This may seem like a strange question, but what is the appeal of drawing cigarettes? I noticed a lot of characters were smoking, and I was wondering if it was anything beyond ‘it gives them something to be doing with their hands.” We could have included a whole lot more vampires and Hellboys, but wanted to really highlight as much of the odder stuff as we had room for. Mostly with the book it was just a matter of coming up with something that looked good, something that showed a nice variety of subjects.

The Marvel characters, for example, were done at different times but we grouped them all together in the book.

MM: Not strictly chronological, but I did try to arrange the major groups together. Is the book more or less presented chronologically? That’s to say, were all the Flintstones drawings, or the gallery of Spider-Man villains, all from the same period of time? Or, once a week or so, did you think, “It’s time to do an aquatic creature, it’s been awhile.” The film, which hit Kickstarter today, speaks to comic creators like Vita Ayala, Fábio Moon, and Dave Stewart, as well as actor Doug Jones ( Hellboy), Mythbusters host Adam Savage, and many more about Mignola’s career. In addition to the sketchbook, which hits stores on Wednesday, Mignola is also the subject of a new feature-length documentary, Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters. Many of the pieces in the book were auctioned off to benefit José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, and the proceeds from the collection will also benefit the organization, which takes on the very real and very vital job of feeding people all over the world. Some of the best or favorite sketches are collected in Mike Mignola: The Quarantine Sketchbook. For Mike Mignola, however, the time at home led to an incredibly productive period that produced quite literally hundreds of new sketches. This is how many of us spent the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mike mignola drawing