Hellboy is one of the best-known comic book characters outside of the worlds of Marvel and DC, andMike Mignola: Drawing Monsterstells the story of how it all began. Featuring exclusive interviews with Mike Mignola himself,Mike Mignola: Drawing Monstersalso boasts testimony from Mignola’s family, collaborators, and admirers alike. Directed by Jim Demonakos and Kevin Konrad Hanna, the documentary serves as both a celebration of a beloved comic book artist and a welcome introduction for those only slightly familiar with his signature character.
Mike Mignola: Drawing Monstersexplores how a stressful stint at Marvel Comics led Mignola to create Hellboy and reveals the deeply personal origins of the character. The film even sees Mignola and Guillermo del Toro each discussing the ups and downs of their collaboration on the movie version ofHellboyand its sequel, which ultimately affirmed Mignola’s preference for the medium of comic books (althoughHellboy: The Crooked Manis set to introduce another big-screen take on the character). Through it all, the documentary shows Mignola’s successes and impact through the eyes of collaborators and admirers like Patton Oswalt, Rebecca Sugar, and Ron Perlman.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man Trailer Reveals First Look At Terrifyingly Accurate Comic Book Villain
Revealed at SDCC, the latest trailer for Hellboy: The Crooked Man offers the first look at the villain of the upcoming comic book adaptation.
Screen Rantinterviewed Mike Mignola about opening up forMike Mignola: Drawing Monstersbut ended up having a conversation that ventured beyond the bounds of the documentary. Mignola revealed the moment he decided to leave Marvel Comics, touched on his relationship with Guillermo del Toro, and dished on his “third act”, a brand-new comic universe calledCurious Objects. Mignola even shared his joys at having his first-ever solo art gallery exhibition (September 19 through October 26 at New York’s Philippe Labaune Gallery), which will feature his rarely-seen watercolor work and a selection of work from hisgothicPinocchiobook.
Mike Mignola Reflects On Condensing His Story So Far Into A Documentary
“I Don’t Have To Do Interviews Anymore”
Screen Rant: You’ve obviously given interviews before, but I imagine it’s pretty different having a whole movie made about you. How was that process?
Mike Mignola: Well, it’s kind of nice in that I can say, “I don’t have to do interviews anymore—just watch the movie.” [Laughs] It’s very surreal, the stuff that you get used to. You don’t think about the fact that that much information about you is out there. It’s pretty odd. I try not to spend a lot of time looking back. I’m very happy where I am, so I keep going forward. But the nice thing is, if you’ve seen the movie, a lot of questions are sort of answered.
Something I loved about it was how it charted your journey. I feel like there are a lot of lessons in there for anybody that wants to be creative, whether or not they know about you or Hellboy. Was that something you’d hoped for in participating in this?
Mike Mignola: Yeah. The journey is kind of a long one and there are a lot of twists and turns, so the documentary obviously really simplified that, but I think you get the gist of it. I was very happy to be working at all, I was really bad at it, and I just kind of kept my head down and kept working. I have nothing else that I know how to do, and eventually I just kind of found my way into doing my own thing. It’s a 40-year journey that you cover an hour and a half in the movie, so there are a lot of ups and downs, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.
It felt to me like it told the story of you identifying your strengths at some point, and how that combined with you pulling from your own life resulted in this thing that continues to be relatable. I imagine it probably didn’t feel that easy as you were going through your career, right?
Mike Mignola: No. It’s amazing to me when I look back and think [that], as terrible as I was, I’ve never been out of work, or never been out of work beyond my control. There were a couple of times where I quit a job and found myself going, “I really have no work,” but it took two days to line up other work. It was only a struggle, I think, in that I was terrible.
It was a little bit of an uphill battle to get work, and then it was just a matter of steering myself towards the work I thought I could do well and figuring out how to do my best work. The whole thing is learning the whole time and then finally realizing, once I kind of knew what I was doing, “Okay, what’s next?” I never imagined I would be doing what I’m doing now, but I was smart enough to at least try it. Or, I got a gentle shove from my wife—“Try this thing and see if it works out.” It was 10 years of scraping and clawing and then, unbelievably, 30 years of being left alone to do whatever I want.
Mignola Reveals The Moment That Made Him Quit Marvel Comics
“That’s One Of The Real Big Turning Point Moments”
Was there any story from your life that you wish had gotten out there, but didn’t make the final cut?
Mike Mignola: No, [but] unfortunately, certain bits are condensed, so you kind of go, “I wish I could have told that complete story, or that ending of that story.” It does make it sound like I just kind of left Marvel at one point where there’s much more of a story about why I left Marvel. It gives a broad-strokes approach that, in some ways, makes it feel like certain things were a lot easier, or that I knew what I was doing.
So, there’s a lot more to fill in, but who’s got the patience to listen to me tell the long version of every story? It’s 40 years, and those first few years feel like they were 20 years. It was like 20 years in two years. My first year in New York was so crazy, and then there were giant stretches where I have almost no memory at all. Not for any drug use kind of thing—simply because it was like, “Oh, I was just working.” There are condensed periods of a lot of changes, and then there are stretches where you’re just sitting seven days a week at the drawing table.
Was there a specific moment that was the impetus for you to leave Marvel?
Mike Mignola: That’s one of the real big turning point moments that I remember so clearly. I was on a completely different track at that point. This was the early ‘90s, and I was spending a lot of time at Marvel in the X-Men office. This was the really brief, super commercial version of me.
I had come off Gotham by Gaslight and this Wolverine book, I had these two big projects lined up, and then I half-jokingly said to the X-Men editor at the time, “Rob Liefeld—he’s not the best artist, but there’s a lot of enthusiasm in his stuff. What would it be like to work over his layouts?” [The editor] said, “Why don’t you try that?” so I did an issue of X-Force over Rob’s thumbnail layouts. It was fun to do, but I had said, “Let me do the cover if I’m drawing the comic,” [because] I’d spent so many years doing covers for other people’s books. The editor said, “Okay, you can do the cover.”
I designed a cover where I would do three-quarters of it and Rob would do the rest, because he was doing a framing sequence in the book, and I got approval for the idea, but never got the go-ahead on the cover. I kept saying, “When do you want me to do the cover?” Eventually, I walked into the office, and there was the cover drawn by Rob.
I couldn’t believe that they didn’t value what I was doing and that [the editor] would lie to me to get this one more cover out of Rob. I was so disgusted and hurt, but mostly I was just really angry. I know this editor had a problem with being straight with people, but he could have made up any story. [It was] the fact that he just kept lying and lying and lying until I walked in and caught him.
I was about to start this other X-Men book, and I was waiting on a script. It was a four-issue miniseries, and it was going to be a high-profile book. I said, “If I haven’t gotten the script in the next 24 hours, I’m out of here.” 24 hours came and went, and the script didn’t show up, so I called and said, “I’m gone. Get somebody else.” That book has actually never been done.
And I’d always been a Marvel Comics guy. It felt really strange to say, “I’m done. That part of my career is completely over.” And I didn’t know anything about DC Comics—I didn’t really have any affection for those characters—so, suddenly, instead of having two publishers in New York, I had just one. I did one issue of Batman, I plotted it myself, and I loved what I did not because it was Batman, but because of the story. I think the fact that I left Marvel and went to DC, where I wasn’t really in love with the material, made Hellboy happen. I guess I should thank that X-Men editor for pushing me out the door.
Mignola Discusses Having His First-Ever Solo Art Gallery Show
“It Opens Up A Different Possible Future For Me”
I’d like to jump decades ahead, because around the time this documentary comes out, you’ll have your first gallery show in New York. As someone who started out as a self-described “bad inker” at Marvel, what does it mean for you to get to this place?
Mike Mignola: Well, it’s New York, which is my favorite town. To have my first gallery show in New York City is just huge. I’ve been doing the paintings for a while. I still have a little bit of a love-hate thing with them—though it’s leaning more towards a love thing these days—[but] I’ve been doing them mostly for myself, so it’s exciting to have them out where people can see them.
It’s significant in a lot of different ways, because if the gallery show is successful, then I see the potential for doing more of that kind of stuff. It opens up a different possible future for me. Not that I would stop drawing comics, but if the paintings become a viable thing, then it’s kind of exciting. Every couple of years, [it could be like,] “Do you take a year and just focus on paintings?” It all depends on how this show goes. It’s important as far as [a] potential future. It’s a place where you can see where you’re at and what your possible futures could be.
I have been kind of precious about my own stuff the last few years, and I’ve been saving some of my best stuff. With this show, they’re all for sale, including some of the paintings I was saving for myself. It’s a lot of stuff that wasn’t going to be for sale, so, for me, there’s a little bit of a pain in letting go. But it’s 169 pieces, I think. To see all of that stuff in one room… it’s really exciting. I’m really looking forward to it.
“You Go … This Is Going To Be Where Everything Ends”
You have pieces fromPinocchioin this gallery as well, right?
Mike Mignola: Yeah. I did an interesting thing with Pinocchio I’d never done before. That book is so special to me and my brothers. We all fell in love with that book at the same time. So, I let each of my brothers pick a piece from the book, and I kept a couple pieces from the book, but with everything else, I said, “We’ll put it in there and see if anybody else cares.”
I think I thought Pinocchio was the end all, be all. I had arrived at a place in my career where the last thing I needed to do was Pinocchio. It happens every once in a while. You go, “This is the book. This is the one. This is going to be where everything ends,” and then you do it and go, “Oh, I’m still alive. Oh, well. I guess I’ve got to come up with something else.” I put a lot of pressure on myself with the Pinocchio thing because that was a really big labor of love project. I’m really happy with it, but it’s done, and I’m not going to put the artwork in a shrine. So, yeah, [I’ll] put it out there.
Don’t Get Your Hopes Up For A Third Mike Mignola & Guillermo Del Toro Collaboration
“We Both Kept Going In Our Own Directions”
Screen Rant: In looking at your work withPinocchioand having just watched the documentary that explored your relationship with Guillermo de Toro, I was struck by how you both have incredibly unique takes on the same character which, to me, shows both how different the two of you are, but also how aligned it seems that you can be. In the documentary, there are clips of both of you saying you’d like to work together again. Do you think the best way to do that is on something like aPinocchio, which neither of you created, but both are passionate about?
Mike Mignola: Well, since we’ve both already done it, I don’t see us ever collaborating on something like that. What’s really crazy to me is as much time as I spent with Guillermo over the years, I don’t recall us ever discussing Pinocchio. Even since we’ve both done it, we’ve never compared notes on Pinocchio. I should probably send him a copy of the book.
Being able to look back now, I’m very happy about the time I spent with him. We had some adventures, and I just think we’ve both moved on in different directions. When you work on movies, especially if you’re on the movie set, there’s so much intensity day in, day out with these people—with the actors, with the director—and then when it’s over, it’s just over. It’s a very strange feeling [where] you just go, “I thought we were friends for life, but I’ll never actually see you again,” and, unfortunately, I think that’s kind of where del Toro and I are.
He’s just on another planet. I’m very glad I got to know him and work with him back when working on a movie was five or six guys, and not the career he has now. But we still speak or email occasionally. In the documentary—and I’m very glad we did this—you do see our clash, and then there’s just enough in the documentary to say, “Yeah, but they don’t hate each other still.” I just think there was a period where we intersected, and then we both kept going in our own directions. I think we certainly appreciate what the other guy is doing.
I do think [del Toro] appreciates that I didn’t cling to his heels and try to make a career in film. So many people in comics so desperately want to be working in film, and so many people [are] doing their own comics [as] a pitch for a TV show or a movie. I just love drawing comics. I remember [del Toro] asking, “What are you going to do now?” I went, “I’m going to go back and draw comics,” and I think he was relieved [by that] as opposed to [me saying], “I don’t know, what are you going to do next? What are we going to do next together?” It was a great experience working with him, but at the end of the day, I know what I do, and I’m not a film guy.
I like being left alone to produce work that I can control. The experience I had on the second movie… I spent three months working on that film, and it didn’t really impact that film very much at all. I came off of that, and I was really unhappy with the second movie. That’s my own problem. I have no good perspective on the film. I just had my problems with the film, and coming off that film, I remember thinking, “Man, if I had spent those three months that I did in pre-production in my studio, I would’ve produced a comic or two that would be exactly what I wanted them to be.”
The first movie I have no problem with, because that was exciting and an adventure, and that was all new. Figuring out how to make a Hellboy movie—that was all exciting. The second movie was a very different experience. I’ve made my peace with it, but for a while there I was grudging the time I spent on it. But our relationship survived, so that’s nice.
The New Curious Objects Comics Universe Is Mike Mignola’s “Third Act”
“I Never Thought I Would Take On Anything Large After Hellboy”
Screen Rant: You have a new anthology coming out next year under a new imprint,Curious Objects. I loved hearing about how personal of a place Hellboy seems to have come from in the documentary. Can you talk about what inspired this?
Mike Mignola: This is, I guess, my third act. I never thought I would take on anything large after Hellboy. I shouldn’t say after Hellboy. Hellboy is still out there, and I’m still writing some things, but I finished the story, basically, in Hellboy. I got to the point at the end of the BPRD series where we end the world, I did the whole Hell thing, and I thought, “Okay. From my part, I’ve gotten a chance to tell the whole arc of this story. Most people never get a chance to do something that big and finish it, so that’s great. Now, I’m kind of semi-retired, and I’m going to just get up every day and do whatever I want, and I’ll do paintings, or I’ll do drawings. Every day will be new and different.”
Then, I realized I had so many different ideas about what to do that I spent most of my time trying to figure out [which I should choose]. I had this one story I wanted to adapt, and I ended up saying, “It’s an Italian folk tale, [but] I don’t want to set it in Italy. I’ll make up a whole world to adapt this one story,” and making up the world took over. I filled four or five sketchbooks of costumes, locations, and maps. It was just crazy. It was like, “I’m going to do The Hobbit, but first I need to write The Silmarillion. I need the mythology and the background and the history.”
So, I ended up making up this whole gigantic thing just to adapt this one story, and then all the other stories started popping up, and now I’m on my second book. The first book comes out in January. I’m almost done with the second book, and I’ve fallen in love with the main character in the second book, and suddenly I’m going, “Oh. I’ve got 2, 3, 4 more books about this guy.” I’m thinking, “Dude, you’re old,” but the beauty is [that] I’m so excited. I’m having so much fun, and there’s no pressure to top Hellboy. I can still say, “I’m doing this book just for me now.” At some point, Dark Horse could say, “Hey, nobody’s buying it. We’re not going to keep publishing it,” but until that happens, I’m very happy just to be doing this book and rest comfortably with the career I have.
I am the creator of Hellboy. No matter how well this thing does, I don’t imagine my bio is going to change. I’ve got the one sentence bio. I’m the creator of Hellboy. That’s all you need to know, so, I’m completely free to do this odd fantasy thing because I’ve earned this spot I’m in where Hellboy is paying the bills, and I’m free to just keep going.
About Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters
Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters is a feature-length film that tells the story of how Mike Mignola came to create a world-renowned comic book universe. The film includes never before-seen interviews conducted with the legendary creator at his studio, drawing demonstrations, behind the scenes footage from workshops and comic book conventions, and interviews with some of the most influential people in entertainment.
Also check out our interview with directors Kevin Konrad Hanna and Jim Demonakos.
Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsterswill be released September 17 on digital platforms and is distributed by The Nacelle Company.
