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Artist Spotlight Mike Mignola

Mike Mignola – Creating Your Own Work

“What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it’s a dead body — you’re just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, “Oh, that’s his pitch for a TV show. That’s his pitch for a movie. That’s him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.” I didn’t do that. My one piece of advice to people who are saying “I wanna do it, but DC and Marvel pay so well…” is that in between your big paying gigs, just find time just to do one comic! It doesn’t have to be a 6000-page epic! It doesn’t have to be Hellboy! Ten years down the road, when you’re scrambling for work or drawing some book you hate, at least you did something when you had fire in your belly that’s really you.”

-Mike Mignola

To read the full interview, go to
The Playboy Conversation: Hellboy Creator Mike Mignola

Mignola_ArtofHellboy

By Jim Keefe

Jim Keefe is the current artist of the Sally Forth comic strip. From 1996-2003 he was the writer and artist of the Flash Gordon comic strip. A graduate of the Joe Kubert School, Keefe likewise teaches Comic Art. Teaching and speaking engagements include SVA in Manhattan, Hofstra’s UCCE Youth Programs, and most recently the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.