"Sinister Occult of Sweden" ("Mamma Mia")
By the time July came around, both Tony and I were feeling exhausted with the number of super hero movies coming out. And good ones too! Not like ten years ago when there was also a utopia of comic books which came out on the heels of Tim Burton's "Batman". Only difference between then and now was all those movies pretty much sucked. But here the buying public was gorging on really well crafted cinema that was faithfully coming to life from the printed page. And while we loved it, our white flags were getting ready to wave.
So when it came down to either doing "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" or "Mamma Mia", our hearts wanted to tackle Mike Mignola's creation but we just didn't have the inspiration. Not a single thing except maybe having Erik fighting a golden army, but even that played too close to another idea we had for a movie coming down the line.
"Mamma Mia" on the other hand was completely different. We already did our 'chick flick' for the year (well, I did the chick flick) and felt that was enough. But just recalling some of the lyrics to "Dancing Queen" gave me the perfect set-up for a picture. However, I kept fighting it. There HAD to be something we could do with Hellboy because I sure didn't want to draw a picture of a guy named Water Lou and... DAMMIT, there was another idea!
And so it went on every time I thought what IF we did a picture of "Mamma Mia". Another song title would come up and I found I could easily base a character design around it as a play on words. Within hours I had a legion of characters floating around in my head. But I really, really wanted to do something with Hellboy!
Eventually I submitted and for the second time that season, I flew solo tackling a film that was aimed for the female 18 to 60 demographic. Ironically, I still managed to give a comic book theme. - Jake