Artist Appreciation: Mike Mignola
Hey guys from Planet-M, this week we have an Artist Appreciation, so I’ll be talking about the mind that has brought us many gothic classics like Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson, that’s right this week I’ll be talking about Mike Mignola.
Mignola’s career began in 1980 as an illustrator for The Comic Reader (Comic News and Fanzine), in 1983 he was given a job at Marvel inking various title such as Power Man and Iron fist, Daredevil, The Incredible Hulk and Rocket Raccoon, he would later go onto draw for DC comic in small titles like the Phantom Stranger, The World of Krypton series and covers for big comics like the Death in The Family and even had the chance to work on a DC one shot with writer Brian Augustyn to create Batman: Gotham By Gaslight.
But he would reach greater success within the comic book industry when in 1994 he went to Dark horse comics and brought Hellboy to the page after years of illustrating the character through multiple work-for-hire comics with Hellboy: Seed of destruction.
With the success of Hellboy Mignola was able to build on the lore and mythos of the universe the character lived in with titles like B.P.R.D., Abe Saipen and Lobster Johnson coming out soon after and establishing a universe that unlike Marvel and DC was easier to understand, easier to get a start on and was able to maintain a consistent tone in the stories because out of all the artist and writers Mignola helms it all, making sure the artwork has some resemblance to his art style and the writing matching the supernatural gothic noir tone of the overall series.
Now that I’ve talked about Mignola and his writing let’s get to the artwork. Mignola’s art style is usually seen as an amalgamation of both Jack Kirby’s use of basic shape and patterns within anatomy and Alex Toth’s inking methods for characters and the backgrounds.
And I have to say that these two styles together work in the best way possible, the dark backgrounds and heavily inked aspects of the characters allow for the gothic and noir atmosphere, the designs of the characters are nothing short of creative such as with characters like Johann Krauss, I know he’s just air in a suit, but the overall design and the details of how he releases air from the suit is quite interesting and the movement of the characters in Mignola’s style feels a lot like a well written speech, powerful and memorable.
If I had to give a description to how I view Mignola’s artwork I would say “if you could look into the mind of Edgar Allen Poe than Mignola’s artwork is probably what everything in there would look like, dark buildings and buildings and demons that reflect humanity in all its forms”.
Now for the reading List, Mignola has written and drew many works so here are a few to get started(and this list is made up of comics he has written or drew), Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Hellboy Seed of destruction, B.P.R.D. Vol. 1, Lobster Johnson Vol. 1, Cosmic Odyssey, Sledge Hammer 44 and The Adventures Of Screw-On-Head, also Mignola has done some work in the film industry so for a watch list we have Hellboy 1 and 2, Atlantis The Lost Empire and The Screw-On-Head pilot.
I hope you all find time to read or watch what is on the list and if you have any suggestions for future blogs please leave them in the comments below and with that I’d like to say Thank You for reading.
