Mignola talks "Hellboy: The Island"

[Jonah Weiland]

This June sees the return of Hellboy to comics in the new mini-series "Hellboy: The Island." CBR News caught up with creator Mike Mignola who updated us on the comic as well as the upcoming sequel to the film and more.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=5025

[Ken O]

Good info. Thanks for posting it here.

[hellboyone]

Cool. Plus the cover image without my Photoshop noodling. :)

R.

[Mikolaj]

Yeah... Cool and all. But does that mean that the next, big Mignola "gothik project" is gonna be a.... erm... A Book? It's not that i don't like books or that i don't appreciate Chrispoher Golden talent but i really expected it to be a comic book... Or maybe I'm wrong and I did read the whole thing in a wrong way?

[Maija]

THE ANTICIPATORY TINGLING!!! IT BURNS!!!

Great article. Cool to get word on the many, many pies Mike has his fingers in, the novel being one of them, but I'm pretty certain the novel is not The Unnamed Gothic Pie, er Project.

That's sweet to know that we'll eventually get to see the "deleted scenes".

Mmmmmmmm, gothic pie-- rich, dense atmosphere wrapped in a tender, flakey, screaming pastry.

[Tad]

ruta, I see you very soon taking the stage in "Sweeney Todd: a one woman show." :)

[Maija]

Wallop! Down the chute!

[ReptileJK]

Wow! Very cool. How can one stand the wait? Almost as painful as this wait, is the wait that will come after The Island comes out :( . Yet, I'd rather Mike put things out as irregularly as he wants, if it means the stories will continue to be top notch. One of the downfalls of monthly comics is that there is no way every issue can be gold. HB, however, has yet to dissapoint!

[Poe Ghostal]

I'm thinking we owe the "drinking with skeletons" line to Ron Perlman (probably in a slightly different form).

[1HELLBOY]

Hellboy/Thor would be freakin awesome :D

this interview just made me that much more excited for this to come out, man i can't wait for this

[Anakin]

Hellboy and Thor would totally kick ass. But who gets the play with Mjollner? :)

I can't wait to read The Island! In between this and Harry Potter 6, this summer is just full of anticipation!

[el seth]

As Hellboy now has a potentially wider audience due to the movie, fans might worry that the Hellboy mythos has been watered down to appeal to new readers. Fortunately, it seems there 's no need to be concerned.

Heh heh. Okay, show of hands, how many of us were worried about this as a possibility?

Yeah. Didn't think so.

[Poe Ghostal]

The Hellboy "mythos" has been all over the road as it is. And judging from all the extras included in the special edition DVD, I detect a wee bit of editorializing creeping in here.

I'm just defending the movie's existence, is all. We've got novels and short story collections, why not a movie? All I'm waiting on now is the animated series and the video game. Personally I find cross-media interpretation fascinating...may I be so lucky as to create a franchise someday! Mwah ha ha!

[citymadeofash]

Lastly, one of Mignola's other creations, "The Amazing Screw-On Head" is being developed as an animated series for the Sci-Fi network. Mignola said he gave the company doing the series his notes on the script and has liked what he saw, but he isn't actively involved with the project.
HOLY CRAP!!!! :Dx100 *does happy dance*


Oh god..... I love the amazing screw on head. This alone might be worth getting television for the first time in 4 years! (lol)

THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD

In an interview at Suicide Girls, "Wonderfalls" co-creator Bryan Fuller talked about his work on the Mike Mignola adaptation. "I first read it because of [Carrie producer] Mark Stern. We became really good friends during Carrie because we would hang out in the hotel room and gossip like hens. He became the executive VP of program development at Sci-Fi Channel so he sent over the comic book and told me to take a look. I read it and thought it was f**king brilliant. Mark asked me what I thought about adapting it and I said I would do dirty things to clean people to get a chance to do that. It’s such a great universe to go play in but there wasn’t a huge amount of support for it at Sci-Fi. In fact of the four executives and [President of Sci-Fi Channel] Bonnie Hammer, two said that they didn’t get it and the other two were like, let’s go for it. Bonnie Hammer was the tie breaker; she said that she didn’t really get it but she trusted us as being more of the demographic for Sci-Fi Channel than she is. I did an outline, wrote a script and I got notes from Mike Mignola because I very much wanted to make him happy. The initial draft of the outline did all those things the network wanted in terms of relatability because it’s a very weird universe. So I came up with some stuff and Mignola hated it because it wasn’t the comic book. After my Dead Like Me experience I told him I respected that. Mignola is a fantastic artist but he’s not a television writer so he’s got to trust me in that area but I think that trust was very hard to come by with that first draft and outline. I had all this backstory with Lincoln fighting Screw-On Head and Mignola was like, don’t do that. So I scaled that way back. There have to be some changes to make it television friendly because the story style and the structure of the comic book is so absurdist that people would watch and not understand. Now Emperor Zombie used to be Screw-On Head’s manservant so there is this subtext of servitude. I also beefed up the triangle between Emperor Zombie, Screw-On Head and Mr. Groin. Also the vampire chick used to be Screw-On Head’s girlfriend before Emperor Zombie turned her into a vampire and turned her against him. I wanted to show relationships so that when these people are in a room together it’s not just weird people in a room but weird people who have relationships with each other."

[Poe Ghostal]

What do you suppose he means by this?
"[...]We've introduced the folklore elements, (and) my own kind of Lovecraft mythology that is being dealt with in the BPRD. This new chapter of Hellboy is very, very folklore-oriented. So this story, in a way, is me making my big statement about the kind of fake 'Lovecraftian' mythology (featured in Hellboy to this point)."
I'm wondering what this "statement" he's referring to is...I have two interpretations thus far. One is that he's dismissing his "fake Lovecraftian mythology" as amateurish or childish (unlikely).

The other is that he's suggesting his Lovecraftian mythology (or perhaps Lovecraft's own works) are really just the latest version of the same ol' myths humanity has been telling throughout history.

[hellboyone]

I think Mike's calling it "fake Lovecraft" so that people know what the inspiration is and that so nobody interprets that he's in some way up there with Lovecraft, especially for the hardcore Lovecraft fans. It's loving homage, not straight copying or trying to do a better version of it. It's self-depricating, in a way.

R.

[ReptileJK]

I think Mike's calling it "fake Lovecraft" so that people know what the inspiration is and that so nobody interprets that he's in some way up there with Lovecraft, especially for the hardcore Lovecraft fans. It's loving homage, not straight copying or trying to do a better version of it. It's self-depricating, in a way.

R.

For what it's worth, this is the way I interpereted Mike's statement, as well.

[citymadeofash]

For what it's worth, this is the way I interpereted Mike's statement, as well.
As did I. Being a hardcore Lovecraft fan myself, I understood his paying hommage to one of America's master's or horror fiction.

If you havent already, its definitly worth checking out Mignolas work in Dark Horse Presents #142 (http://darkhorse.com/profile/profile_popup.php?sku=98-036)

[Johann]

Some great news, updates are ALWAYS appreciated.
However, the wait is killing me, knowing that it will be out in just a few months is much worse than knowing a year of wait is around the corner.

I fear i can never get over the fact that Mike will not be doing the next Hellboy arc. Bermejo is a great artist and all, but I just don't want it to happen. :(

The thor/hellboy thang sounds groovy, although it's highly unlikely.

[Poe Ghostal]

I wonder if the non-Hellboy collaborative novel with Golden is Joe Golem.

[kid cthulhu]

Good news, good news!

I'm only wishing it was more than 2 issues. Definitely psyched about the "deleted scenes" idea. Hope it ends up in the final product.