Mike Mignola knows that people always think the same thing about his work.
“I have a one-sentence quote: ‘Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy,’” the comics writer and artist joked in an interview with TheWrap. “So everything outside of Hellboy feels like it’s just me playing. I’m very lucky that after all these years — I want to say, 40 years of comics — my favorite thing to do is sit at a drawing table and draw all day long. Do it.”
This is despite the fact that Mignola is now semi-retired, having completed the epic Hellboy saga during his long years as a comics creator. Both the “Hellboy” art and more of Mignola’s work are now on display in the artist’s first exhibition at New York’s Philip Labaun Gallery through New York Comic Con next month. The artist called the city “his favorite city.”
“The idea of a New York gallery show is very important,” Mignola said. “It’s been a long time since I had an event where I felt that not everything depended on it, but it had the potential to change my perspective on the future. This is for the paintings, to find out if there is a market for this kind of thing, to determine if more works are possible as gallery shows.”
As part of the exhibition, Mignola will also release a new IDW book featuring all the pieces on display.
“I don’t think of it as an art book,” Mignola said. “I think of it as a catalogue for a gallery show. And I didn’t know we had an art book or a gallery catalogue, but it allowed me to go to these paintings, because I really liked the paintings, because I didn’t do much and I made them just for myself.”
The creator praised the book for saying goodbye to him and allowing more people to enjoy the work.
“Some of them are my favorite things I’ve ever made,” Mignola said. “And here at home, they were just sitting on the shelf, so the idea of selling them… It was like, ‘Yeah, but if I have a picture of them, I can look at them and say, ‘Oh, I made that.’ That allowed for photographs to be allowed if someone wanted them. We’ll see.”
There are more than 160 pieces that Minnola considers his best work, and he has finally accepted the possibility of parting ways.
“So to be in a room with 160 incredible pieces of your best work? It’s very exciting. I honestly can’t wait to get in there and see what it’s like,” Mignola said.
One thing that makes the work on display so special is that Mignola didn’t have to make the transition that many other contemporary comics creators have to digitally produce their work, and he’s grateful he didn’t have to.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen artwork and said, ‘Oh, I want to buy that,’ and someone says, ‘Well, that doesn’t exist,’” Mignola lamented.
But the art in this exhibit is real pieces that exist in the real world. You can see these items as part of a gallery exhibit or in the new book Hell, Black and Water: The Art of Mike Mignola from publisher IDW.
See exclusive images from the new book and exhibit below:
