Hellboy was entirely the comic I wish someone much more talented than I was doing, because I would have been a huge fan of that comic. But nobody was doing it, so it fell to me to do it.
Mike MignolaLady, I was gonna cut you some slack, 'cause you're a major mythological figure...but now you've just gone nuts!
Mike MignolaI look at all of world mythology and folklore as my toy to play with. There are just so many characters and creatures there I want to put on paper. It's a really exciting thing for me to take material that I really love and put a new coat of paint on it and present it to this audience. And I don't have to make up any of the characters. I can just pull a book of mythology off the shelf and say, "I'll use this guy." I also hate making up names for fantasy characters. I'll just flip through these books and say, "Wow, this is way crazier than anything I could make up".
Mike MignolaBaltimore was never intended to be anything other than this original novel that Chris Golden and I did together. There was never any thought of this thing going on and becoming a series. If there's any common thing between these characters, it's that they weren't anything I was seeing in comics. Almost everything I've done is something I wish somebody else was doing, because it's what I'd like to read.
Mike Mignola