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Hellboy II: The Golden Army looks more like a Guillermo del Toro movie than a Mike Mignola movie. Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and Johann Strauss are surrounded by Pan's Labyrinth style creatures. Some artists might be proprietary about their visions, but Mignola seems really laid back and happy to see where the director takes his property.

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Crave Online: Guillermo del Toro's creatures have a very distinct look. How do you feel they fit into Hellboy universe?

Mike Mignola: Well, it was much easier on this film because everything in the film was original. It wasn't really adapting characters from the comic, other than the character Johann who is from the comics. There were a lot of design changes to that character to bring him to the film but all the other creatures didn't have their origins in the film. In the first film, we had a lot of characters we had to adapt in the comics but this one was just brand new so in a lot of ways, even though I did early designs for some of these characters, for the most part, all the signature creature designs in this film are very much del Toro creature designs. The most unique ones are very much from del Toro's imagination.

Crave Online: But there's still Hellboy and Abe.

Mike Mignola: But again, we'd already done all those translations on the first film, but in a way, as a designer, I had much less to do on this second film. I just tried to stay out of his way.

Crave Online: How much input did you have?

Mike Mignola: Quite a lot. Guillermo and I actually sat down originally to do an adaptation of one of the existing stories and after about eight hours, we hit a snag and said, "Ah, let's just do fairies instead." He was preparing Pan's Labyrinth and I was preparing a major storyline in the Hellboy comic, both of which involved the kind of fantasy, fairy, elf stuff. So I think that's where both our heads were at so we just abandoned the adaptation we were going to do and immediately just came up with a brand new story.

Crave Online: Which story would it have been?

Mike Mignola: We were going to do, it would have been a very loose adaptation of something called Almost Colossus.

 

Crave Online: Does introducing BPRD characters rule out a BPRD film or TV series?

Mike Mignola: The one thing is when he quit BPRD, it looked like Abe went with him so you kind of go, "Well, who would the BPRD TV series be, or BPRD film?" It's not like the X-Men where we have a billion superpowered characters. Basically we have these two or three creature characters and most of the BPRD is human. Certainly I think you could do something with the BPRD. Especially I think it would be great for TV because you wouldn't be doing characters for the most part that need a billion hours of makeup. But again, that's for other people to make those decisions.

Crave Online: Are you optimistic there will be a Hellboy III?

Mike Mignola: I'm never optimistic. I would have sworn that there would never be a Hellboy 1 so I've been wrong a couple times. I think the best thing I can do for Hellboy III is to say it'll never happen because that seems to be helping us get made. Certainly at this point there seems to be a lot of interest in Hellboy III so I'm guardedly optimistic.

Crave Online: But Guillermo will be busy for four years. Could someone else direct Hellboy III?

Mike Mignola: That's certainly going to be a really interesting situation because I can't imagine if this movie is successful, I can't imagine the studio saying, "Sure, we'll wait five years." So I don't know what's going to happen. I can't imagine it without him, but at the same time, I can't imagine people sitting around waiting five years.

Crave Online: And just three, no more?

Mike Mignola: I think the situation that Guillermo's built in is a very definite arc. It certainly isn't James Bond. It isn't something that's designed to not advance the character. I think with the Hellboy/Liz Sherman relationship being so central to the story and now the introduction of children, you kind of go, "Well, this is clearly going someplace." It would be hard to do a third picture that's just more of the same. I mean, for me personally, I'd be happy to see Hellboy IV, Hellboy V but the film version of Hellboy is very much his baby. So if he wants to wrape it up, so be it. The one thing I've got to be really careful about is that if he does do a third picture and if he does do the end of Hellboy, I gotta make damn sure he doesn't make the ending that I'm going to do in the comic, because mine's 15 years away. I don't want him to give away my ending. But it also would be a very strange situation where he's doing the life and whatever, death of Hellboy and I'm still over here doing the comic going, "No, kids, it's not over yet."