I do think there's a difference when you see a book where you can tell the creator's doing something they really love or are really passionate about as opposed to an artist or a writer who is just doing a particular job or trying to sell a product or trying to cash in on a popular trend.
Mike Mignola
My Hellboy is modeled on my father in some ways: a guy who's been in the Korean War, and he's traveled, and he's done a lot of stuff, and he's kind of got a been there, done that attitude. He's also been in the world. Del Toro's change was to have Hellboy bottled up in a room and mooning over the girl he can't have.
I've just always liked monsters, since I was a little kid. It was always the thing I found interesting. It's always what I wanted to draw; it's always what I wanted to read, and so, yeah, I don't know. It's a good question for a therapist, why I like monsters. But I tend to not question it. It's what pays the bills, so that's kind of nice.
I've painted in the past, but I only average about one painting a year, and the last painting I did, I actually really liked.
I hadn't seen 'Bride of Frankenstein' until high school or maybe even later than that. It's really one of the great movie experiences where you think you know what it's going to be, but it's so much weirder and so much better than anything you could've imagined. It's so full of these striking, powerful images.
The more I see of the movie business, the less I understand about it. I have no idea what goes on with that stuff.
When the first 'Hellboy' series came out, in the same batch of fan mail I got a letter from somebody from the Church of Satan, and I got a letter from a minister, and they both liked it. And I thought, 'What am I doing that I'm making both these guys happy?'
I've always been much more comfortable with drawing fantasy stuff.
I'm thinking about color all the time. Sometimes even as far back as the plotting sequence.
When I started the 'Hellboy' series way back when, I wasn't really thinking consciously about the humor, but Hellboy does have my personality, and that's an important part of my personality.
My struggle over the years has constantly been, it only takes 10 minutes, or an average shower, to come up with a mini-series or two, but it takes a year to draw them. So for me, it's been just trying to find a way to get all these ideas and all these incidents on paper.
The idea of a Frankenstein-like creature is something I've done several times. It's such an icon of the horror scene.
There's a ton of stuff in mythology and folklore that is loaded with wonderful creatures that I haven't drawn yet, but that's kind of my retirement plan. Theoretically, I won't be doing comics any longer, and I'll just be drawing and painting whatever the hell I want. Most of that will be monsters.
