YOUNG HELLBOY: A Portrait of the Demon as an Adventurous Kid

An EXCLUSIVE INSIDE LOOK at a groovy variant cover…

Mike Mignola chronicles the adventures of a youthful Hellboy starting in February with Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #1, co-written by Tom Sniegoski, featuring art by Craig Rousseau and colors by Dave Stewart.

The series has fans all abuzz and we’ve got an EXCLUSIVE INSIDE LOOK for you at the variant cover of Issue #3 by Wylie Beckert, due in April.

Beckert, who is best known for her fine art and playing card illustrations, is making her comics debut with this cover. Dig this snapshot of her process:

“One of the things that struck me about this series is how the young and old versions of Hellboy manage to be such distinct characters,” Beckert explained. “Old Hellboy has the world-weariness of someone who has been clocking in every day to fight monsters, and isn’t surprised by anything; Young Hellboy is seeing everything for the first time and couldn’t be more excited about it. And yet they’re still very believable as parts of the same personality—just captured at different moments in the timeline. I wanted to show both sides of the coin with my variant cover by contrasting an immovable stone idol of Old Hellboy with Young Hellboy’s awe and delight over the strange jungle critters around him.”

“Most of my working hours on this piece were divided between the composition (which began life as a rough napkin sketch and underwent a great deal of tweaking and re-drawing in Photoshop) and the monochromatic underpainting in traditional media (ink, pencil, and white charcoal). Color and finishing touches were added digitally,” she added.

“Mike has long been one of my favorite artists, so tackling Hellboy was both a dream job and an intimidating proposition,” Beckert said. “I spent a lot of time poring over his 25 Years of Covers book for inspiration while I was working.”

Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land #1 (of 4) is scheduled to be released Feb. 17. Issue #3 is due in April.

MORE

— 13 PANELS That Capture the Magic of HELLBOY. Click here.

— VIDEO SPECIAL: Mike Mignola Talks HELLBOY and Creativity. Click here.

Author: Dan Greenfield

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