During Dragon*Con, I was able to sit down with Mike Mignola and talk about many, many things.
As you know, Mignola is the creator of Hellboy and has had a rich body of work for all the comic book companies. We spoke about his start in comics, early freelancing, his work on films and even how George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola helped influence the creation of Hellboy.
We also talked about his work on The Hobbit. Here’s an excerpt of that portion of the interview:
Big Shiny Robot!: And now, and I don’t know if this is overstated as well, but I’ve read everywhere that you’ll be working on The Hobbit with [Guillermo Del Toro].
Mike Mignola: I did. I worked on it for about a week. It took longer to go to and come back from New Zealand… I was more time in the plane, I think, than I was on the ground in New Zealand, but there really wasn’t much for me to do. That world is so clearly established in Lord of the Rings, I just thought, “What is there for me to do?” And he had a few things he wanted me to take a crack at. It was really intimidating because John Howe, one of the main designers on Lord of the Rings flew out with me, so we were in New Zealand together. And Alan Lee was coming in the next couple of days and I’m like, “What the hell am I doing with these guys?” I suspect that what I did in the week I was there as soon as I left he handed that stuff over to John or Alan and said, “Here’s what the kid did. If you can use any of it, fine, if not, just throw it away.” I think he just wanted me to be there.
BSR!: Can you talk at all about what you did while you were there?
MM: Probably not. Not at this point.
BSR!: Lots of pictures of Ron Perlman as Beorn?
MM: No, I did not. It’s so funny, because there’s so much speculation about what I did and it goes from someone saying, “I hope he did this,” to someone saying, “I hear he did this.” Those stories, especially anything involving Hollywood, you put that shit on the internet and it grows like a weed.
He was perhaps one of the most self-deprecating and humble artists I’ve ever had the pleasure to interview.
To listen to the complete audio, click the link here.
To order any of Mike Mignola’s books on Amazon, click this link.