I don't do anything for Halloween. I carry Halloween inside of me.

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to shake things up, but we're going to have to get some pants on this one.

My daughter is reading various Young Adult vampire stuff, and I ask her, "Is there even a bad vampire in the story?" There's always a good vampire now, but do any of them sleep in coffins? And I would bring her down to my library and say, "Here's every classic vampire literature. There are coffins, there's this, there's that," you know? "When you get to the YA stuff, you may try some of this stuff just to see where it came from."

What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it's a dead body - you're just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, 'Oh, that's his pitch for a TV show. That's his pitch for a movie. That's him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.' I didn't do that.

I don't do costumes, I don't do sh_t like that. I love Halloween as a concept, but do I actually go out and do things? No. Trick or treating? Pain in the ass. Hate answering the door all night long. I do love fall, which is bad because I live in Los Angeles.

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.

With a rasping cough, the vampire shakes its head. "It was you who called us. All of you, with your war. The roar of your cannons shook us from our quiet graves.