With the release of The Crown: A Tale of Hell from Dark Horse Comics, we are delighted to be joined by Todd Mignola. Todd is a screenwriter and novelist. He is the co-writer of The Crown: A Tale of Hell, alongside Mike Mignola, and they are joined by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell for the comic.
Hi Todd, it’s so great to have you here with us.
My pleasure. Glad to be here.
Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Well, as Mignola’s a fairly uncommon name… So, yeah, I’m Mike “Hellboy” Mignola’s youngest brother. Some of your readers may have caught sight of me in the Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters documentary a few years ago. I’ve been writing for a long time now, first as a screenwriter, later as a novelist. I purposely steered clear of the comics medium—until now—because that seemed Mike’s milieu. My thinking has changed on that in the past year or so.
Can you tell us about the origins of The Crown: A Tale of Hell?
I knew from talking to Mike that Hellboy’s half-brothers, his Hell-brothers Lusk and Gamon, were based loosely on my brother Scott and I; exaggerations of us as kids, one brutal, the other conniving—and so I was always sort of sorry that they didn’t get more than a cameo appearance in Hellboy in Hell. I started knocking around a loose backstory idea for them, and then ran it by Mike to gauge his interest. He’d never thought of doing anything more with those characters, but jumped at the idea to explore the Hell-family in a historical setting. We had a lot of fun hammering out the plot.
What was it like writing The Crown: A Tale of Hell with Mike?
Mike and I, while very different writers in some ways, share a lot of cultural references—especially with regard to film and our deep interest in folklore—and so it was easy to build an original story that we were both gung-ho about. Once we got into more granular aspects of the writing, though, we didn’t always see eye to eye—although we got pretty good at hashing things out to mutual satisfaction. When in doubt, it was easy for me to defer to him since it was his universe we were playing around in. Mike knows his stuff, and is damned good at what he does. I respect that.
What made Warwick Johnson-Cadwell the right artist for The Crown: A Tale of Hell?
Well, first and foremost, Mike and I both love Warwick’s work. The man’s a genius, his art so uniquely, wonderfully wonky. And anyone who knows Warwick’s art has seen the magic he works with moody castles and such, and since we were setting The Crown in a medieval Hell… A no brainer, really. We also wanted a comic tone to the thing, which WJC naturally brings to all his work.
What can you tell us about The Crown: A Tale of Hell?
The Crown’s a departure from other Hellboy-adjacent series, and not just because it takes place entirely in Hell, and a Hell we haven’t seen before. Set in the year 1566, the action takes place in a single day, giving the story an almost play-like feel, and all the more so because it’s laser-focused on a small cast of characters. Mike and I wanted the dysfunctional dynamics of Hellboy’s Hell-family to have an almost Shakespearean air—and so they do.
Will you be writing more Hellboy comics in the future?
In the short term, yes. In the long term… We’ll see. I hope so. I have a pile of ideas that I’m anxious to bring to readers. I should probably bring ’em to Mike first, though.
Any message for the ComicBuzz readers?
Yeah. Check out The Crown when it lands February 11, and be sure to let me know on social media what you think of it! Also, keep an eye out for future creator-owned projects I’m cooking up with a slew of fantastic artists.
We would like to say thank you to Todd for chatting with us and wish him the best of luck with the release of The Crown: A Tale of Hell.
