In the original rough draft, the kidnapped scientist was just your typical nondescript old guy in a lab coat (your generic cartoon scientist).  I decided to make things a tad more interesting and changed him to instead resemble my late grandfather.  I normally try to avoid inside jokes as much as possible, since they can be irritating to readers, but this isn’t so much of an inside joke as it is giving a character some personality by basing him off of someone I know (Hellboy, allegedly, is modeled on Mike Mignola’s own father).

Well, that may not be entirely true: there is one joke here that makes more sense to me than it might to anyone else.  My grandpa, while a short guy, was insanely strong.  Whenever I used to greet him there would be a ‘handshake battle’ where he would try to get me to grip down on his hand as hard as I could, and every single time I couldn’t make him feel a thing.  Then he would grip down on my puny artist paw as hard as he could and let out a mock yell (like in the cartoon above).  It was all in good fun, although sometimes I wondered if he ever had the urge to just pull my arm right out of the socket.  Ah, Grandpa.  You are still remembered.

Say…did you hear someone mention an animated SCAPULA cartoon?  Tune in next Sunday for an interesting development.