With the new Young Hellboy coming out on Wednesday February 17th from Dark Horse Comics, I was able to spend some time reading this new comic and coming up with questions for Tom Sniegoski, the guy who (in my humble opinion, was dead lucky) got to write this new story with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.
1.How did working with Mike Mignola come about?
TOM: I’ve known Mike for quite a few years, and have worked on some Hellboy-related projects with him. We also wrote a pretty crazy novel together called Grim Death & Bill the Electrocuted Criminal. So, I think we were pretty much ready for this series.
2. How did you land on this story idea? (the crabs are awesome by the way)
TOM: I LOVED the crabs! Mike and I really wanted to do a fun, pulpy adventure story for the first Young Hellboy miniseries. We batted around all sorts of ideas, landed on the kinds of things we wanted to see and what we felt a story like this needed, and incorporated them all into a plot and then into scripts.
3. Were there any ideas that didn’t get used in this issue? You have kong, giant crabs and velociraptors!
TOM: Nope. We managed to get all the things that we thought would be necessary for this story in. There’s a lot of really cool things, but we didn’t feel like the story was too much, y’know? It was just right.
4. Did you have any say/input in the art? I love how it’s a bit brighter than Hellboy usually is. (is that a nod to him being young here?)
TOM: Mike and I work full script, so we were telling the amazing Craig Rousseau what we wanted to see. But Craig is such an amazing artist that he brought his own unique spin to what Mike and I were describing for him in the scripts. And Dave Stewart’s colors are just fantastic, capturing that sense of ‘gee whiz’ in the character at this age.
5. Is there more collaboration with MM coming? What is next for you as a writer?
TOM: I would LOVE there to be more collaboration with Mike! It’s always a blast. We’ll just have to see how the fans react to this series. As far as my writing goes, I’m wrapping up a new novel with my writing partner, Jeannine Acheson, and still plugging away on my monthly Vengeance of Vampirella series for Dynamite. There are few other incredibly exciting things in the works, but I can’t quite talk about them yet. Give me a poke a little later and I’ll be happy to share.
* keep an eye out on this space, I am super stoked to be sharing my review for Young Hellboy when it comes out on Wednesday.
