Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish notes

Now that the book is out and many of you have had a chance to see it, I wanted to mention a few things.

I really need to publicly thank Mike Mignola for caring enough to write a Hellboy story specifically for me to draw. I don't know what I did to deserve this gift from a guy like Mike but I'm very grateful to him. He thought my lack of enthusiasm after he described the story was nonchalance. Now that it's all over, I can admit that I was just afraid I couldn't pull it off. No one can draw Hellboy better than Mike and I really didn't want to let him down. Turns out that really wasn't the most important thing. There are so many quirky, oddball visuals in the story – as well as a fair amount of rustic, rural Americana – that I had fun drawing ALL of the pages, not just the ones with Hellboy. I don't know how Mike knew I'd enjoy drawing all those cow faces. It's scary to think that a writer can know something about me that I don't know about myself.

Mike hasn't spent much time in the Midwest or hung out with Kansas farmers but like Alan Moore before him, he somehow got just the right amount of twang in the voices of the locals.

Dark Horse was more than accommodating and let me do my own colors and seps. With most jobs, by the time I finish the inks, I have a lot of very specific ideas about how I'd like the art to be colored. Passing it off to someone else to execute that final layer of the art just never feels right. I was running a little late with the pencils and inks but the coloring went so fast that I actually finished the book a few days ahead of the deadline. Scott Allie and Mike were concerned that I was coloring everything too bright after they saw the first few pages. I went back in and toned down the daylight scene a little but the bulk of the story takes place at night or inside a dark space ship so that problem eventually took care of itself.

Anyway, this was the most fun I've had in years and I'm really grateful for the response to it so far. Thanks to all of you who bought the book and/or took the time to email, call or tweet about it. You really made my day!

Kevin

Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish preview

This might have been posted a long time ago, but I just noticed that Dark Horse is previewing the first six pages on their site. The book goes on sale April 13th.

Newsarama Hellboy interview

The Hellboy one-shot, "Buster Oakley Gets His Wish" will be going on sale next month. Here's a Newsarama interview where we discuss some of the behind-the-scenes work.

By the way, you shouldn't be alarmed by the unfinished art you're seeing. The book's all done, at the printer and on schedule. For once, I finished something a few days ahead of the deadline.

Hellboy cover: thumbnail sketch to inks

For me, the challenge on this cover was coming up with an interesting image that didn't spoil any of the surprises in the story. I'll try to post some images from the interior pages later.

Hellboy

The cat's out of the bag so I might as well link to the news story. It goes on sale in April. Script by Mike Mignola, pencils, inks, lettering and colors by yours truly. A terrific, weird, sad and funny 24 page Hellboy story plus this cover. Yippee!