Universe keeps branching out into new series, but there’s a threshold that you cross when it starts drawing back together again. It seems we crossed that threshold in 2016.
Scott: Absolutely—that’s why it seemed like we had to end “Abe Sapien” at the same time as “B.P.R.D.” There was a plan for how it would overlap into the next cycle, but it was better to wrap it up sooner, to get the answers it was going to give at the same time the Ogdru Hem were put out of commission in “Hell on Earth.” We do leave Abe on a bit of a cliffhanger, and hopefully where we see him again will be a bit of a surprise.
As sad as it is to see these various series end, when they do, they make room for something new, and there are a lot of new things to be excited about this year. And much more unusual things. I never expected a book like “Rise of the Black Flame,” and “The Visitor” is so different from anything else in Mignola’s line of books. You’ve really shown these stories can go anywhere.
Scott: Mike’s the most excited about that. We were talking about Rogue One today—he just saw it. He felt like some of the antipathy about it comes from the fact that it’s really a war movie, and not a kids movie. I haven’t seen it, so I just take his word for it for now. I’m sure there are other reasons people don’t like it, I have no interest in that unless I see it myself. But Mike’s point was that the Star Wars universe is certainly big enough to have movies with radically different tones, set in the same massive world. “The Visitor” tests that theory in the Hellboy universe, just as “B.P.R.D. Vampire” did before. Tonally it’s really it’s own thing. Going with Grist is an exciting move that sets the book apart. And that’s not about how Paul draws, but about how he tells a story. Roberson worked toward that so perfectly, he really blended into what Paul does to make this nothing like we’ve got going on in the other titles.
This is a big universe, constantly referencing other stories. How do you wrangle that as an editor, especially in terms of the scheduling, where one story can affect the way another is read?
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Scott: It obviously really, really helps that it’s a small, tight-knit group of writers. One reason we chose Chris to replace John is that I knew I could work closely with Chris—we knew both Mike and I would be happy talking to him ad nauseam about this world. Your question addresses a very complicated aspect of the world. Mike and I were talking the other day about a couple of events in two different books by different writers coming sometime in 2017–2018. We really believe in telling the right story when it’s ready with the right artist, and so it’s hard to co-ordinate to make sure that issue #4 of one series comes out the same month as issue #2 of another one, if you know what I mean. And so we don’t prioritize that. We think a lot about the reader who might be twelve right now who’ll discover all these books in a few years, and reads them in whatever order they want, or whatever order your list recommends. So in the instance Mike and I were discussing this week, we talked about how it would work if they came out the same time, how it would work if they came out in one order, and what if they come out in the reverse order. And we try to make it so it works any which way—because again, for different readers, it will be different orders. You know?
Another book that was being discussed this week, which we may or may not do, we were talking about how it might relate to the work of the other writers in the room, as it were, and making sure we dealt with the various correspondences. It’s a lot to keep track of, but it’s certainly far easier than managing fifty years of Spider-man continuity. This is ultimately one story, told by one big team, with one leader calling the shots. I’m not sure that comics has ever seen a story this big and this cohesive. Others have been bigger, others have probably been more cohesive, but I think this is something that distinguishes this line of books in the history of the medium. And it’s all about communication, deference, teamwork between everyone involved—including, I should say, all the assistant and associate editors I’ve worked with over the years, including my current co-editor, Katii O’Brien. She retains a great amount of knowledge, being the person who’s read a lot of this stuff most recently. It takes a village.
Geof Darrow variant cover
Later this month the “Hellboy Winter Special 2017” comes out. This book was a wonderful surprise for me. I love the short stories of the Hellboy Universe, and I miss them in the years when there aren’t many. When last year’s Winter Special came out, I assumed that, like the “Hellboy Christmas Special” before it, it was a one-off thing. So to see this return is great. It’s like we have our own “Mike Mignola Presents” issue once a year.
Scott: We’re working on next year’s now, and I think it’ll surprise even you. Mike and I love anthologies, Chris loves short stories. It lets us get other folks into the family, like Chelsea Cain last year. Also, the occasional short story allows us to make “1954” last longer, in addition to the five issues that go into a trade paperback. The short story we did with Paul Grist in this year’s Winter Special gave us a chance to do something with “The Visitor” character that wouldn’t have a place in the miniseries, but set him in context from the B.P.R.D. perspective.
You’ve got a story in the Winter Special too, drawn by your “Abe Sapien” collaborator Sebastián Fiumara, set in the 1980s. I find this is an interesting time period to explore, because Hellboy, Liz, and Abe are all together before their individual destinies tear them apart. This is a time when they’re a family and support for each other. What is it about having this group of characters together that appeals to you?
Scott: I’ll forever be happy for any excuse, opportunity, to work with Seba or Max. Around the time I started writing “Abe Sapien,” I recognized something that appealed to me in a lot of my favorite stories, from The Shield to ’Salem’s Lot to “Watchmen”—at the heart of these stories they’re about a close friendship that comes to feel like family, though often compromised. A lot of my favorite stories have this, but here I was writing a story in the fictional world I know best, and I had a solo figure, I had a guy on his own, occasionally forming a short-term friendship before moving on. So the whole time I was writing Abe, I kept wishing Liz or Hellboy were there. Hellboy and Liz and more. I love their relationship, their little web of friendships. That one scene I did in #24 with them back in [Professor Bruttenholm’s] office, that was a lot of fun. So after Abe, I’m excited about writing about characters who have years of bonds and baggage between them.
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In February “The Red Kingdom” begins. This will be the final arc of the “Baltimore” series, and while this isn’t a surprise (the story has clearly been building to an ending since “The Cult of the Red King”), I’ll be sorry to see it go. Since Peter Bergting joined the series, it’s undergone a transformation from a book about a sole doomed protagonist to an ensemble that hints at possible redemption.
What’s your experience been with this title, especially since it’s one that had its beginnings outside of comics?
Scott: There are a lot of interesting things with this one… the novel was a real solid story, so the way in which we built toward it, then sort of hopped around it to continue forward, that was a weird dance. Changing artists right around the same time—nowadays we move from artist to artist with some grace, but with a book like “Baltimore,” where we had Ben [Stenbeck] for a long time, that was a weird transition to manage. And while I knew Peter’s work from his creator owned stuff, and apparently he did something for a Hellboy role playing game once upon a time, it was still weird to break him in like we did. No weirder than the way it happened with Tyler on “B.P.R.D.,” but still strange. But every book is unique, every job strange in its way. I was glad when Dark Horse finally got to an edition of the “Baltimore” novel. It doesn’t change anything, but there’s just something nice that now the whole saga is under one roof, even though Dan Chabon handled that one, the novel.
In April “Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea” comes out, a brand new hardcover original graphic novel. I’m very glad to see you’re still making these. “The Midnight Circus” and “House of the Living Dead” were fantastic, truly worthy of the format, and “Into the Silent Sea” continues that tradition. What is it that excites you about “Hellboy” stories in the OGN format?
Scott: It’s a perfect length for a Mignola story. Maybe it’s the perfect length for a lot of comics, really. I love a done-in-one story, you buy it, go home, read it, you don’t have to wait a month. I know that’s contrary to the whole business model, but obviously it’s ideal, right? A 22-page story is over so quick—it’s a sketch. The way we tell stories nowadays, I mean. Jack Kirby used to do in 24 pages what artists these days will do in a whole miniseries, but the rhythm and pacing is so different nowadays. Personally I still really like 22-page stories, I liked doing them in Abe, but they’re so compact. I’d suggest that they work best as part of something bigger. On the other hand a five-issue story, sometimes they can lose their shape. I don’t like when you close the third issue of something and you still have no sense of payoff—you’re waiting half a year to find out what happens. A story of about 50–60 pages, though, that’s a very nice length for a comic, and it’s a length that Mike’s thinking in particular falls into real nicely. He’s done a lot of good two-issue stories. But a two-issue miniseries, that sucks. A two-parter within an ongoing series is great, but say for instance “Almost Colossus,” to go back a bit—stories like that were problematic commercially. You sell good numbers on #1, you get the usual drop on #2, and you’re already done, you gotta start heating the engine back up for next time. That’s how we’re doing it in “Joe Golem,” in fact. So I like being able to tell a story of this length, substantial but not enormous, a length that I think is analogous to a good old-fashioned short prose story—it’s done-in-one, and you have it forever in print. There’s something perfect about that. And when it’s Mike teaming up with a brilliant artist like Gary [Gianni] or Duncan [Fegredo] or [Richard] Corben… That’s something I want on my shelf, worthy of the format.
Gary Gianni isn’t just illustrating “Into the Silent Sea,” he’s also the co-writer. For me this story is a kind of wish fulfillment. While Gary has never worked on a “Hellboy” story before, his work has a history of living next to it, as many of his “MonsterMen” stories appeared as backups in “Hellboy” over the years. In a way, this collaboration feels inevitable, and yet it’s taken over twenty years to get to this point. What was your role in bringing these two creators together?
Continued belowScott: I don’t know if I had a role in bringing them together, maybe I encouraged Mike, but I don’t remember. This is a big pay off for me. Working with Mike has been of course career defining for me, but it all started with Mike and Gary—Gary was doing backups in “Wake the Devil,” my first big miniseries with Mike, the first thing Mike and I did from start to finish. So my earliest days in comics, my focus was all on Gary and Mike. It takes it all back to that beginning for all of us. The two of them have never worked like this before, but I’ve worked extensively with both of them, so I was able to be the middle man. Often that’s the most important role for the editor. Cowriting gigs, everyone of them is different. We didn’t have a carefully drawn map of who’d do what, so there was some back and forth in finding that balance, figuring out where one guy’s writing ended and the other’s began. I think the result is seamless. It reads like both of them. Even when you have two great friends working together, they can use a buffer, sometimes a go between, and twenty years of friendship set me up well for doing that here and making sure they were both happy with what they were doing. An editor friend of mine says our job is to hire the right people and sit back and let them go. I’d say if you’re lucky the job is to hire the right people, and then cultivate for them the proper environment to do their best work. So I tried to create that for both of them, as well as Dave [Stewart] and Clem [Robins]. Could not be happier with the results.
Looking forward into 2017, with “B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” having reached its end, will we be seeing omnibuses collecting the series?
Scott: Yeah, I don’t love the word omnibuses, because I think that word has come to indicate a bargain format, and I’m very proud of the quality of the “Plague of Frogs” hardcovers and the paperback editions. “Hell on Earth” will receive the same treatment after the trades have sold out.
The omnibuses really are more of a deluxe format, being in hardcover and with the expanded sketchbooks. They’re beautiful books.
“B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth” has ended, but “B.P.R.D.” the series isn’t done yet. There’s still one last story cycle to go. Are there plans for the next cycle to begin in 2017?
Scott: Yup! Work is underway, with the first issue drawn, and a small stack of covers completed. Standby…
The “Hellboy Winter Special 2017” comes out January 25 with three new stories from Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson, Scott Allie, Paul Grist, Christopher Mitten, and Sebastián Fiumara.
