It’s been a big year for the Hellboy Universe: Frankenstein Underground had its debut, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. impressed as it wrapped up 1952 and headed into 1953, Abe Sapien had some big reveals, while B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth more than live up to its name with one of the Ogdru Jahad making its way to Earth, and finally, Hellboy in Hell had one of the best Hellboy stories ever. So I thought it’d be a good idea to take a moment and look back at it all. Oh, and Mike Mignola decided to join me and share his insight.
It’s a long interview, so I’ve split it into three parts. Part one can be found here, and part two can be found here, and part three is below. Sorry for the long delay on this final part. We had to wait for a certain big announcement.
2016 kicks off with the Hellboy Winter Special. One of the stories in there, Broken Vessels is a Gall Dennar story. We’ve seen Gall Dennar in B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, but here the character appears for the first time in his own story. Honestly, I’m fascinated by this character and I could easily read more about him.
Mike Mignola: Me too. That is one of those places where I think there’s a whole series there.
Oh yeah. Most definitely. (You can see a preview of Tim Sale’s art on this story at 13th Dimension.)
Then there’s Wandering Souls, which is Chris Roberson’s debut in the Hellboy Universe. This one was my favorite from the special, because you get to dig into Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. more, and explore the character Susan Xiang, the team’s psychic, in more depth.
MM: Right. Yeah, the first thing Chris was going to do in our world of books was Witchfinder, and he had come up with a proposal for this Witchfinder series, because we were casting around after Kim Newman. Who would come on for Witchfinder? And I know Chris, and Chris knows Kim, and they share that same interest in a lot of stuff. And Scott [Allie] knows Chris so we started talking, and when Chris wrote up this proposal for Witchfinder, it referenced so many different things in the Hellboy Universe and tied so many things together, I thought “Wow, this guy really wants to play with all this stuff I’ve set up, and John’s leaving… Can Chris come in and be the new John Arcudi?”
So we put Chris on as many books as humanly possible. And we’re come up with ideas for a couple of other things that haven’t been announced yet, but so far Chris seems to be so excited to be working in this world. I couldn’t be more thrilled. At the same time, he has very different ideas about stories and directions that I never would have ever come up with. So that’s great, because we don’t want to just be retelling the same stories over and over again. And there are so many things we haven’t covered yet, I’m very happy to let Chris run with that stuff.
coming in February
So obviously we’ve got more Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. to look forward to. In fact in May, 1954 kicks off with a Free Comic Book Day short story, The Mirror, with art by Richard Corben.
MM: Yeah, it was great. Scott called me up and said “What we were going to have in Free Comic Book Day crapped out on us. Can you come up with an eight-page Hellboy story?” And I haven’t been coming up with eight-page Hellboy stories in a long time, so it was like “Oh, um, I’m thrilled to work with Richard again, but I’ve got no ideas.”
But that one… I dimly remembered something I had read in a book of what I thought was Jewish folklore, so I went looking for that. And I couldn’t find it, but … I remembered there was something about a mirror, and while I was looking for the story, a little man that lives in the back of my head said “Stop looking. I remember enough… or I think I remember enough, but I just made up a whole new story about that”.
Continued belowSo that one came together really fast, and it’s got a neat visual thing that I thought Richard could pull off, because he can pull off anything. I’m really happy with that. It was a fun little story and a fun little visual gag. It’s hard to do something interesting in eight pages, but yeah, I think it’ll work.
Of course, the other thing looming on the horizon is Hellboy in Mexico. You’ve got the trade coming out in April, but the thing is when we get to Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1956, that five-month drinking binge of Hellboy’s has to be dealt with in some way. It makes me think something really bad happened just prior to him being sent to Mexico. And it makes me a little concerned for his fellow agents, to be honest. I feel like maybe one of them might be going to die.
MM: Huh. Your take on the material is a little different from mine, but I do agree with you that it’s such a big thing for Hellboy, we need to reference it. One of the things I talked to Chris about recently is how to handle this story, and I don’t want to give anything away, but I wanted something that really approached the whole Mexico debacle from a different direction.
I’m very happy with what we’ve got. I’ve had an idea for how to handle that story for a really long time and so I’m kind of sheepish working with Chris, or anybody else, where I’m kind of saying “I want you to do what you do, but here’s the idea I had”. And fortunately most of my ideas are pretty vague, so if we can get what I’m looking for, but still give the writer a lot of room to do his particular spin on it, then I guess we’re doing OK.
Yeah.
I have to mention the elephant in the room. We’ve got Abe Sapien Dark and Terrible, B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, and even Hellboy in Hell all ending next year. (Read the full the announcement in The Vulture’s interview with Mike Mignola here.)
MM: Yeah, Hellboy in Hell. I’m actually scripting issue nine right now and chomping at the bit to get on to issue ten, which will be the last issue. So, um, that’s a story that I think over the years I’ve said that it was a series that was going to go on forever, and at some point I started saying it was four books, because I’d plotted it out to four books, and then I replotted it so that it was three books, and then somewhere in the middle of The Hounds of Pluto I went “Huh. Things are moving much faster with a different tone than I expected. Is it possible to end this thing in two more issues?” And it turned out it was.
I let these things work at their own pace.
It feels almost on par for the course, what with the other two major books ending. Almost a little coincidental.
MM: Yeah, it is coincidental. I mean, again, Hellboy in Hell wasn’t supposed to end until just a few months ago I made this decision. The trick is keeping the other stuff going, and maybe shifting the focus. I think Witchfinder will, in the future, be coming out more often, hopefully.
Please do, because I love that series.
MM: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. will keep going, hopefully. A lot of it comes down to finding the right artist for these books. And then, of course, the last arc of B.P.R.D., again, whenever the logistics work out for the artists on that book. I don’t think we have too big of a gap between Hell on Earth and the last B.P.R.D. arc.
I’ve probably kept you talking for much too long already, but one last question to wrap up. What are you most proud of in your work for 2015?
MM: I don’t know. It’s all a blur. To me, there are no gigantic standouts and, more importantly, there are no gigantic, horrible, festering, embarrassments. The fact that everything seems to be continuing to run along is what I’m happy about. I’m very happy with how I plotted these last two issues of Hellboy in Hell. Obviously, it’s the book that I’m closest to and the way I figured out how to wrap up that series… I hope I can pull it off. I mean, issue ten especially has got some interesting things in it. It’s certainly going to be a comic unlike anything I’ve ever done. Unlike anything that’s been in the series. So far, I’m very proud of the way that thing is tying up.
Continued belowThanks Mike.
And also thanks to David Hyde for putting this together. I hope you all enjoyed this.
