Part of Series
See Mike Mignola’s art as you never have before–presented in IDW’s Artisan Edition format! Mike Mignola has been (and remains!) one of the preeminent comics creators of the past several decades. His career was already firmly established for his outstanding work on characters like Batman, Wolverine, a myriad of beautiful covers and more… And then came Hellboy. Mignola’s iconic creation struck a meteoric chord with fans from the very start and has not abated in the 25-plus years since the character’s debut. This Artisan Edition features the first five issues of Hellboy in Hell as well as a wealth of historic supplementary material: the first three Hellboy stories–the two initial four-pagers, produced for promotional purposes, and the 10-page story from John Byrne’s Nextmen #21–plus The Corpse, and two other tales selected by Mignola for inclusion. Nearly every page has been scanned from Mignola’s original art and showcases the artist’s gorgeous work as closely as possible to the physical page–this is a book for fans of great storytelling and students of the craft. An Artisan Edition endeavors to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art–for instance, corrections, blue pencils, paste-overs, all the little nuances that make original art unique. Unless you are holding Mike’s art in your hands, there is no way to better experience his original art.
Author
Mike Mignola was born September 16, 1960 in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading Dracula at age 13 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered. In 1982, hoping to find a way to draw monsters for a living, he moved to New York City and began working for Marvel Comics, first as a (very terrible) inker and then as an artist on comics like Rocket Raccoon, Alpha Flight and The Hulk. By the late 80s he had begun to develop his signature style (thin lines, clunky shapes and lots of black) and moved onto higher profile commercial projects like Cosmic Odyssey (1988) and Gotham by Gaslight (1989) for DC Comics, and the not-so-commercial Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (1990) for Marvel. In 1992, he drew the comic book adaptation of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula for Topps Comics. In 1993, Mike moved to Dark Horse comics and created Hellboy, a half-demon occult detective who may or may not be the Beast of the Apocalypse. While the first story line (Seed of Destruction, 1994) was co-written by John Byrne, Mike has continued writing the series himself. There are, at this moment, 13 Hellboy graphic novel collections (with more on the way), several spin-off titles (B.P.R.D., Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien and Witchfinder), three anthologies of prose stories, several novels, two animated films and two live-action films staring Ron Perlman. Hellboy has earned numerous comic industry awards and is published in a great many countries. Mike also created the award-winning comic book The Amazing Screw-on Head and has co-written two novels (Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire and Joe Golem and the Drowning City) with best-selling author Christopher Golden. Mike worked (very briefly) with Francis Ford Coppola on his film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), was a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). He lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter, a lot of books and a cat.
