Mike Mignola: Looking Back at Hellboy 2 and...Ahead?
By Steve Fritz
Hellboy 2, now on DVD
It must really be something to be Mike Mignola. Over the last five
years, his devilishly delightful creation Hellboy has gone from comic
book icon to mass media monster. That doesn’t mean the general public
knows his personal vision of the Big Red cat fancier and demon slayer.
They are buying into the franchise thanks to the films of his longtime
buddy Guillermo Del Toro.
Go onto the IMDB sometime. Check out the credits on Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
You’ll discover Del Toro shares the story credit with Mignola and the
mighty Mexican film director has the screenplay exclusively to himself.
So, was it Mignola’s idea to include Dr. Krauss or have Liz Sherman in a
family way? No. Those are ideas that are strictly Del Toro. Much the
same way other Hollywood types have put their personal imprimaturs on a
comic book creation, Del Toro has indelibly stamped Mignola’s creation
with his own flourishes and idiosyncrasies. Not that the general
public, or Mignola for that matter, mind.
It reminds me of a time I once had an interview with Neil Gaiman. At
that time, Terry Gilliam had purchased the rights to his and Terry
Prachett’s novel Good Omens.
When asked if he thought this would make a good movie, Gaiman, quite
cheerfully, quipped, “I don’t know if it will make a good Neil Gaiman
or Terry Prachett movie, but it should make one great Terry Gilliam
film.”
One gets the impression Mignola would concur with Gaiman regarding Del
Toro’s treatment of Hellboy. So when the opportunity came to discuss
the differences with him, and Mignola’s personal involvement in the
creative process, it was impossible to say no.
Here’s what he had to say:
Newsarama: The new DVD set comes with a documentary by Guillermo Del Toro about making Hellboy 2 called In Service of the Demon.
Mike Mignola: Oh really? Cool! Does he mention me?
NRAMA: Actually, you’re in it.
MM: That’s nice!
NRAMA: One of the points it brings out is you and Del Toro share 90% of the same vision.
MM: That percentage might be a little high. We do comfortably
meet somewhere in the middle. From the moment I met Guillermo, it was
amazing how much we had the same ideas on the same things. He is much
better read than I am, but we do share a real affection for this genre
and monsters in general.
Man Accidentally Shoots Wife During Sex
Hellboy with his gun
NRAMA: I was more interested in the 10% or whatever difference.
MM: His sensibilities are much louder than mine. He’s much more
colorful and emotional; more flashy. I see that especially in the
second film, the sense of humor is much broader than mine. I tend to be
a bit quieter and dryer, grayer. He uses more color and he likes stuff
that moves. I like stuff that stands still.
One of the jokes that’s is when we were doing design work on both Hellboy
movies, I would hand him some design things, then he would hand them to
someone else and instruct them to make things spin around and have gas
jets pop out of them. It’s been a running joke for some time. I would
do something and he would laugh at how simple it was. Then he would add
clock gears spinning around it.
NRAMA: It’s funny you mention that. In the film it shows him designing the Golden Army soldiers.
MM: That was clearly something that if I had any hand in them
they would have been…I would have had something similar as far as the
silhouette, but they would have had two or three big gears in it. His
had 60,000 tiny, little gears and other moving parts. I think much more
in simpler, er, chunks.
NRAMA: Would you say that’s due to your personal illustrating style?
MM: It does come from my illustration background, but there are
plenty of other illustrators out there who draw 60,000 little gears and
moving parts in their work. In fact, one of the major designers is
Francisco Velasquez, a Mexican comic book artist. He’s the guy who
would add gears and moving parts. It’s a different style, a different
sensibility.
NRAMA: One thing I noticed in the documentary is Del Toro mentioning an illustrator who you and I also liked named Chichoni.
MM: I have no problem with that, especially after going from the
first film to the second. I knew we were not going to go with my
version of things on the big screen. My job on the Hellboy
films is to help him realize his vision of what this stuff should be.
There were certain scenes in the film that we would differ radically
about. I think the Troll Market is very much not my vision.
NRAMA: The Troll Market reminded me a lot of a Harry Potter thing.
MM: Yeah. It was so colorful and lively. Particularly as
we had a budget issue, I was much more of the mind to have something
that only had three characters as opposed to 300. It wouldn’t have had
as much light. It wouldn’t have had as much color. I would have made it
spooky, quiet and it probably would have been a complete failure. Of
course, it’s one of the scenes that everyone has loved the most. It’s
just not my sensibility to have something that much fun. That’s so much
Del Toro’s personality.
NRAMA: Now one thing you say directly in the film is you loved Pan’s Labyrinth. In fact, in the film you said Hellboy 2 shouldn’t be considered a sequel to the first Hellboy, but that film.
a...disagreement
MM: We had already decided to make Hellboy 2 a fancy, folklore-based film before I had a chance to see Pan’s Labyrinth. He hadn’t even started Pan’s Labyrinth
yet. Obviously, he had written it and knew he was going to do it. He
was in that folklore mindset. So was I because that was the kind of
stuff I was writing in Hellboy. So it made perfect sense to do that kind of stuff.
So there was a lot of fantasy stuff I had never seen Del Toro do before Pan’s Labyrinth, I was kind of sitting there going ‘I don’t know about this.’ Then when I saw Pan’s Labyrinth, I went ‘Oh My God! Of course you can do this.’ After Pan’s Labyrinth
there was a lot of things in the script I would have questioned him on
all I could say is ‘Boy! You really know what you’re doing! I’ll stay
the hell out of your way.’ Yes, I had to hold my tongue in a few
places, but it’s not my usual style.
NRAMA: But Hellboy is your baby. The title does say ‘Mike Mignola’s’—note the possessive-- ‘Hellboy.’
Abe Sapien
MM: The first film, to me, was all about Guillermo putting my
comic on the screen. Through the course of that first movie, he
gradually took possession of those characters. With Hellboy 2, it’s about Del Toro owning those characters. What you see there is truly a Del Toro Hellboy. He’s much more confident.
In a way, the best way to compare it is to Tim Burton’s Batman. The first Batman
film was fine, but it was a little safe. With the second film, you
could see that Burton was saying he was going to do the crazy shit only
he was capable of. He was putting his personality on the character. I
think that’s what you see with the second Hellboy. There were
less places where Del Toro would ask me if he could do something. He
just did them. It was his character by that point, and that’s fine.
NRAMA: So you are comfortable with this?
MM: I am. My version exists. It exists in the comics. His
version, as different as it is, is still true to the spirit of what I
do.
NRAMA: So let’s look back a bit. I interviewed you when they did
the animated version of Hellboy with Cheeks Galloway doing the
character design. You were comfortable with that.
MM: Yeah. The more different it is from my stuff, the more I can
be objective about it. What makes me most uncomfortable is when people
try to imitate me and get it wrong. So in some ways that made the
second film more difficult but in other ways it made the film easier
because I could separate myself from it more.
I think what also helped is it wasn’t an adaptation of one of my
stories. It was an original story. There was no part of me saying ‘I
did it this way and you’re changing it.’ So what happened in the story
of Hellboy 2
has certain parallels to a story I’m working on in the comic books. So
even if there were things that I would have done different from this, I
felt fine because I have the comic book. I can put it out there my way.
NRAMA: Yeah. The idea of Hellboy being a daddy strikes me as kind of alien to the work you do.
MM: That one was the one I was the most nervous about with the
fans. I was afraid they were going to come after us with pitchforks and
torches. If they did, I would have just handed them Guillermo’s
address. That wasn’t me. That is not my idea. It could have created an
odd situation because in the next film it could swerve [Del Toro’s]
Hellboy so far away from my Hellboy that I would have no idea what he
would do on the third picture. It could potentially put it on a
completely different planet than my character.
NRAMA: Now the DVD does include an animation by Brooks Burgess (Broken Saints) that is supposed to be a prequel to the third movie. Is it underway?
MM: We’ve always talked about it being three pictures. The question is he’s doing The Hobbit
first and that’s going to take years. When is he going to do the third
film. The big question with Guillermo is he’s always got 60,000
projects that are his next picture, it’s absurd for me to…
Del Toro
Well, the plan is he’s going to do The Hobbit and then he’s going to do Hellboy 3.
God only knows. It’s constantly changing. If he does do a third
picture, I hope he asks me to work on it. I think if I work on the
third picture, my role would be to safeguard my ending. I want to make
sure I don't tell him how I plan to end the comic. I don’t want him to
put that on the screen ten years before I get around to it and people
then say ‘Oh! I saw that!’
Guillermo actually did say that I told him my ending once. I hope
that’s not true. If it is true, I hope he forgot it. It would be a
weird situation because he has talked about the third film as being the
end of Hellboy. It would be weird to have the end of Hellboy on film
and I’m sitting there in the corner going ‘Uh…it’s not really over. I’m
over here!’
NRAMA: There’s one factor we haven’t discussed in the
interpretation of Hellboy, and that’s the performance of Ron Perlman.
What did you think of it?
MM: Guillermo and I, from the moment we met, agreed there was
only one actor who could play Hellboy, and we were right. Ron Perlman?
He’s…just…great. I can’t imagine it being done by anybody else. We had
a very difficult time convincing the studios that was the case. I know
we also take personal satisfaction when the reviews came back on the
first film and they agreed with us.