It’s not every day one of your favorite characters turns 20 years old, but that’s the case today as Hellboy’s official first appearance was 20 years ago today. To help celebrate this day, we had Mark Tweedale’s excellent piece earlier looking back on 20 years, and now the whole Mignolaversity team has an interview with Dark Horse Comics Editor-in-Chief and Mignolaverse architect Scott Allie. We talk to Scott about the development of this world, what’s coming next, what’s around the corner over at Abe Sapien, one special trip to Argentina, and more.
On top of that, we have some exciting exclusive art, including:
- A first look at the final version of the “Hellboy in Hell” #5 cover
- A first look inside “Hellboy in Hell” #5
- A first look at the cover to “Lobster Johnson: Get the Lobster!” #1 from Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Tonci Zonjic
- A first look at the cover to “Sledgehammer ’44: The Lightning War” #2 from Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Laurence Campbell
That’s a lot of exciting reveals, and just about enough to properly celebrate Hellboy’s birthday (so to speak). But come back the next couple hours as we have a couple art features of B.P.R.D. and Hellboy artists drawing Hellboy, as well as other artists who shared their love of the character through their art.
Today marks the 20th Anniversary of the first appearance of Hellboy. To you, what is Hellboy’s legacy? How do you think comics would be different if Mike never published a Hellboy story?
Allie: Mike won the creator-owned jackpot, and he did it right. In terms of success, obviously, but also morality, work ethic, everything. A lot of people have contributed to this over the years, and Mike’s generous with how he shares the long term benefits of the success of the books. This thing started as one guy doing a comic—when I first started working with him, no one ever knew what we were up to, I was on the other end of the phone and fax machine, the only guy who knew what he was doing. And it’s grown organically from there to be a much bigger thing. I hope I live to see the day this whole thing is over, and we’ve organized it all into a bunch of great collections, and it’s easy to read it all in an order that tells you a single, complex story unlike anything that’s ever been told in comics or anything else.
A lot has been happening in the Mignolaverse lately. “Abe Sapien” has been firing on all cylinders, Rafael Albuquerque is the new cover artist on “B.P.R.D.,” and “Itty Bitty Hellboy” is about to kick off. Is there anything that stands out to you as especially exciting right now? Which of these events do you see making the biggest splash?
Allie: Well, the biggest splash is generally whenever Mike draws Hellboy, and we got one of those coming soon, with the fifth issue of Hellboy in Hell in December. I’m very excited about the overall effect of the books—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I love the collection of artists, the diversity of what we have, and the web of connections between the books. All the pieces fit together, in ways that reward close readings, but no two books feel quite the same.
What can you tell us about the upcoming Lobster Johnson mini-series that features the return of Tonci Zonjic? It appears that LoJo’s supporting cast has been getting more defined roles lately, and that they are becoming a more integral part of the story. What was the impulse to give LoJo’s crew more focus, and what about the character has led him more into the spotlight these past few years?
Allie: I think the impulse there is two simple things. Lobster himself remains a bit of a cypher—you never see him unmasked, you don’t know him as Bruce Wayne or Lamont Cranston, so you don’t really know him at all, and so his supporting cast are more relatable characters. On top of that, it’s John’s inclination to bring a lot of life to supporting characters, folks who might be treated as cyphers themselves by other writers. It’s one of the things I love about John’s work, something I try to do myself. I like the idea of supporting characters occasionally taking over, supporting characters who don’t think of themselves as supporting characters. I think that’s part of where John comes from in bringing so much life and focus to the supporting characters—even those cops.
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We loved the first “Sledgehammer” series, and are very pleased to see it continuing, with Laurence Campbell taking over from the equally great Jason Latour. The Sledgehammer suit is an interesting “character” to build a book around – how did this come about as something you guys want to focus more on? When the suit was introduced years ago, was it always earmarked as something to return to, or did something re-spark the interest in the suit?
Allie: After Iron Prometheus, the first LoJo series, Mike knew he’d get back to the suit somehow, but we didn’t know quite how. Originally the idea to do this book came when we finished Lost and Gone Forever and John Severin said he’d like to do a World War II book next. We were like, Shit, all our stuff starts AFTER World War II! And then Mike’s brain started working, and he started talking to John, and they came up with this book for Sev. Which of course was sadly not meant to be. I can’t remember if Mike or John came up with the name Sledgehammer for the suit—I think that came up because we knew we needed a fun name for the book, and Mike really wanted it to feel like a Golden Age comic. Well, sort of. Anyway, it’s always impossible to remember who came up with what, because we usually come up with it on these great phone calls where a million things get said and a little bit sticks. Keeping score would be beyond tedious.
Agent Howards was introduced in “The Abyss of Time” but made a spectacular entrance at the end of “Wasteland.” He’s an incredibly interesting character, especially with his Hyperborean connections and considering what he went through in “The Abyss of Time.” How did that character get developed, and were his origins mostly from you or from John, or some combination of both?
Allie: That’s another one where we didn’t know we were gonna get attached to him. Mike gave the basic framework of Abyss of Time, which provided Howards’s origins, so to speak, and which would then leave him in the basement, out cold, probably to be found someday … but we liked it all enough, we loved what James did, that it made sense to get right back to it. Even though we plan things ahead pretty well, there is flexibility, and John was able to get right back to him. Howards is going to continue to be a pretty great character, and when James comes back for an extended run next year you’re really going to see some amazing stuff for Howards.
Abe Sapien so far has very much been Abe by himself trying to figure out who he is in this new world. With a story that lives and dies on its lead who is very much on an introspective journey, what difficulties arise from that set up in terms of keeping readers engaged, and would you say that journey is the focus on the story for the foreseeable future?
Allie: That journey is definitely the focus. Right now he’s kind of running from something, but the journey will evolve, and he’ll be running to something more and more. I feel a little at a disadvantage, that he’s on the road alone, and so I don’t get to develop relationships the way I’d really love to across an ongoing series—although there’s room for some of that. And Strobl and Vaughn’s relationship evolves. Abe’s relationship to the central question—Am I the monster that ends the human race?—evolves throughout the series. It changes, and his approach to the question will change. It’d be great if we were doing something where Devon’s chasing him and they butt heads repeatedly, that would give a certain kind of tension and through line that would work really well for this sort of thing, but that’s not what we’re doing. One of the challenges is keeping his introspective journey where you can see it, in a book where we don’t do much narration, and where he doesn’t have close confidantes to talk to. Right now I really wish there was some one there to yell at him, say, “Abe! You’re in denial!” But I just need to rely on the reader to pick that up.
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Is there a difficulty to having a story where Abe is constantly meeting new folks, and so there isn’t much conversation that can go as deep as, say, old friends would have? Will Abe encounter any familiar faces anytime soon?
Allie: Yeah, exactly. That’s the trick. He has to form temporary bonds. Drinking helps. Don’t expect much in the way of familiar faces.
We’ve seen, physically, how different Abe is after his time in the coma. Will we get a better sense soon of just how much of a toll that experience took on him emotionally?
Allie: Yeah, I think so. But the real emotional toll you’re gonna see is from the events hitting him now. Abe is vulnerable and conflicted, and he’s going to get angry at himself when he experiences some real failures out here on the road.
Gustav Strobl is circling Abe in this story with Agent Vaughn in tow, and he’s a character that has been on the periphery in a few previous stories, but never quite in the mix. What’s his role, and why introduce him to the heart of a story like this?
Allie: If Abe’s question is, Am I the monster that ends the human race?, then Strobl’s is, How can I get a piece of that? Strobl thought he was set. The Apocalypse would come, and the demons and devils would come up and say, Good work, Strobl, you get Australia. But Hellboy killed Satan, other stuff happened, and Strobl is not gonna get what he thought he was promised. So he has a very different vested interest in what’s happening with this end of the world shenanigans. And since Mike and I wanted Abe to be a book about the supernatural, occult end of this situation, we loved the idea of having a sorcerer at the heart of it. He’s the kind of character I know how to write. He could have been the villain in The Devil’s Footprints, or my Solomon Kane series. So he has a great perspective on what’s happening, and then Vaughn has a perspective on him that the reader can relate to.
Speaking of Agent Vaughn, he is the latest in a line of human B.P.R.D. agents getting thrust into the spotlight. When these characters are created, are they made to be “red shirts” and then are rescued out of anonymity, or are they created with a purpose in mind, but one that takes the reader a long time to see come to fruition?
Allie: The first time I wrote Vaughn was in a short story I wrote for Guy Davis, which I think is in the Being Human collection. And boy, was he the definition of a red shirt. Except he didn’t die. I literally needed a character to get beat up, to end up unconscious, so Abe and Liz could talk about how they always lived through this shit but regular people could hardly keep up. That was sort of the point of the story. And how’s he end up? Face to face with Abe as some mutant rips him in half. When I wrote him in Pickens County I knew I’d be writing him later on in Abe, so he got teamed up with a red shirt, Peters, who did die in that story. So Vaughn did not initially have a greater purpose, not in the first eight pager, but he did by the time we got to Pickens. Same with a lot of John’s characters. I aspire to do what John does, which is to imbue each minor walk-on character with enough life that they could be important later. Like Ashley Strode. She first showed up in War on Frogs #3 or #4, where John needed someone to play against Liz Sherman. A fully formed character with no plans for the future. Then when Mike and Cameron Stewart and I were kicking around ideas for Cameron to write and draw something for us, he knew what he wanted, and we realized Ashley was it. John said he had no plans for Ashley, so off she went. Sometimes it takes a long time for any of us to know what the characters are really all about. But it always kind of looks like we planned it…
Continued belowGiven Strobl’s return, Edward Grey’s presence in “Hellboy in Hell”, the focus on Abe’s past and the ominous presence of the Oannes Society and the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra, it seems like the occult and that Victorian time period are increasing in importance. Was this by design from the start, or was it a situation like with many of the human characters where their roles increased naturally as the story developed?
Allie: That’s just a natural result of the kind of occultism we’re into, that we’re going to trace it back to that period and populate the history with people from that period. It’s a little meta, really. The origins of Hellboy’s world, Mignola’s world, come in many ways from the actions of people from that time period, because Mike’s own work is so inspired first of all from the writings of that period. Mike’s superhero stuff is historically set in the period when superhero comics were born, and his occult stuff comes from the days of Arthur Machen.
You recently had the chance to go down to Argentina to visit Sebastian and Max Fiumara in their home country. Did seeing where they grew up, where their influences came from, inspire or challenge you to try new things in your collaboration?
Allie: I definitely got some ideas from what I saw there, but the real value was the degree to which we go to bond, and how much we talked through the story of the Abe series. I told them the whole thing from beginning to end, and we brainstormed on some details. We know how it ends, but there’s a lot of room along the way to get their ideas in there. I’d invited them to make suggestions before, but I think meeting face to face, and eating every meal together for most of a week, has made it easier for them to ask for specific things in the scripts. I have a better idea of the differences between the two of them, as well, things that I’ll want to make happen in Max’s issues as opposed to Seba’s. Argentina was great, but by far the best thing I got out of it was getting to become friends with these guys.
After 20 years of Hellboy, there are a lot of stories for the Mignolaverse team to be proud of. As one of the chief architects, I’m curious: what are the ones you personally enjoy the most, whether you’re talking Hellboy, BPRD, LoJo or any of the other books?
Allie: I always like the compact atmosphere stuff. The Corpse, The Troll Witch, Crooked Man. Sometimes Mike’s work really evokes another time and place, and puts me there, and I love that sort of work. That’s what Mike wants to do the most, and that’s what a lot of Hellboy in Hell will be. When you read Hellboy in Hell #5 … Whoo. It’s such a weird vignette, poignant and haunting.
