Mignola admitted with a laugh that he hadn't actually seen the DVD extras on Hellboy 2 yet, but that he's excited about them. "There's a big documentary in it that I'm curious to see," he said. "I think I'm in it!"

We discussed the difference between Mignola's Hellboy, he of the comic books, and Del Toro's Hellboy in the movies. While Mignola gave Del Toro a lot of advice about how to treat Hellboy in the first flick, Del Toro pretty much took over the character in Hellboy 2 and he really became quite different from our beloved comic book Hellboy. For one thing, movie Hellboy is shacking up with firegirl Liz and having a lot of marital strife.

Mignola said:

My character is much more of a gruff old guy and the one in the film is a kid — he has a lack of maturity. There's a lot of "I like the girl and she doesn't like me." You see that with Abe Sapien too. In the comic all that stuff happened off camera. Hellboy's been around and had relationships and now he's a gruff guy dealing with bigger issues. One of the things Hollywood always needs is a girl. They look at that as where the story arc's gotta be. You're trying for as broad an audience as possible, and you need to humanize the characters. So the first thing you think is there's gotta be a love interest. I'm sure the studio would have suggested that [for Hellboy 2] if Del Toro hadn't suggested it.

While Del Toro controls the movie Hellboy, Mignola maintains control of the entire Hellboy universe in the comic books from Dark Horse. There's the central Hellboy comic, which he writes and often illustrates. And then there are spinoff books like BPRD (about the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense where Hellboy works), Abe Sapien (the solo adventures of Hellboy's fishy friend), and Lobster Johnson (a terrific, crazy sendup of 30s action adventure stories).

Mignola gives us some hints about what's coming up in the Hellboyverse:

We're starting Lobster Johnson at year one, building up to gigantic frenzy that will alter the world. For Hellboy, we're in the middle of a 4-book arc that will alter that character. I'm running the show, so I can say that this character isn't intended to last for a hundred years so he can sell underwear for some company. He's going to change and it's not going to be just a change of costume. We can cut off a leg and it will stay gone.

Plus, there's good news for those of us who adore Mignola's non-Hellboy stuff:

I'm starting a Victorian occult detective series set in the Hellboy world. There are also some non-Hellboy stories I've been talking about doing. Maybe companions to The Amazing Screw-On Head.

By writing his Victorian detective story, and returning to Screw-On Head, which takes place during the Lincoln Administration in America, Mignola is returning to historical territory he wants to explore more.
He said:

I love the nineteenth century. I love it visually, and as I'm writing the Victorian occult detective book – I can't draw it, I don't have the time - but as I write it it's just made of scenes I wish I could draw. That's part of the future of Hellboy that I envision – we may see some of that [Victoriana].

Finally, we asked Mignola what he thought of the new adolescent angst vampire movie Twilight. He said:

My daughter is very excited about it, but I'd rather not watch it. Twilight is too much the real world, it's not my kind of vampire. I prefer an old-school vampire. I co-wrote an old-shcool vampire novel with Christopher Golden [called Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire], and we've been struggling with a screen adaptation of it. We're trying to make an old school vampire movie. But the problem is that if nobody's made one in the last five years – nobody wants to make one.

The movie is slated to come out in 2010, with David "Dark Knight" Goyer as director. Here's hoping they can keep it old-school.

The eighteenth variation of Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" always seemed sweet and romantic to me, but it means something very different to this Weird Tales author:

WeirdTalesMagazine.com has more. While you're there, don't forget to download that free issue, because it has enough marvelous fiction, poetry, and book reviews to fill an entire afternoon — not to mention an exploration of sleep terrors and funky masks, a guided tour through Lovecraftian Dreamland, and an interview with Hellboy's Mike Mignola.

[WeirdTalesMagazine.com]

After listing Del Toro's multitude of future projects (like Frankenstein and Slaughterhouse Five, never mind that whole The Hobbit thing), the end of the Variety article reads:

Meanwhile, del Toro is awaiting word on whether U[niversal] will embrace a follow-up to "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army." The big-budget film opened in the heat of summer and fell short of blockbuster status in the U.S. but has performed well overseas.

"I think they’ll decide when the last euro hits the piggybank," del Toro said. "We laid the groundwork to have a magnificent third act. I’d like to return to an action franchise with 60-year-old actor Ron Perlman, because he’ll be scratching at that age when I get to it."

Langley said the studio is interested and may work with del Toro to add a TV series and online segments to broaden the following before making the series finale.

The "Langley" in question isn't the CIA headquarters made famous by shows like Chuck and Alias - although it would be great if they were the people in charge of future Hellboy decisions - but Universal's President of Production, Donna Langley. This isn't the first time that she's spoken in support of the Mignola/Del Toro franchise, but it is the first time she's suggested that it may extend to television. Could this be the next Buffy The Vampire Slayer in waiting? Only time - and the movie's foreign box office - will tell.

Guillermo Del Toro booked thru 2017 [Variety, via Blog@Newsarama]

In an interview with MTV, Mignola talked about his concern that the character could be killed off before he's had a chance to say goodbye:

“The problem is, what del Toro’s talked about to me is that ‘Hellboy III’ would be the end of Hellboy,” Mignola said. “And here’s where we have the big conflict. My version of Hellboy in the comics is a finite story, but it’s going to take me 15 years to get to the ending. If he makes Hellboy III and it’s the death of Hellboy, I’m left doing the comic going, ‘But I’m not done yet.’

15 years might seem like a stretch, but Mignola does have some time to get to the end of Big Red before the movie version meets his end. Del Toro is working on the epic undertaking that is The Hobbit (which is still in pre-pre-production), and it would probably be at least four years until del Toro can even think about another Hellboy. So there's plenty of time for Hellboy's kids and eventual demise to play out in Mignola's pages. The prolonged work on The Hobbit might even give everyone enough time to change their minds and keep everyone's favorite blue-collar demon hunter alive.

We think that Mignola deserves to have the final say in how Big Red goes (having, you know, created him), and I'm sure del Toro will take that into consideration on the third film. Let's hope studio pressure doesn't step in and ruin the great balance between these two minds. But what if the studio doesdecides to kill of Hellboy because it would make for a fitting ending to a trilogy?

"That will be between me, del Toro, and my therapist,” Mignola laughed. “I’m still raising Hellboy. I’m not done with the character yet.”

Could ‘Hellboy III’ Mean The Death Of Hellboy? We Ask Creator Mike Mignola [MTV Splash Page]

Thursday afternoon, EW's Nisha Goplan introduced Jim Lee, John Cassaday, Matt Fraction, Mike Mignola, Robert Kirkman, Colleen Doran and Grant Morrison to an eager audience, and then shut up and let them do the talking. The short version of the event would go something like this: Comics can do anything, comic creators should be less afraid to try to do anything and everything they want, and Mike Mignola really can't stop himself swearing accidentally. But why give you a short version when we can let the panelists talk for themselves?

On Movies' Influence On Comics:

Kirkman: I don't think [movies] will change the content, I don't think it should change the content. Hollywood comes to us because of our content.

Morrison: I think we should write comic books that are more like comic books.

Mignola: The plus side is, I think some things are getting published... because they might see potential in it somewhere else...

Morrison: Hollywood's got a lot of rules, it's very formulaic. Comics should break those rules.

Mignola: It's sad to see people changing their structure to fit [the Hollywood rule]... Let's do the comic and see someone else turn it into a film.

Lee: I think it's the opposite, I see a lot of movies and TV shows like Lost following the comics form.

Morrison: Death to Hollywood!

Mike Mignola On The Pluses And Minuses On The Hellboy Movies:

You try your best to convince yourself that you're doing the best thing, and then you spend the rest of your life explaining yourself that, no, Hellboy doesn't have a girlfriend... You live in the shadow of the movie. But you make your peace with it. Or don't license the character.

On The Future Of Print Comics:

Fraction: As long as there's print, there'll be comics. We're a cheap, easy, nasty, swarthy medium. We'll be the last to go... I've yet to see an iPhone that can beat a comic.

Cassaday: I can't stare at my computer screen for very long.

Morrison: You can't take your computer in the bath,

Kirkman: Yes you can!

Morrison: This man knows more than me.

Kirkman: Do you mean bathroom or bath?

Morrison: I mean bath, being immersed, I mean, water is the best element.

Kirkman: We'll talk later.

Mignola: We sure sound like visionaries, don't we?

Grant Morrison On The Need For Superheroes:

I think superheroes are more relevant now than they've ever been before. Superheroes have become this desperate attempt to imagine the future for ourselves. Superheroes and Star Trek. They represent something that isn't a cowboy for the West to be. I don't know if we'll ever reach it, because we have a lot of good bombs.

On working on personal projects against corporate creations:

Fraction: A lot of guys like me, their own stuff doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't even buy lunch. If you write the X-Men, it's okay, bills are paid.

Mignola: Find some time in between commercial projects and try something. I firmly believed that, after I'd done the first Hellboy, I'd go back and do another Batman book. But when you try that thing, you should really make sure that it's something you love so that if it's successful, you're stuck doing the thing you love.

Doran: Too many people treat their entire project as an audition for the rest of their career.

Robert Kirkman On Killing Characters:

I never think of this stuff, or else I wouldn't do it. I just write things and think, yeah, I think this guy's gonna die now. The main character in Walking Dead gets his hand cut off, and I didn't think about it. I remember thinking, I should think about what this will mean. Oh, he can't button his shirt, this'll be easy. And then, ten years later, I was like, oh crap. I shouldn't have cut that guy's hand off.

On Why They Create Comics:

Kirkman: I do it so my wife doesn't think if I'm a failure. I can't do anything else.
Fraction: I've never run across anything that you can't do in comics. No-one ever says that you can't afford to blow up New York. We can blow up New York and rebuild it twice if we want.
Lee: I always figured that if I was ever arrested, I could be the big guy's art bitch. I'm being completely serious.

On Why Colleen Doran Got Into Comics:

Doran: I had a crush on Aquaman.

Morrison: What was it about him?

Doran: He was wet.

On Who Today's Visionaries Think We Should Watch Out For:

Fraction: Jason Aaron.

Doran: Derek McCullogh.

Kirkman: Jonathan Hickman.

Mignola: It's not that I don't think that anyone's good, I tend to not remember anyone's names.

Morrison: I want to see an entire generation of crazy 17 year-olds doing this stuff.

Mignola’s dark, flat style, which Alan Moore has called "German expressionism meets Jack Kirby," gains its unique power from the use of shadow to define space in each panel. Through these varying shades of darkness color reaches the viewer as if from the bottom of a well. The contrast or frame created by the shadow his use of color unexpectedly rich and deep. What should be murky is sharp. What should be opaque instead illuminates. The flatness is itself deceptive, in that Mignola manages a kind of layering effect that renders both the characters and their actions three-dimensional. All of these effects ran counter—and still to some extent run counter—to traditional wisdom in creating comics.

If Hellboy has become iconic since then it is in part because of this unique quality to the art and in part because Mignola’s imagination in the storylines has been a match for his artistic talent. While the stories work as adventures, and Hellboy himself entertains with his wisecracks, Mignola often mines very strange territory indeed—mixing myths of world creation and destruction with more localized stories of witches and demons into the fabric of a modern world. Using such varied material has allowed him to refine and add nuance to his art.

Now that Hellboy has reached the big screen, Mignola has teamed up with another great visual stylist: Guillermo del Toro, whose vision in movies like Pan’s Labyrinth brings another great tradition—Mexican surrealism—into Hellboy’s world. The result is a unique hybrid vision from two highly imaginative creators.

With Hellboy 2 opening in theaters, we talked briefly to a hyper-busy Mignola about his work...

What science fiction and science fiction artists have influenced your work?
The writing of H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock...the art of Frank Frazetta and Jack Kirby were my biggest and earliest influences.

What’s your relationship to technology and the modern world? Are there elements you try to put into your work?
I am able to send and get email. I do not love technology. My stories are very low tech...in the entire run of Hellboy I think I've only drawn three cars and none of them were moving!

What projects have been most personal to you, and what are you most proud of?
The Amazing Screw-On Head and the short story The Magician and the Snake.

What are you currently working on?
I'm writing 2 different Hellboy series, The Crooked Man for Richard Corben and The Wild Hunt for Duncan Fregredo and I am writing and drawing In The Chapel of Moloch. I'm also co-ploting the BPRD comics and a few other things!

Many thanks to Mignola and Dark Horse Comics for letting io9 to run a gallery with this feature.

http://www.hellboy.com/

I guess we should start with the only comic featuring the 70-year-old Man of Steel, huh? That would be Superman: Last Son, a hardcover collection of the much-delayed storyline that brought Richard Donner to comics - he co-writes the book alongside Geoff Johns - as well as returned General Zod and the Phantom Zone to current DC continuity. I could tell you more about the story, like the fact that Superman adopts a son, but I know that all you'll really care about is that there's a special 3-D section midway through the book. That Phantom Zone is trippy, man.

Elsewhere in the DC line this week, Superman's oldest rival Captain Marvel gets a new series, with the first issue of kid-targeted Billy Batson And The Magic of Shazam. Less friendly for little tykes, the Dark Knight tie-ins start properly with the first issue of The Joker's Asylum, which makes Heath Ledger's alter-ego into your host as he narrates stories about the other inmates over at Arkham Asylum. Or maybe you want even darker still, with Hellblazer: The Fear Machine collecting some of the earliest stories of magician, former punk and all-round bastard John Constantine from the 1980s, when it was cool to turn yuppies into demons.

More nostalgia comes in the form of the imported Doctor Who: The World Shapers, which brings together the little-seen mid-80s run of Grant Morrison on the British Who comic. On the one hand, yes, it's the Colin Baker Doctor, but on the other, rare Morrison... It's a tough one. Equally tough is Star Trek: Mirror Images, a new mini-series that explores one of the greatest Star Trek concepts ever, the Mirror Universe. IDW's Trek comics have been somewhat hit and miss, so the potential for disappointment here is, sadly, great. But it is the Mirror Universe. I mean, goateed Spock...what could go wrong?

If you're looking for things that will make you much less conflicted, I can heartily recommend the following three books: Boom!'s Station is a murder mystery set on the international space station right as things start to go wrong and it looks like everyone might end up dead. If you liked Greg Rucka's Whiteout, chances are you'll enjoy it. Mike Mignola gets slightly ahead of the movie curve this week with a new Hellboy series, The Crooked Man, illustrated by comics legend Richard Corben. So expect the same great writing and slightly off-putting stumpy figures (I kid because... well, because I can, really. But you'll know what I mean when you pick it up).

Pick of the week, however, is easily Buffy The Vampire Slayer #16, which sees Joss Whedon return as writer, as well as the return of his futuristic slayer, Fray. For everyone who hasn't read the Fray series and wonders why this is a big deal, all I have to say is this: Imagine Faith, but from the far future, and with an even worse attitude. I foresee carnage and futuristic cursing that you can get away with in comics, as well as quite a few battles over that weird scythe that both of them think they own.

As is the case every single week, you can see the complete list of everything hitting comic stores this week here, and find out where your local comic book store is by clicking here. Do it because Clark Kent would want you to.

Written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola from a story by Mignola and Golden Army director Guillermo Del Toro, the animated six-minute short comes in advance of the movie's July 11th release date. And if you're wondering where the young Hellboy came from, you can always see his origin story.

Hellboy II Animated Comic [Apple.com via /Film]

To find out who wins this fight watch the rest of the clip at Latino Review.

[Latino Review and Mania]

Though Mignola has drawn a million fight scenes for his most famous creation, Hellboy, I think some of his greatest fights can be found elsewhere. I love this action-packed cover Mignola drew for a Lobster Johnson comic because it contains all the most important ingredients of an awesome smackdown: a skeleton, a robot, a disembodied brain, and a scorpion. Really, it doesn't get better than that.

Mignola is also the creator of another brilliantly-named hero, the Amazing Screw-On Head, a robot head who fights giant monsters for President Lincoln in the nineteenth century. The comic, which won an Eisner Award, was made into an animated short featuring the voices of Paul Giamatti (as the Screw-On Head) and David Hyde Pierce (his arch-nemesis Emperor Zombie). Here you can see a great fight from the animated version of the comic book, right after Emperor Zombie raises a monster and the Screw-On Head fights it. Luckily, the Screw-On Head's sidekick Mr. Groin is there to help!

OK, the picture below isn't of a fight, but it demonstrates one of the reasons why Mignola is so great at composing fights. It's a picture of H.P. Lovecraft, his face defined by darkness rather than features. The backgrounds are complicated, murky, and evocative. And then there's the crowning glory, the tentacle snaking out of old H.P.'s pants. That is Mignola all over: a swirl of hyperbolic darkness, punctuated by a carefully-placed joke.

And no celebration of fight scenes would be complete without this great cover that Mignola drew back in 1990, for an Aliens vs. Predator comic book. Teeth! Stabbing! Darkness! Oh, yeah.

Cancel The Ten-Foot, Three-Headed Dog

Much to the dismay of director Del Toro, a few creatures had to be dropped from Hellboy 2 including the ten-foot, three-headed bull dog. "I liked it because he was going to be in the back ground licking himself," said Del Toro. He added that the troll market scene in the new Hellboy 2 will be jam-packed with creatures. So never fear, your scary monster quota will be met. But still Del Toro promised he would post an image of the dog online in the next few weeks.

Milk, Eggs, Apocalypse

Del Toro did chat a little about his next project: he's started to sketch and write more about childhood. The possible title his next film is, Saturn At The End Of Days. The concept, "A kid named Saturn is watching the apocalypse happen on the way home from the grocery store," Del Toro revealed. "That one I am just doing because I'll be doing a small movie that I control, that no one else would do for sure."

Man Of The People

Besides being an incredible director, writer and artist Del Toro also knows when its time to look past himself. He encouraged creature designers to reach out to him, saying, "One or two guys have come out of Comic-Con and come to work with me on a movie." Asked by the audience if he ever hires interns, Del Toro encouraged people to email abe_sapien@hotmail.com.

Meanwhile, at his own panel, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola revealed more about his creative process and his early influences, plus the mythology he wants to include in upcoming issues of the comic. Here are his thoughts on a variety of topics.

His Early Influences

"I read Dracula when I was about 13 years old, and that was it. It's got that dark supernatural Victorian stuff, but there's also a background of folklore and old history and legend. My favorite comic growing up was Marvel Comics' Thor. From those two things I got really interested in weird stuff — it's so much fun because so little of it makes any sense."

When Universes Collide

Mignola says he tries not to have the different versions of Hellboy — the movie, animation, comic and video game universes — collide too often. "The movie is very much its own world, and the computer game falls into that world — you know, the one where he's wearing pants. The animations are their own thing." But one unexpected crossover did happen recently: the Hellboy novels have referenced the comics, but not vice versa — until the comics started to use a character that novelist Chris Golden had created. Meanwhile, the short story collections are also their own animal, and don't fit into the comics' universe. "Mostly, I keep my head down and just look at the comics."

Hellboy, Social Critic?

There's not really much social criticism in the Hellboy comics, Mignola says. "It's certainly never been my intention. I just want to see the big stuff smashing into each other. And a talking hedgehog! We have a talking hedgehog coming up! I'm really excited about that."

How To Break Into Comics

Drawing comics was all Mignola ever wanted to do. "I always wanted to draw, and I never really thought I could draw comics, but I wanted to work as an illustrator just drawing monsters and folklore — the kind of stuff I was reading. There just aren't that many places to do that. At some point, I just thought, let me sneak into the comics business. My plan was go to New York and sneak in as an inker, and eventually someone would feel sorry for me and say, "hey, why don't you try drawing a Conan story or something?" That was my goal. But since I was a terrible inker and had no other skills of any kind, one of the editors at Marvel got to me when my inking career died out and said, "are you ready to try drawing now?" I had nothing else to do. I had no fallback. I don't know what else I'd be doing. I was terrible — so bad — but little by little, after 6 or 8 years, I began to figure out what I was doing."

Developing His Art Style

"As I mentioned, I was horrible ... so most of that style came about by trying to be less horrible every time. "Maybe if I try this" is sort of how I thought, and little by little, it worked. Plus the coloring was often not so good, so i thought: "Gee, maybe if I put MORE black, that's one less place they can put pink or yellow." Little by little weird shapes would just be replaced with black. I desperately wanted to be Frank Frazetta in high school and Bernie Wrightson in college, so that's who I looked up to."

Monster-Obsessed

Someone asked, "As a writer, do you ever just want to stop the epic for a little while and write a story about two people just sitting on a beach talking about their feelings, or something?" Mignola replied: "If they're [talking] about monsters, yeah! [Guillermo] del Toro and I are similar in that way — he says if there isn't a weird creature on the call sheet, he doesn't want to go to work that day. Probably one of my failings as a writer is that it just doesn't hold my interest to write about regular people. I do a lot of character stuff, but I do it with these weird creatures."

What Mignola's Currently Reading

"There's not a horror series that I currently read ... I'm not big on contemporary writers. That's not true, there's a guy named David Wellington who just did a book called 99 Coffins, and before that he did a book called 13 Bullets — they're vampire books, and they're exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't normally read, but I read them and they're fantastic. I read mostly weird old stuff, and I'm a short story guy, so I read a lot of weird old short stories. Old 1800s kind of stuff. I'm not big on the whole contemporary world thing, which is why I dropped Hellboy off the face of the Earth. It's more fun to write about different places."

Mignola's Transition From Drawing To Writing

"I never set out to be a writer — I actually just wrote a thing about this in the second volume of the Hellboy Library Edition, whenever it comes out. For a couple months in high school I tried to be a fantasy writer, and then somebody read something I wrote out loud, and I never wanted to do it again until John Byrne said "okay, you're ready. You should write Hellboy yourself." Writing is really fun — but it's really hard. Drawing to me is pure fun, so I always approach it as an artist first and foremost. Working with great artists is so liberating, though, because as a writer, I can just say: "32 guys on horseback approach something" without going "oh my God, what does that look like?" I love writing and drawing my own stuff, and I will continue to do that, but there's something about just concentrating on one thing that's very appealing. For my next novel, I will plot it or co-plot it, but that's one where I'm going to work with another writer, because it would be so much fun to just focus on the art. That's something I haven't done in years."

What's Mignola's Favorite Lovecraft Story?

Says Mignola, "I probably haven't read all the Lovecraft stuff, and what I did read, I read a billion years ago — if I give a favorite now, I'll probably change my mind tomorrow. I love the overall sense of Lovecraft's stories, of this big unknowable universe, of these gigantic things bouncing around that couldn't care less about mankind, and mankind scraping around saying, "hey, what happens if I do this? *bang*" It's almost science fiction, but it stops short of being sci-fi because these gigantic godlike things are so remote from humanity that it's beyond comprehension. It's one of the things I'm always trying to make sure I do in my own work — to me, there's some kind of logic to the supernatural, but no one else can put the pieces together. As soon as there are rules, though, as soon as 2+2=4, it's not science fiction anymore. The further you look back in folklore and mythology, the less you see those hard-and-fast rules. I get upset when people say "vampires can do this or that," because they're supernatural creatures — they can do whatever I need them to do."

Working With Guillermo Del Toro

"Before I met Guillermo, he hadn't done The Devil's Backbone — he had done Cronos and Mimic, which I saw before he ever got onto Hellboy. So when somebody said "he wants to do Hellboy," I was all for it. When we met it was mostly comparing notes, and it worked immediately. He was sitting down, I walked into the room, and he shook my hand and said "I know who should play Hellboy" and I said "I do too" and we both said it at the same time. Then it was easy; we just went to the bookstore and hung out. We played a great trick on Mike Richardson. The second he dropped us off — in Portland, Oregon, where they have the best used bookstores in America — Guillermo said "this is a great opportunity" and we went back to my apartment. Guillermo coached me through the acting for this trick; I called Richardson and started screaming at him "DID YOU TALK TO THIS GUY?! HOW COULD YOU PUT ME WITH HIM?" Richardson was saying, "where is he now?" and I replied, "HE'S GONE! He went to the airport!" It was pretty good. Mostly, Guillermo's just a riot. He's so much fun to work with."

Movies That Influenced The Young Mignola

"There are certainly certain movies that really made a huge effect on me. They're all over the place — Beneath the Planet of the Apes just lit my head on fire, it was a life-changing moment for me. The John Huston Moby Dick, for whatever reason, is the greatest movie ever! I like that big drama stuff. The Bride of Frankenstein, and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast .... There are some other ones, but that gives you a pretty wide range. I do watch a lot of movies."

When Will We See Duncan Fegredo (Who Illustrated Darkness Falls) Again?

"That's not a bad idea. I should promote my upcoming works! What he's done on the sequel to Darkness Calls — which is called The Wild Hunt — is already better than the entire Darkness Calls miniseries. He's already done most of the first issue. Richard Corben and I are doing a 3-issue miniseries called The Crooked Man, which takes place in the Appalachian mountains in the 1950s. It's got Hellboy dealing with backwoods witchcraft, that kind of thing."

How Lobster Johnson Got His Name

"I was in Italy, and I woke up and said to my wife, 'I just came up with the greatest name for a character ever!' And she looked at me the way she looks at me, which is: 'yeah, that's great, honey.' Every once in awhile something just comes together. I can labor and labor to try to think of names, but the best one just came to me. Every time I met a new character, I would go, 'can I use Lobster Johnson for that?'"

On Being A Perfectionist

"It's certainly easier to work on stuff when people aren't anticipating it, and the longer you wait between series, the more people are anticipating it: 'It's been 5 years! It must really be good!' I've always been a perfectionist, which is part of why now I want to do these smaller stories. There isn't that gigantic burden. The Amazing Screw-On Headwent really smooth, because I knew nobody was going to care about it — it went so well for me and was so much fun. I want to do more stuff like that, where I'm like, 'Well, no danger of anybody caring about this!'"

Additional reporting by Kaila Hale-Stern.