Mike Mignola

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