Mike Mignola spoke, moderated by Christopher Golden, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston on Thursday, April 3, 2008. He talked about how he became an artist, his influences, Hellboy and what projects he’s working on now. If you have a chance to hear him speak, I recommend it. He’s genuine and very funny.

Three points that stuck with me:

• He has a “working stiff, blue collar” work ethic. He’s always at his art table, seven days a week.
• Went through a long phase where he wanted to be a different artist, (draw in a different artist’s style,) every two days.
• Created Hellboy (as opposed to the mainstream superhero stuff that was prevalent in the early 90s comic market) because he wanted to do “what he wanted to do” and get paid for it.

My notes from the talk and several of the images he showed in his presentation are after the jump.

Background

Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer 2

• Grew up in Oakland, CA.
• His mother died when he was very young. His father didn’t discourage him to pursue an art career, but he wanted Mike to get a teaching degree or something to fall back on.
• From his father, he developed a “working stiff, blue-collar work” attitude.
• Moved to NYC after art school with another art student who was, unbeknownst to Mike, insane.
• He started at Marvel Comics as a “really bad inker.”

“Amazing Spaceman”
by Jeff Jones

Influences

• Frank Frazetta. Learned to build strong powerful shapes in his compositions.
• Jack Kirby. He drew so damn fast. By the time Jack realized it was a bad idea, he had already drawn 7 issues.
• Jeff Jones. Shape-oriented. A lot of guys are “line guys,” but Mike prefers strong simple shapes. Jeff Jones boils Frazetta down to simple shapes.
• Berni Wrightson. For two years, Mike couldn’t draw anything without looking to see how Wrightson did it.


Berni Wrighton’s
Frankenstein

• Craig Russel. Storytelling influence.

He went through phase where he wanted to be a different guy every two days. Comics forced him to work fast, tread water and combine all the stuff he learned and liked.

Hellboy

• He needed to work, cook, in the industry for ten years before he was “ready” to create Hellboy.
• He shudders to think of what Hellboy would have been like had he not done this. It would have been something cheesy… “Axelord, Demonslayer.”


Mike Mignola’s first
sketch of Hellboy

• Thought about making a commercial comic, was invited to make an Image comic, but felt he would hate doing it.
• He wanted to do “what he wanted to do” and get paid for it. Contrast with Image founders who created Image books that mirrored their mainstream comics. They said, “we want to give the audience what they’re asking for.” Mignola wanted to take a shot on something that reflected his personality.
• Wanted to draw a paranormal investigator, but thought he would get bored drawing a normal guy. Drew a monster so that, even if he was at the grocery store, he would be drawing monsters.
• Laughed out loud when he wrote the name “Hell Boy” on the belt buckle of a monster he drew for a convention sketch.
• Writing was very difficult in the beginning due to his lack of confidence.
• Cites a page from “The Corpse” as not “perfect, but pretty damn good.” The secret to making a page this good: “have fun.”


A page from “Hellboy: The Corpse”

• Towards the end of his tenure drawing Hellboy, he became obsessed with getting everything perfect. He took a month off in the middle of his last, long Hellboy story and re-thought everything he had done before. Threw it all away. Started again. Threw it away. Second-guessed his second guesses.
• So he stopped drawing.
• (He showed a Hellboy 2 trailer, but the volume wasn’t turned up on the laptop.) Hellboy 2: Mostly a Del Toro (the director) vision.

Other Work

• Hellboy became his “commercial book,” so he wanted to try to make his “weird book.” The Amazing Screw-On Head is the “best I can do.”
• Wrote it the way he talks, the way he explains the stories to people, with funny lines popping out, lots of humor.
• It redefined the type of work he wants to do, as Hellboy became more commercial and his thought process became less commercial.


Cover to
“Baltimore…”

• Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire is an illustrated novel. “I don’t like illustrating because I don’t like telling the reader what the characters look like.”
• Lobster Johnson is the focus of his next novel (with Christopher Golden,) and will be in the style of the pulps.

The best announcement he made is that he’s going to draw comics again.

Question and Answers from the audience.

Marketing and Promotional Products. He keeps a tight reign on commercial products dealing with the Hellboy comic. The movie stuff is out of his control. The nice thing is that the name “Hellboy” alone limits the scope of the commercial product. He feels the marketing stuff doesn’t make a ton of money anyway.

New Intellectual Properties. When he comes up with additional characters, IPs, he knows lawyers/advisors recommend that he should separate them all so that he can sell the rights, but he never does. He just throws them into Hellboy.

Advice for Artists with Comics Not Selling/Selling Slowly. “The beauty is it’s yours.” He said to his friend Gary Gianni who did a backup feature in Hellboy called “The MonsterMen,” “at the end of the day, you’ve done it, you put it in the drawer, or you keep doing it if you can afford to keep doing it, and it’s yours. It has a life.” Whereas you do something for a publisher, do a great job, they publish it once and throw it out or bury it someplace.

The First Thing He Did Which He Felt Didn’t Suck. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Folklore. Stocks his studio library with books of folklore, mythology. Andrew Lang Fairy Tale books. He was going to do these stories as straight adaptations, but no one would have cared. He uses them in Hellboy stories instead.