CI: Just how involved with the Dracula movie were you?

MM: My involvement in Dracula was extremely minor. It’s one of these things where various people have exaggerated what my involvement in Dracula was, which was extremely minor. Because I was living in San Francisco, and was going to Zootrope Pictures to pick up reference on Dracula, I was called in occasionally to do some modifications on the model of Castle Dracula they had gotten in. Footage of that model [came in] and Coppola wasn’t real happy with it so he and I sat down...He told me what he wanted and I just did some drawings for the model builders so they could adjust the model to a little more what he wanted. Then there was one other incident where the Castle Dracula scene is in flashbacks, real briefly, hard to even notice. I, and someone else I never spoke to, designed this together. Through Roman Coppola, this drawing got faxed back and forth two or three times, and I would do something and somebody else would do something, and it would come back to me. That was in one afternoon and that thing showed up in the movie. That was pretty weird.

Then I did some storyboards at the real last minute. The weirdest experience was one night when Coppola invited me to go see a rough cut of the picture and it was George Lucas and I and Francis watching the rough cut, and then the two of them, kind of with me there, discussed what worked, what didn’t work. Are there some scenes missing that should be there and the consensus was [to] see about adding a couple of scenes and changing the ending a little bit. Francis called me up and we went over it by the phone. I did [in] comic book page style four scenes that I faxed off to him. At least one of them showed up exactly the way I did it. There’s an opening shot in the movie where Dracula’s saying goodbye to Elizabeth and going off to war. That wasn’t in the original version of the film and was added at the last minute. That was pretty neat.

CI: Working with Coppola and Lucas, wow!

MM: That was weird, and that was around the time I made up Hellboy. I said “My career has gotten so strange, what am I going to do now?” I was wrapping up Dracula, “What am I going to do next? After things like this happen maybe I should go back to doing my own thing.” At that point, it felt like anything I did would be a step backwards, or repeating what I’d done in the past.

CI: You’ve also become very, very well known for your cover work as well. One series you did was the “Death in the Family.” When you initially did these pieces, did you envision the storyline gaining as much media attention as it did?

MM: Concerning how much media attention it was, I wish I had done better covers. I remember the big deal buzzing around the office: Are they gonna kill Robin, are they not going to kill Robin? It was this phone-in vote thing. It just seemed like a silly gimmick to me. But it did mean that one of those covers was showed on Time and Newsweek. But, no that was pretty much another job.

CI: Are there any other characters you’d like to handle if you ever have any spare time?

MM: The trouble with doing my own stuff now is that I’ve gotten really spoiled. If I were to handle some other...established characters, you’d have to sit down and read this stuff. You have to figure this out. I’d rather do new stuff. There are characters like Batman who are fun to draw and really easy to make look good. Batman is fun for me to do. I can’t say I read [or know much about] Batman, but he’s fun to draw. Off-hand, I can’t think of anything out there where I’ve gone “I haven’t drawn that guy.” One thing about doing a lot of covers: I got to draw a lot of characters. Like the Cosmic Odyssey I did for DC, I did a lot of characters in there, I checked off a lot of guys that maybe I wanted to draw. No, comic book character-wise, I don’t hink there’s anybody I’m dying to do.

CI: Okay, if the Madman, Mage, and Grendel figures from Graffiti do well, have you contemplated a Hellboy figure?

MM: Yeah, as soon as they showed the Madman figure at San Diego last year, a lot of people were coming up to Chapman and saying “Do a Hellboy one.” Bob talked to me about it, and I think it’s something we’ve discussed. Things are a little complicated because there is a Hellboy movie option which ties up some of the rights to some of the stuff. As long as it’s a limited edition deal, there shouldn’t be a problem with doing a Hellboy one.

CI: A movie option? Would you care to tell me about that, or is it under wraps?

MM: I don’t worry about that. I know there’s a guy who, by now, has finished writing the screenplay. I like what he was going to do, but I haven’t read any of it. He came out here and we discussed it a little bit. He knows more about Hellboy than I do and he wants to squeeze stuff from the different mini-series into this one big thing. I’m 99% sure nothing will ever happen with it. I don’t want to be one of those guys who sits around and talks about how great his movie is going to be. Almost none of these things ever get made. The ones that do made are more often than not aren’t very good. So, I’m certainly not sitting around counting the money.

If it happens, it happens, that’d be great.