Weird Tales, Volume 350

by Norman Spinrad

  So how did the character of Hellboy actually come about? I've heard you say he was based on your father, but where did he come from?

  Well, I knew the kinds of stories I wanted to do. Coming from ten years of working for Marvel, I knew I wanted to do supernatural stories and I knew I wanted to do an occult detective kind of a character. I had no interest in creating the kind of character Hellboy really turned into, really. I just wanted a vehicle to do little supernatural stories.

  My first instinct was to create a regular human occult detective, like some of the guys I had read about in other people's stories, but I knew I'd get bored drawing a regular person. So I created this monster character just because he'd be fun to draw. But I never intended to get into what that character was. Because I wasn't an experienced writer, the only way I knew how to write a character was to ask: “What would I do, what would I say?”

  I wanted a guy who was tough. And kind of older and leathery. I didn't want a snappy wisecracking guy, I wanted a tough, gnarled, been-there-done-that kind of guy, which is very much the kind of guy my father is. He's from that WWII generation, and there was something very heroic about those tough old guys. So that's the part of my father that went into Hellboy. Of course, he doesn't talk like my father. He talks like me! But he feels like my father.

  Do you have a big interest in World War II?

  Not really. Not beyond the comic book version of WWII, anyway. That was really important to me when I was reading comics as a kid. I was a Marvel comics guy. And all of my favorite Marvel stuff had at least one foot in WWII. Marvel had all these great WWII villains. They had the Red Skull, they had Baron Zemo … they just had these wonderful odd characters. To me, a character like Captain America works better in WWII.

  There was just something very heroic and old school about the WWII Marvel stuff. I wanted Hellboy's origin to have one foot in WWII because that just seemed like the real deal, like real comics.

  How did you decide to pursue art as a career?

  I was drawing well before I read Dracula — as far back as I could remember. And I don't think I ever found anything else I was even slightly good at. I mean I tried writing a little bit when I was in high school — again, very much inspired by the pulp guys. I tried to come up with this series of fantasy stories with a Conan kind of character. But I just couldn't do it. It didn't click the way drawing did. So I never considered writing as a career. Comics was always something to break into with drawing.

  Hellboy used to be small scale and now he’s an icon, or approaching one. Has the way that people perceive him now changed your approach?

  Well, I still think of him as I always have. One of the things that has changed is that it's a lot scarier to sit down and do the comic now that people know about it. It's much easier to do stuff when your motivation is “Nobody expects anything from me, but I'm going to show them something cool.” Now, there's a certain level of expectation and that makes it a little bit tougher.

  One thing I'm very happy about, though, is that I've stuck to what I wanted that character to be. I could make that comic a much more commercial comic. But even before I did the first movie, I knew the direction I wanted that character to go in. There's a finite Hellboy story. I could have just said, well, I'm going to dismantle that storyline and turn Hellboy into a regular kind of a comic book character where maybe there's the illusion of change but things don't really change. But once I figured out who this character was, I wanted to tell his story.

  So right now, I'm happy that I am going in a particular direction that changes him. He evolves, and turns into something else, and the movie hasn't really changed that. A lot more people have seen Hellboy because of the movie, and that's great. But yeah, I'm sticking to what I set out to do.

  Are you working on more Hellboy stories right now?

  I'm writing two Hellboy books right now. I'm writing a 3-issue story for comics legend Richard Corbin based on Appalachian folk tales. It's a story I've wanted to do for a long time, so it's a blast. And then there's the regular ongoing Hellboy storyline. The 8-issue series I'm writing right now takes Hellboy right into the middle of both his life and a big gigantic story arc that really changes him forever.

  Duncan Fegredo does the art now, right?

  I keep telling Duncan that nobody's going to want me back on the book now that they've seen what he can do. He's just great, and I'm really happy with what he's doing. He frees up my writing because there are so many things that he can do so well and so much better than me. A lot of things I'd thought of in the past would make me go, “Yeah, that sounds great, but I sure as hell don't want to draw it” or “I wouldn't know how to draw that.” But Duncan can draw anything.

  I don't feel any of the story limitations I felt when I was drawing it myself.

  I never would have guessed you felt limited, because you make it look so effortless! Of course, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Making it look effortless.

  Yeah, well, it isn't! [Laughs.] The story I'm doing right now is so huge, there's no way I would have ever approached this thing if I'd thought, wow, I have to draw all this. I probably could have done it, but that would have meant I wouldn't be able to do anything else. As I'm getting older, there are two or three other things I'd like to do. And I had to make the decision: do I do just Hellboy and do it all myself, and know that nothing else will ever get done, or do I say, “Okay, I've done Hellboy myself for 15 years and now I'd like to go on and do some different things.”

  It was never a question of stopping Hellboy. Not just for financial reasons, but because I'm in the middle of a story and I do want to finish it. But the decision not to draw the book was one of the toughest decisions I've ever had to make. And finding someone else to do the book was just … not easy.

  Did you find Duncan yourself?

  It never occurred to me that Duncan would be available. I'd been a fan of his for a very long time, but I'd always assumed that Duncan was under contract to DC. So I found this other artist who was really good and really wanted to do it, and he actually drew the first issue of Darkness Calls, but it just didn't work out.

  So here we were, an entire year behind schedule (we'd actually delayed the book to get this other artist), and we had this issue drawn that we had to throw out. We had to start all over. I was kind of in a panic. And a friend said, “Well, you should try Duncan Fegredo,” and I said “Yeah, he's probably not available, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.” As it turned out, Duncan actually dropped another project that he was about to start on to jump on the Hellboy stuff.

  And it worked out!

  That was a good day. [Laughs.]

  So now you've written and you've drawn and you've worked in movies. What’s your favorite?

  The more I do stuff other than comics, the more I love doing comics. All the other stuff I've done is more like an interesting side job. I've never done anything else where I thought, “Yeah, maybe I want to do that for a living.”

  I'll admit I entertained throwing in the towel with drawing, because I get frustrated with my own artwork. You probably know what that's like — there are days when I swear that I'm never going to draw again. “I'm just going to write,” I'll say to myself. “It'll make my life so much easier.” And sure, I've been doing mostly that for the last couple years. But I'm so keyed up to draw again. I've been doing covers, but I'm really itching to go back and draw comics.

  I was watching a clip of you at the con in Birmingham, and you mentioned you were doing more weird personal stories in lieu of Hellboy art. Any hints about these?

  A few years back I did a comic called The Amazing Screw-On Head. I think it's one of the two best things I've ever done. It wasn't intended to be commercial, and I didn't know if anyone would like it. It was just for me. As it turned out, people really did like it. So I decided that I want to do more stuff like this. It's what I need to do.

  I have a couple of things I've come up with recently that take place in the Hellboy universe — they don't pe
rtain to Hellboy per se, they're just set in that world. But the Screw-On Head stuff and stories in that vein are just odd little stories I want to do. I have a collection of them.

  Last question. We all know you love monsters. Do you have a favorite monster?

  If we're talking about movies, it's gotta be Frankenstein. If we're talking about a spe-cies of literary creature, it's still gotta be vampires, I think. I never really recovered from Dracula. I know how clichéd that is these days. But I'm talking about the old school stuff. No offense to Anne Rice and Buffy fans, but it'd be the old, weird shit. That's the stuff I like.

  FICTION

  ALL IN

  (In which the stakes are high and the pot is multicellular)

  by Peter Atwood

  The panel slid open with a shunk. Two eyes peered out.

  “Diagnosis?” the voice asked.

  I could smell the cigarette smoke, thick behind the closed door. I nodded.

  “Show me,” said the voice.

  I pulled the creased papers from my shirt pocket, unfolded them against my chest with my free hand, and held them out so the St. Jerome's Infirmary logo was clearly visible at the top. The eyes took in the sealed ice-cream tub hanging from my left hand, then studied the top sheet of the stapled pages long enough to read it twice. The panel shut. I counted my heartbeats as I waited in the dim corridor. The locks on the other side turned. The door creaked open wide enough for me to slip through.

  Inside, four players sat around a low wooden table, its veneer cracked and yellow. A matching cloud of yellow cigarette smoke ghosted the visored lamp above.

  The eyes behind the door, it turned out, belonged to a gaunt face that fronted a bald head on a tall, gangly frame. He now sat at a tiny metal desk against the wall and extended a hand to take my paperwork. Under the desk was a row of cold boxes: two vacuum cases with handles, two silver insulated containers, and a large, wide-mouthed thermos. Beside them, a small butcher's scale.

  Baldy laid the papers on his desk and lifted his chin towards my tub. “Anything in there?”

  From the center of the room, I heard the riffle of cards. I shook my head.

  Baldy looked at me with surprise.

  “It's empty,” I said, handing him the tub. A white vapor stream from the dry-ice inside escaped through a crack in the lid and slid down the side like an evaporating snake.

  Baldy set the tub under the desk with the other containers, then flipped to the last page of my stapled paperwork. “Everyone here is lung cancer,” he commented.

  I shrugged.

  He examined the signature above my doctor's typed name, his double-jointed finger pressing the paper to the desk. Satisfied, he asked me how much.

  “You tell me,” I said. I stretched my hands out, palms up. He examined my right hand closely, then pushed my sleeves up to my elbows.

  “Hmmph,” he said, and counted out twenty-three round, white chips from a tray. I took them in two short stacks, and he waved me to the table.

  At the back of the room, a man in a wrinkled tan suit was signing a clipboard held out by a man in green cottons. They stood by a door with a small square window. Tan Suit handed back the pen and watched me. His jacket hung from his shoulders, limp with misery. A green tie was stuffed halfway into its pocket. He looked as if he had some shame to hide, but was too curious to turn away. His eyes stayed on me until I reached the table, scraped back an empty chair, and sat.

  I coughed. “Hello.”

  In response, a card slid towards me. A second slid past to the player on my left. The dealer continued in silence until a pair of cards lay facedown in front of each of us. The four others all anted up with a clatter of chips, and I added mine.

  It was two weeks since my doctor had recited my diagnosis to me, my feet dangling in their socks as I listened from his paper-lined exam table. It was sadly common. You hit

  a certain age and everyone knows someone with an expiry date. Two months, two years — two weeks. But the shock of looking into your doctor's pale brown eyes, your senses numb, as he delivers death's personal ETA — you sweat, your stomach hollows out.

  The cool hospital air brushed my ankles. I took a breath. “So what happens next?” I asked him.

  It's like being let into a club. The chemical acronyms, the therapy nicknames, the test-result shorthands. And after, all these passwords open new corridors of conversation. “My blood work is up.” “My husband's serum count is down.” “They bumped my sister to category 4B.” Therapy-group comfort offered over coffee.

  It only took a few days before I heard the stories. “Mary's father gave his leg for his wife. Well, from the knee down. She's past remission now. Fully healed.” The medical profession doesn't talk about the Treatment. It came from Argentina, but the scientist was from Mumbai — or the other way round. The incubation was developed in Korea. A virid is populated, distilled, and injected. It can take two or three tries, but success is eighty-plus percent. It's the donation that's problematic. The virid incubates in living flesh and marrow, enough to make the whole process unethical. Donors must be genetically distant.

  I looked at the player to my left. He was a mountain of a man in a short-sleeved,

  avocado-print shirt. He stretched forward to stub his butt out against the table. His fat arm jiggled. The pile of chips in front of him would easily last till morning. He inspected his cards and dropped them to the table. His cigarette pack lay on the table beside his cards, and after shaking out a fresh white smoke, he slid the carton in my direction.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I'm leukemia.”

  “Well, if that don't beat shit,” he said, and cupped his lighter to the cigarette between his lips.

  The others looked at me. To the left of Fatso was a bearded, narrow-eyed man in his fifties. Vertical wrinkles creased the middle of his forehead. Beside him a player hid behind eighties’ Ray-Bans as if this were some Vegas casino. No one was here for the thrill. We rotting players imagine we keep our desperation close to our chest, but all

  we do is parcel out despair in round pieces of plastic. On my right sat a hunched, gray-haired lady, so thin, shadows cast in the hollow of her collarbone. She coughed and sucked on a cigarette.

  This was a lung-patient game — they're the only ones who don't care about smoking. I was here ’cause I needed a new table, desperately. My luck had been bad all week. I lifted the corner of my two cards: diamonds, a jack and queen.

  When the betting came around to me, I called, and tossed my one chip in. Fatso beside me did the same. Mr. Beard was dealing this hand. He picked up the deck and peeled off three cards, laying them out face-up. Two low spades and the nine of diamonds. The betting went around again noncommittally. I managed to stay in with only one more chip at risk.

  Mr. Beard pulled off another card and turned it up. Eight of diamonds. My stomach did a leap.

  Ray-Bans reached forward with a pair of chips, and said, “Two.”

  The lady to my right tossed her cards forward. “I fold,” she wheezed, then pounded a fist against her chest until she hacked out a long cough.

  I resisted the urge to check my cards again. I counted four chips from my pile and tossed them forward. “Raise.”

  “Leukemia Boy is here to play,” Fatso deadpanned. The two others still in grunted.

  I kept my expression relaxed, and stared at my two cards, still facedown before me. If the final card came up diamonds, I was sitting on a flush. A ten, and I was holding the miracle of a straight flush.

  Fatso turned up the corners of his cards, then considered my sixteen remaining chips as if there were some math involved he

  hadn't encountered before.

  “You in?” Ray-Bans asked him finally.

  “Well of course I'm fucking in. I'm one treatment from getting clear and clean, so I'm not leaving here without my pound of flesh.”

  A heavy thunk and a sharp yell came from beyond the square-windowed door. I looked around. Tan Suit and Clipboard were gone.
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br />   Fatso laughed. “Sounds like my first eight ounces are being prepared.”

  For a moment, we all sat listening to the quiet whimpering coming from the next room.

  “Just place your bet,” Ray-Bans said.

  “I'm gonna raise us all another six.” Fatso separated out six chips with his chubby index finger and slid them into the pot.

  Mr. Beard folded, but Ray-Bans stayed in.

  I considered the pile in the center of the table. I turned in my chair and looked back at my tub, leaking CO2 under the desk. It was empty, a scary thought. If anyone had been paying attention when I came in, they would know. I had the unsettling impression Fatso would take special delight in the fact that I was wearing all my collateral on my bones. The thing is, when leukemia strikes late in life, it's swift. How much time did I have left? Your doctor sees your lips tremble, and his eyes soften. He stresses that it's not precise. Could be more, could be less. Some people live … who knows? But all you remember is that first hard and fast date. Mine was up tomorrow.

  I pushed my remaining chips into the pot. “I'm all in,” I said.

  The dealer picked up the deck and lifted the top card. He paused to note it for himself before laying it down. It was the four of clubs.

  My teeth clenched. I had nothing! Not even a pair. Not even, not even … shit!

  “Well, that's a kick in the sweet bits,” Fatso chuckled.

  I stared at the chips in the pot, going from one to another trying to count the twenty-three specific chips that were mine.

  The back door opened and Clipboard escorted Tan Suit back through the room. We all watched. His steps were unsteady. His suit jacket was draped over his left arm, supported in a sling, and at the end of his arm, a round bundle of white gauze was growing a red stain. Clipboard helped him out the door with the locks and then closed it behind. The sound of the latch brought us back to the table.