Results tagged “Mike Mignola” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

MIKE MIGNOLA is the creator of Hellboy, the star of two hit live-action movies and animation features, plus of course a plethora of great comic books.

Ironically, Mignola began his career drawing adaptations of British sci-fi and fantasy author Michael Moorcock's Prince Corum books for First Comics.

He subsequently worked for the two major US companies, Marvel and DC Comics.

Among the books he pencilled for Marvel were the Canadian superhero group series Alpha Flight and, for its Epic imprint, Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery novel favourites Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser (a collection now back in print from Dark Horse).

Work for DC included an eerie mini-series featuring The Phantom Stranger and Batman: Gotham by Gaslight the company's debut Elseworlds Prestige book.

In 1993 things began to hot up for Mignola when he created Hellboy for Dark Horse's creator-owned Legend imprint. A devil of a character, Hellboy has been described as the "world's greatest paranormal investigator".

Enthusing B-movie aplomb, pulp pastiche and a dash of American comic book icon Jack Kirby's visual dynamics to Mignola's own unique stylised approach, together with the spirit of adventure he imbued in the series, proved to be a strong sales incentive and swiftly found favour with fans and critics alike.

Mini-series have been collected into popular trade paperbacks, and a regular line of spin-off mini-series and their subsequent collections under the BPRD title heading come about, all before Hollywood came a calling wanting to turn Hellboy into movie magic.

Directed by Guillermo del Tora the 2004 Hellboy feature film proved a box office success and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army hit the silver screen in 2008. Keeping the franchise alive in between were the animated films Sword of Storms and Blood and Iron, available on DVD.

Mike Mignola himself has also produced design, illustration and storyboard work for animation and live-action films.

These include Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (subsequently drawing the comic series for Topps), an adaptation of his own comic The Amazing Screw-On Head for the Sci-Fi channel, Blade II, Batman: the Animated Series and Batman Beyond and has been heavily involved himself with the production of the actual Hellboy movies.

The Hellboy related comic book series remain in constant demand by fans. John Byrne dialogued the very first Hellboy mini-series and with Mignola's time at a premium these days he has branched out, allowing more co-creators to share in and empower his vision further, with Britain's own Duncan Fegredo as regular artist of recent series for the character.

Mike Mignola was a star guest at the UK's Birmingham International Comic Show in 2007 with fans coming from far and wide to see him.

The photo to the left is from that show and features Mike Mignola on the left, with Comics International publisher Mike Conroy holding Hellboy art. The photo, along with others from that year's show that you can still find featured on Speech Balloons were taken and (c) Jordan X.

Additional Information:

To order advance BICS 2009 tickets visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

For more information on Hellboy visit: www.Hellboy.com

DESPITE RUMOURS claiming otherwise, Great Britain's longest-running comic book awards, The Eagles, still promise to take place this year, albeit somewhat differently.

The Eagle Awards were founded back in 1976 by Richard Burton and Mike Conroy and are the comics industry's longest established awards. Acknowledged as the pre-eminent international prizes, they have been featured on the covers of leading US and UK titles across the last 28 years ranging from The Uncanny X-Men and Saga of the Swamp Thing to MAD and 2000AD.

Cassandra Conroy is the Eagle Awards' new organiser and she recently made public her comments on the various rumours surrounding their future.

"When I took over the Eagles last year from my father, Mike Conroy - people said that I had an uphill battle to keep the Eagles at the top of the UK awards scene.

"When circumstances meant that the main hall of the Bristol Comic Con, our traditional place of ceremony over the years would not be able to be used in the evening, we realised that there was no way that the Eagles could be run as they usually are, for 2009 at least. But I didn't want my first year as organiser to be a no-show, and so after a lot of discussions and opinions, we're still going to be running the awards."

Cassandra has taken advice from some of the biggest names in comics, and she feels that the Eagles really do have a place in UK comics' history.

"Over the years we have had some of the fiercest competitions out there. When you have an award ceremony that has categories nominated by creators and fans and then voted for by creators and fans, the pressure for a creator to gain such a prestigious award is immense. We've had some of the biggest names in comics step up onto that stage to accept their awards, and although this year we cannot achieve that vision, in future years we will be back, bigger and better than ever."

She explained that, as far as the nominations process and voting goes, the Eagle Awards would be following their well known format.

"The nominations process will begin Friday 8th May 2009 on our website, eagleawards.co.uk. Just nominate your 2008 choice in each category and click return. Nominations close on Friday 22nd May 2009, and then we'll take the top five nominations in each section and place them up for voting to begin Monday 1st June 2009."

Unique in the comics industry, they reflect both the professional and the reader's choice, the Eagle Awards comprise two distinct stages: a nominations form allowing the entire comics community to choose their favourites, and that the top five nominations then appear on the voting form for the readers and fans to choose from, thus focusing the fans with no wasted votes.

Above: BICS 2007 special guest and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola with Eagle Awards creator and Comics International publisher Mike Conroy (Picture (c) Jordan X).

Cassandra Conroy concluded: "The winners of the Eagle Awards might not have a stage to stand on or an opportunity to give a speech this year, but they will receive an Eagle Award, whether in person or by other means. And the full list of Award Winners will be released to the world on Monday 15th June 2009.

'We might not have a meal this year, but we will have awards. We will have winners. And the best of the UK and US comic scene will still fight for the right to be showcased on one of the longest and most prestigious awards out there."

For more details visit: eagleawards.co.uk.

BIRMINGHAM HAS a proud comics related history.

Back in the swinging sixties comics came out weekly costing less than sixpence - Roy of the Rovers, Dennis the Menace and The Spider, drawn by Birmingham's very own Reginald Bunn. There was Batman on the telly while the adventures of Spider-Man and his cape-flowing friends got sent over in dazzling four-colour print as ballast on ships... so kids bought comics by the go-kart load, but unlike before, as they grew up, they didn't stop.

(Left, Staz Johnson drawing Catwoman live at BICS 2007).

In 1968 some youths of the time had a typically off-the-wall Brummie take on the love-ins and crazy happenings that were the current rave. They wanted to celebrate their love of comics and so they put together the first ever UK comics convention.

(Left, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and Comics International publisher Mike Conroy).

Fans came out of the woodwork, second hand book dealers did deals with those trading in comics and some guys who were working in the comic book industry itself happened to find time to pop along.

Fashions and ideas change but this wasn't a one-off novelty. As the years went by the country's capital city of London subsequently took the reins and produced lavish annual events, the buzz spread Glasgow wanted in.

It branched out here, there and everywhere; Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, the Birmingham Comic Art Shows and more recently the Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS).

Now, the city that started it all is to be host to a comics show again, so I say let's not pull our punches and start waving flags to proudly celebrate our heritage, for even though BICS has been rechristened the British International Comics Show on 3rd and 4th October at Birmingham's Millennium Point it will be the place to be!

Comics entertain first and foremost. They also chronicle the social and cultural times they were created in. Comics from decades gone by along with those of the future on the internet will be seen, revered and purchased all weekend at the show. That is why we should all pop along and become a part of history by joining the many famous writers and artists from around the world that will be attending this important event.

For further information & to reserve tickets visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

Pictures supplied in this feature care of: www.comicshopvoice.co.uk

ENTERTAINING READS and sometimes thought-provoking reads...

Mike Mignola's B.P.R.D Hollow Earth & Other Stories
By Mike Mignola & Various
(Dark Horse/Titan)

Those looking for Hellboy will only find him hanging on a picture somewhere in the background of a panel or cameod in flashback. This collection features his sidekicks in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (American spelling),

They are stories of varying lengths from assorted publications. They flesh out the characterisations of Abe, Rober, a returning Liz, and new monster on the block, as freshly recruited within the Hollow Earth story, Johann Kraus - giving some of his background but not all to keep this mystery feel going.

They are tales of friendship. Despite the fact that they are also tales of adversity but the friendship is not forged in that manner; those problems simply reinforces their devotion towards each other. The BPRD are actually more like the Fantastic Four than once self-titled World's Greatest Comics' cast are themselves these days.

Jack Kirby's artwork holds a definite influence on the Hellboy saga as a whole, but there's also rather a lot of Wally Wood too, in the use of space through perspective and the eerie quietness of certain situations.

Mignola's collaborators, writers and artists, follow on in his own creative footsteps without aping his style, difficult enough tasks to attempt to do, even harder to pull off. They have more of his attitude towards crafting quality action-horror suspense.
While not a great book due to its collective short story format it's a good and valid collection worth reading for its own sake rather than just as back story to the big guy himself.

Summer Blonde
By Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterley)

City people, town and suburb folk, young losers, old whiners and liars, and indifferent types alike find themselves - along with some rather unlikely suspects - in these stories collected from the Optic Nerve comic.

Much is made of Tomine as a writer - he writes good, engrossing short stories of a mainstream fiction sort. His use of the caption box is welcomed - too often dismantled, or thrown away completely as a narrative tool in comics the past 15 years, or inner turmoil diary styled drivel. Tomine gives it back to the author - giving him the authoritative edge over the way the reader is directed to the themes of the particular storyline. More power to him for it being so.

They're long stand alone comic stories averaging 30 pages each but short as fiction.
The art is alternative/independent Daniel Clowes without the cartooning characteristics and more graphic illustration in that it's straight folks (only revealing their underwear when they've little else on instead of over their trousers!) but there seems to be appreciative use of tone and emotional reaction that reminds me more of Canadian artist Peter Hsu. There's also this underlying horror in the book that curiously never rises to the surface least it become labelled genre material?

Charley's War by Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun (Titan)

Forget Dan Dare or Judge Dredd, this is possibly the British adventure comic strip more worthy of celebration, that debuted in the pages of Battle (and was later to become Battle Action) on a weekly basis from 6 Jan 1979 on. It was in black and white, had only four pages, sometimes went down to three and a half to allow for adverts, then settled at three. It featured the singular artistic vision of Joe Colquhoun who had visualised the popular Johnny Red for Battle, but had done countless other series that so many grownups once grew up on; Roy of the Rovers for Tiger being one. Myself I recall fondly his Football Family Robinson in, I think, the short-lived Scorcher & Score, and I hated football.

Colquhoun brought detailed drama and human pathos in equal measures to Charley's War. He also brought a hard fought for pinch of humour to what could have been an all too bleak tale. And that despite the remarkablle efforts of writer Pat Mills. Mills, who came armed with a truckload of research, and delivered with passion a crackling good read based on reality.

War has always proved popular in British boys' comics and papers but World War I with its trench bound scenario had a static talking heads type problem since characters could be stuck in trenches for an age. Mills got over this with a number of storytelling techniques including flashbacks, divergent narrative caption viewpoints in the form of postcards to and from Blighty, and more besides; mainly trying not to hold back from the horrific truth of war. What most historians, socialists, comic bods forget is that this was written for little boys! The only other similar thing was Cadman, the coward in DC Thomson's comics. Black Adder owes a lot to both.

Charlie's War features Charlie Bourne who joined the army, like so many other lads, underage, wanting to do his bit for king and country. The war we witness shows the futility of such naivety. It does that with the benefit of hindsight. The higher echelons that are the generals et al pontificate, put privates on charges, and generally wine and dine themselves to the point of gluttony from afar as the poor old Tommies wallow in mud, waiting ear -racking guns and bombs, silent mustard gas and losing friends only briefly met and made, wandering if the rats will eat their own corpse or someone get to bury them. It 's not all that black and white. There are good leaders and bad foot soldiers shown, and this goes for the German enemy as it does the British. That doesn't ignore the great and shameful folly that was the battle of the Somme. The pacing of this book takes us from Charley's landing in France to that terrible battle (that's from June to August 1916 for those no longer taught proper history in schools).

Mills' tale was monumental, and with Colquhoun he largely succeeded, and this despite the majority of their readers would most likely have been ten year old tearaways. How many of the men grew up and joined the British army? Did they find things had changed by the time of the Falklands or Iraq? Alas, probably not enough.

This hardback edition is well deserved. The paperback from Titan had been decades out of print. Further volumes are imminent. They're in libraries they ought to be in schools too.

Rumours floated about this collection before it came out. Guest writers doing introductions, with egos at large on both sides of a camp, some apparently finding Mills' research borrowed too heavily from one book - if so it doesn't matter, all British kids comics owed heavily to other mediums back then, it was the fact that they devoured their source material and spat it out into something new, unique, or at the very least palatable for a different audience than its original one, for the kids of that time. It was what the Norse Gods did to create Kvasir, that is how magic truly happens.

The book is supplemented with some thoughtful articles and background information on both the war and the comic strip series. Buy this book. Buy it now.

In brief: Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student by Gail Simone & Artists (DC/Titan) a good mainstream superhero read with a slightly different feel, Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia - Greg Rucka, JG Jones, Wade Von Grawbadger (DC) has generally eye-catching art, Conan: Both of Thoth by Kurt Busiek, Len Wein & Kelley Jones (Dark Horse) features some of Jones' best art in ages, The Authority: Fractured Worlds by Robbie Morrison, Dwayne Turner, Whilce Portacio & Sal Regla (WildStorm/DC/Titan) reads better than critics said at the time, Justice League Elite: Volume One by Joe Kelly & Artists (DC/Titan) okay stuff, Global Frequency: Planet Ablaze by Warren Ellis & Artists (WildStorm/DC/Titan) stylish art and while not as impressive a tale as one hoped for, better than the last two books mentioned, Superman: For Tomorrow: Volume 1 & 2 by Brian Azzarello, Jim Lee, Scott Williams + (DC/Titan) flashy but little substance, Wolverine: Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith (Marvel) now classic and still classy, The Avengers: The Kree-Skrull War by Roy Thomas, Sal & John Buscema, Neal Adams (Marvel) still holds up well, and finally Teen Titans Go!: Truth, Justic, Pizza! T Torres & artists (DC) a Cartoon Network manga-derived digest that proved fun reading!

MORE GRAPHIC novels reviewed, many collections of popular series.

Fables Vol 5: The Mean Seasons by Bill Willingham & Various (Vertigo/DC/Titan)

Fabletown, where the folk of fairy stories go to live in an all too real world. Politics, sexual drama and the odd bit of hokum. Always loved Willingham's superior soap opera way with words even if it falls to Vertigo to ghettoize him. Appealing Mark Buckingham work. The plot: who will become new mayor of Fabletown and is there a serial killer loose in town?

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others
By Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Comics)

One does tend to wonder at times if all Hellboy needs to do is go in swinging his fists Thing style to solve any problem that come his way when dealing through this collection, but Mignola marries atmospheric scene setting with matter of fact storytelling to deliver contemporary pulp fiction that's engrossing and wholesomely satisfying.

The Spider: Scavenger of the Slaughtered Sacrifices
By Don McGregor & Gene Colan (Vanguard)

It's a little unclear who actually commissioned this book, and one expects only dedicated fans and the downright curious will actually pick it up.

The Spider is a classic pulp character, and the masked crime-fighter featured in this contemporary tale has him attempting to stop heinous murders and the like that are the copycat crimes of a TV show - thus we have metaphors with the pulps, comics and everything else that has been cool for kids at one time or another. These themes take up an awful lot of the story time and because it's McGregor most often by narrative caption, this is indeed something worthy of the title of being a book.

The actual fight that begins at the outset lasts some 50 pages before we change location and during that time the caption boxes hypothesize and pontificate with great gusto. It's eccentrically paced to say the least, and we're not even talking about the abrupt conclusion.

This aside it's a heartfelt story, but Colan's art - reproduced from his pencils - while nice and occasionally exquisite, even obscurely painterly, tends to visualise the most basic interpretation of the what's happening as indicated in the words, thus illustrating rather than illuminating and not moving the story along as it should within the comic medium.

McGregor fans will forgive this, fans of the Spider may to, I myself and pleased I actually sat down and read it, but I wouldn't hold it up as an interesting experiment rather than anything like the best of either of the creators' work.

Ex Machina: The First Hundred Day
By Brian K Vaughn & Tony Harris (WildStorm/DC/Titan)

Michael Hundred is the mayor of New York City. He used to a superhero. If you like The West Wing but want thrills with your drama this is your book. It also pre-dates Heroes. Excellently well told, and written with unobtrusive style. Flashbacks add intrigue rather than being an outdated dramatic device. There's a subplot or two and a satisfactory conclusion to the collection. It's fully rounded with a supporting cast you want, need, to know more about. The art may too photo referenced at times but that can be forgiven. Superb stuff.

Swamp Thing: Bad Seed by Andy Diggle & Enrque Breccia (Vertgo/DC/Titan)

The Swamp Thing tends to be all the more exciting when that Hellblazer John Constantine makes a guest appearance. It's always a case of pouring oil on burning water too.

The Swamp Thing now controls the ancient Greek element of fire, water, air and naturally earth - but he's got Sargon the Sorcerer giving his elemental daughter Tefe the Chinese whispers about how daddy's going to tip the natural world off balance and between a parent-child grudge and heroine heroics she gets lead down the proverbial garden path.

It's all rather interestingly put together because when it comes to it and all the sections can get broken down and the themes it tries to put across are also the type seen in a standard TV soap opera. However, when Breccia's art lets rip with the horror elements the standard goes up several sharp notches.

Tales of the Vampires
By Joss Whedon & Various (Dark Horse/Titan)

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator gathers his TV scripting crew to create short comic strips about vampires. It uses a framing sequences of children learning how to be slayers at the feet of a shackled vampire so they can learn about their enemies first hand, and there's a suitable twist in the tale to that.

The short stories are generally decently entertaining. It's more for the vampire fan than the Buffy completist I'd have thought unless characters within get expanded at a latter date.