Wake the devil

What first got you excited about comics?
Boy, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that! My cousin was a comic-book reader, and I was exposed to great Marvel comics—Stan Lee, Jack Kirby stuff—when I was really young, and while I didn’t really become a comic book collector until later, like in junior high school, the bug kind of hit me early that there was this whole world I was unaware of. As I got a little older, I sort of rediscovered this stuff I’d been exposed to as a young kid, and I was just hooked.

What was it that appealed to you? Was it about getting away from reality?
Yeah, it was a real spectacular kind of fiction—there’s the art and the story, and I was drawing since I was tiny, and so the art obviously appealed to me—but it was mostly the mythology.

So what inspired you to go from being a fan to writing and creating your own stories?
From an early age, partly fuelled by comics, but also from the books I started reading, I always loved the supernatural—I always loved monsters—and as I went through art school, my goal was to somehow make a living drawing monsters. There aren’t a lot of jobs doing that! [laughs] And I’d actually gotten out of comics, and wasn’t really following them at that point.

I was gearing myself towards becoming an illustrator, but at some point you realise there aren’t a lot of jobs for an illustrator that wants to draw monsters. So as I came out of art school, I started looking at comics again as a place where I could get away with drawing monsters. I didn’t think I was good enough to draw comics, but I though that by getting in there and inking other people’s work, slowly, little by little, I would eventually be able to get a job in comics, drawing covers or something like that.

I thought that was the only outlet for what I wanted to do. It never even occurred to me to write my own stories at that point. I was in the business for ten years before I started even playing with the idea of writing my own stuff.

What prompted you to start writing?
Well, after ten years in the business, drawing a lot of stuff that didn’t have monsters in it [laughs], I realised that the only way I was going to get to draw the stuff I wanted to draw was to make it up myself.

There was actually a Batman story that I wrote with someone else, but it was my idea, so basically “here’s a list of the things I wanna draw”. I drew it and someone else scripted it, and it was a lot of fun.

Suddenly, I was sitting there thinking that was kind of nice, getting to do my subject matter, so why don’t I, instead of making up other weird stories like this and trying to stick Batman or some other established characters into them, make up my own characters specifically for the purpose of doing these kinds of supernatural stories?

I knew the kinds of stories and subject matter I wanted to do, so then it was just a matter of making up a character to base these stories around. Hellboy isn’t a character I’d planned to do—not something I’d made up as a little kid. I’d done one or two drawings of a character kind of like him, and on one drawing I’d tacked on the name Hellboy, just as a joke.

I actually wanted to do a cult detective kind of character, and I would have made him a regular human being, except I knew I’d get bored drawing a regular human being, and so I just thought why not take this fun monster and make him my main character, because I won’t get bored drawing him!

With thanks to Mike and Christine Mignola, and the guys at Dark Horse. The official Hellboy website can be found at hellboy.com.

Hellboy week navigation:
Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

A six-part interview with Mike Mignola this way comes

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to speak with Mike Mignola about his work in comics and the film industry. He provided insight into his illustrative style, the inspiration for his Hellboy work, and what it’s like to see your creation move to the big screen. Since the bulk of the interview never saw the light of day, due to the restrictions imposed by limited space in magazines, I thought I’d run the interview over the next week or so, to whet people’s appetites for the British release of Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

So check back over the coming days for one of the most comprehensive interviews with comics legend Mignola that you’re ever likely to read.

Update: all six parts are now online—Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6.

• Garfield minus Garfield is getting a book, with the original comics alongside the doctored ones: http://tinyurl.com/4ul2wv #
• PerversionTracker is back, showcasing the very worst of Mac software, concentrating on iPhone dreck. http://perversiontracker.com/ #
• Judging by comments for some of my recent online articles, the word ‘faff’ isn’t universally known. My mission is to change this in 2008! #

Recently, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours talking to games designer Eugene Jarvis, the chap responsible for, amongst other titles, Robotron: 2084 and Defender. The guy is one of those genius types who’s about as modest as they come. Handily—what with me interviewing him for various magazine articles—he also happens to be witty and able to provide plenty of insight into gaming’s past, present and future.

One of the things gaming’s typically accused of in the modern era is churning out more of the same, crushing innovation underfoot. Jarvis has a different take:

I’m blown away with how games have gone. Look at Defender side-by-side with Halo or BioShock, and all these modern games, and see where we got in 25 years… It’s amazing how from year-to-year we’re always complaining that everything’s just the same as the last game—sequel upon sequel. But we used to say that in the Space Invaders era! It seems like from year-to-year, we’re always decrying the lack of progress. But then after 25 years of that, it’s like: holy cow! [laughs] 25 years of cloned games and we’ve gone a long way!

I’m usually the first to complain about stagnation within gaming and a lack of innovation, but Jarvis offers a good point. Sometimes, it pays to take a step back and make a more direct comparison between past and present. Evolution isn’t always fast, and like watching a child or plant grow, it often takes juxtaposing things ten years apart to see how much something has changed.

That’s not to say that there aren’t massive problems in the current games industry, because there are. However, this most-talked-about of concerns has clearly been a headache since the very start of gaming (indeed, Jarvis noted that Robotron: 2084 is basically Space Invaders crossed with Berzerk!, and that Defender evolved from a batch of Space Invaders and Asteroids clones), and so perhaps it’s time to get over the cloning issue and just enjoy gaming’s continual—if decidedly inconsistent—evolution on the path to who-knows-where.

Robotron: 2084. If you’re a youngster, this is where your modern console game’s controls first appeared.

He’s got a whole world in his hands

As someone who’s been pining for a DS version of Civilization for a couple of years, I wonder whether the realisation of such a product could ever have been anything other than a disappointment. Unfortunately, after a few weeks’ play, ‘disappointment’ pretty much sums up my opinion regarding the DS port of the latest game in the famous turn-based strategy series.

To be fair to Firaxis and Sid Meier, it’s actually the DS itself that causes some of the problems with this game, and the Civilization core remains largely intact. You get to take a civilization from prehistory to modern times, building and moving units, researching technology, and aiming to become the greatest in the world via various means (domination, economics, technology, or by building the UN). However, with Civ basically being a strategy title, it’s problematic when that aspect of the game is hampered.

First and foremost, the DS screen is too small to provide you with a decent overview of the world. Although the team wisely ditched the 3D graphics from the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, opting instead for an iconic approach similar to the original Civilization, the map still feels cramped, and moving around it is a chore. This problem could have been alleviated somewhat by providing the option to allow the map to appear—at least optionally—on both screens; unfortunately, one screen is mostly reserved for pointless battle animations.

Elsewhere, the streamlining of the original concept to hammer it into consoles rather than PCs and Macs has neutered it. Although the game is faster, it’s become more of an overt race than a game of chess. Instead of investing in technology and thinking of long-term plans, a war-obsessed AI largely forces games into tending towards moving units, protracted wars and conquest. The technology tree is very basic, and random events are frequent and absurdly powerful. It’s not uncommon to end up with tanks in 200 AD, especially if you stumble across Atlantis, which always spews forth a number of technological advances.

It’s not all bad news—the game is quite fun, and gives you a quick Civ-style fix for when you’re away from your PC. However, rather than being captivating in a ‘total addiction’ sense, this game instead feels ‘annoyingly’ compelling in the same way as Puzzle Quest: you can’t put the game down, but in your heart of hearts you know it’s actually a somewhat tedious slog that could have been a lot better.

Civilization Revolution is already out in the US, and comes to Europe towards the end of August.

Sadly, Civilization Revolution doesn’t have a whale unit—it’s just a resource icon.