We chat with Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski about the new Hellboy audio drama.
Welcome to Creator Corner, our recurring interview series in which we chat with the coolest and most thought-provoking creators in the industry. In this entry, we're conversing with Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski about Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan. Listen to the unedited audio HERE.
Some worlds cannot be contained to one person's imagination. For years, Hellboy lived exclusively in Mike Mignola's noggin. Then came the prose novel The Lost Army by Christopher Golden, which Mignola illustrated. Quickly, other novels and short story collections followed, eventually leading to the spin-off BPRD comic book mini-series Hollow Earth, written by Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski, and illustrated by Ryan Sook. While Mignola held the leash, Hellboy traveled blissfully from creator to creator, and now, dozens upon dozens of writers and artists have had a hand in contributing to his glorious universe.
Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan is a Graphic Audio drama written by Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski. It is the latest saga created within Hellboy's world, and it's playing in a medium that harkens back to classic pulp radio heroes like The Shadow. Working in the world of sound, different creative decisions must be considered. Thankfully, Golden and Sniegoski have had some serious experience in this field. Even better, they've mastered moving through Hellboy's dimension, aka Mike Mignola's mindscape.
The Goddess of Manhattan takes place in 1990, when Hellboy is still a proud and confident BPRD member, working alongside Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien. Below Manhattan, for more than sixty years, a secret society thrives. Unfortunately or fortunately, their time may be up as a creature cuts through them, dwindling their numbers. Hellboy and company travel below to investigate and come face to face with an ancient and possibly malevolent force.
We spoke with Golden and Sniegoski about The Goddess of Manhattan. We discuss how they operate with Mike Mignola, creating in his world while maintaining their artistic vision. We celebrate what Mignola has uniquely achieved in comics, consider how else the Hellboy universe could expand, and how working exclusively in an audio format alters the creative process.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
The Goddess of Manhattan is a Proper Dip into Hellboy's Realm
Brad: How has Hellboy and how has his world evolved in your imagination since you started?
Christopher Golden: Well, I mean, from my part, I think I was the first person to write anything in this world other than Mike. In fact, I am certain I was. And so when I started writing The Lost Army, there was very little Hellboy universe. I mean, it was just what was inside Mike's brain and what he'd already put in, I think, the first miniseries.
I say this all the time, but there is no single creator in the history of comics who has created such a massive story world and never rebooted it. So there are two things. No one has ever created a story world the size of this one that doesn't belong to somebody else. And also, it's never been rebooted. So it's one story that continues to grow, and every time Mike thinks that the story's over, jackasses like me and Tom call him up and say, "Hey, you know, we were thinking about Frankenstein, and we don't think that story is over." And he's like, "Of course, it's over." And then we tell him the idea, and he's like, "Oh, that's good."
Thomas E. Sniegoski: Since you were the guy that was the first, after Mike, I kind of followed you. It was kind of like, all right, I saw what Chris was doing. Now let's see what I could add to this mix. Yeah, without Mike, there's nothing; Mike is always the churning center of all of this. I mean, any idea, any wild concept that Chris and I might have, it has to go through him. It has to be sucked into that vortex and spun around a little bit, and then it gets that Mignola feel to it, and then it usually is passed off to us to continue with after what he's added to it.
Christopher Golden: In a weird way, I feel it's sort of like Mike's story brain for this universe because he's now created others, which is always moving. And so when you have an idea or a thought of something that you want to add to it, the question is, will you be able to keep up with it if you're trying to jump onto that moving train? Right?
Or will your idea fit into some of the crevices in the story he's already got in his mind? And that's how it started at the beginning. And for a couple of years, Dark Horse and Mike were all like, "No, the fans don't want more than what I'm giving them." And finally, I said, "Look, Tom and I, you should let us write this BPRD miniseries." And they finally all went for it. And that was the best part because I think it really made both Mike and Dark Horse realize how great the appetite of the fans was because we were and are fans. So we are saying, "We want to know more. We want to see more, explore more with these characters."
So I think that was the beginning. And then other people came in. Mike came up with Edward Grey, and Chris Roberson is the perfect guy to write Edward Grey stories with him. And so it grows organically, and I always feel like Mike himself and this world don't get enough credit for how unique in the annals of comic history it all is.
Making Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan Your Own
Brad: I would imagine it gets a little more complicated the more you contribute to it, or is it easier somehow?
Thomas E. Sniegoski: Yeah. I don't know if easy is the right word, because there are many moving parts to that stuff - what you think you might know or think is correct. A lot of the times it's a little off. Remember Chris, when we were doing Frankenstein and you were like, "Oh, no, the Vril energy, he didn't have that yet." Or something. There was something, and I was like, "I thought he did have it." "No."
Christopher Golden: But then you go back and you do your research and you're like, "Oh yeah, wait a minute." See, this is the thing about it: it's like climbing a mountain, right? You'll always find a toehold or a handhold if you look. And so it isn't about there not being room for stories. It's about having a great idea and finding the perfect place to put it.
Working on Hellboy In Love was great because I created this character, Anastasia Bransfield, in the first novel, The Lost Army. Mike always said, "I'm not going to cover those years in the comics because eventually you'll do something." And we finally found the right time to do it. That's been really interesting to explore because it's a very different Hellboy. So yeah, it's always interesting.
By the way, also, I should say, for those who aren't familiar with what we have and haven't done, I want to make sure we're not implying that Tom and I wrote the BPRD series. We wrote with Mike the original BPRD mini-series, Hollow Earth, which has three issues. And I think that sort of laid the seeds or planted the seeds for the plans that Mike then came in and said, "Oh, you know what? I've always wanted." He always knew where he was going with Hellboy, but I think that the ongoing BPRD series gave him room to tell the kind of apocalyptic story that the Hellboy stories didn't really have room to accommodate.
Thomas E. Sniegoski: And he'd always planned that apocalypse. I remember talking to him back in the very beginning of this stuff. He always knew where this was going, and it never really changed. There might've been some details here and there, but it never really changed.
Brad: How do you maintain your own voice within such a Mike Mignola world?
Christopher Golden: Oh, Tom, you field that one. Talk about Young Hellboy because I don't think Mike would've let anybody else do that series the way it was done.
Thomas E. Sniegoski: He was very, very specific that this is what I want you to do with Hellboy. Whereas he wanted Chris to do his Hellboy In Love stories and things like that. That was Chris's version of Hellboy. He was very, very, very, very specific about, because I think he's seen a kind of goofiness in my writing style and some of the Bone stuff that I did with Jeff Smith and some of my YA material and things. There's always kind of a sense of humor to a lot of the work. So I think he felt that that fit perfectly with Hellboy at that age in terms of the adventures that he would be getting into. So yeah, it was really kind of neat to have him look you in the eye and say, "Yeah, you need to do this." He did the same thing with the Lobster Johnson novel that I did. He was like, "I don't think anybody else could do a Lobster Johnson novel. I want you to do it."
Christopher Golden: This is the thing. Tom has this very sort of frenetic, gleefully mischievous style, and that's who he is also as a person. And so if Mike wants that story, Tom is the guy who will write it. And that's the interesting thing, too. It's like Tom and I communicate a certain way. Tom and Mike communicate a certain way. Mike and I communicate a certain way. And so interestingly, again, the way that I'm telling certain stories with all the Outerverse stuff that Mike and I have done, those are stories Tom would've written completely differently.
And my Young Hellboy would've been completely different. So yeah, it is a really interesting dynamic. However, I also want to ensure that we keep returning to the fact that Mike is the creative inspiration.
Thomas E. Sniegoski: Oh, yeah. When you don't think you know where you need to go, he, within seconds, will say, "Well, why don't you do that?" I mean, it's amazing. Just a phone conversation with Mike - you'll have 20 ideas for a new series in the course of a conversation.
Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan's Soundscape
Brad: And so do you find yourself having to change gears when entering the audio world, especially now that you've got it down with the third story, Chris?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Tom, talk about Grim Death a little bit, even though it's not Hellboy, because that's really instructive to your process of doing this.
Thomas E. Sniegoski: We are doing an audio drama based on the novel that Mike and I wrote called Grim Death and Bill the Electrocuted Criminal. And I had to adapt the novel into this audio drama. And it was so interesting because I'd never done anything like it. So I had to look at my prose, almost remove it, and make it almost like a movie script. I had to picture everything. I had to think about what makes sound, if there is no sound in this particular moment, what could possibly make a sound to convey some kind of emotion or a particular moment or an action. It helped an awful lot in writing Goddess of Manhattan with Chris. I got to focus on conveying my story, not only with dialogue but with sound, sound effects, and really sharp dialogue or specific dialogue.
Christopher Golden: We also wrote the two Buffy the Vampire Slayer video games together. And there's something about that, too. Amber Benson and I had done an animated series with BBC called Ghosts of Albion, and there's something about those experiences that helped, even though there are visuals with those, that helped start thinking about how do you communicate without doing a massive info dump, without doing something that sounds unnatural?
How can you get this across to the audience so they know what's going on and they can get caught up in it without it sounding stilted? And so that was an interesting challenge going to this. It also helped that Tom was doing Grim Death. It helped that I was simultaneously doing Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, which is the nine-episode Buffy the Vampire Slayer sequel/audio series that Amber Benson and I did for Audible, which Amber and I directed together as well. And that helps, too, by the way. Before that, I had only ever directed stage musical stuff like local stuff. But I think that helps too, because you're always thinking about how can I communicate something to the audience in a way that you don't have the tools of a prose writer. You can't just sit there and describe something like you would on a page of prose. I would say it's a learning curve, but it's fun.
Hellboy and the BPRD: The Goddess of Manhattan is now available from Graphic Audio.
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