CREATOR EXCLUSIVE
Hellboy meets Iceland’s Yule Cat in this year’s Winter Special
► SCI-FACT! According to Icelandic folklore, the Yule Cat eats people who haven’t received any new clothes for Yule. Bit harsh.
→ THIS YEAR’S HELLBOY Winter Special pits mythical Icelandic feline Yule Cat against Mike Mignola’s demonic detective. The idea sprang out of some preparatory illustrations which writer/artist Matt Smith did before embarking on illustrating the 2021 one-shot Long Night At Goloski Station.
“My first move was to start sketching Hellboy to make sure I could actually pull it off,” Smith tells Red Alert. “But instead of sketching Hellboy in various positions like a normal person, I started sketching out a short story. My logic was this would prompt me to draw Hellboy in various ways, such as small within an establishing shot, or expressions for reaction shots.
“So, without a script, I started sketching a half-dozen pages based around a trip I had made to Iceland. These were of Hellboy walking around Reykjavík and meeting a local folklorist. Of course, there had to be something to try out action scenes – and so, enter the Yule Cat.”
After Smith sent the sketches to Mignola, the latter suggested expanding it into what would eventually become the Hellboy Winter Special: The Yule Cat one-shot. “I hadn’t really approached it from the angle of fitting a story to a seasonal Christmas theme,” Smith continues.
“It went from choosing a setting, Iceland, to choosing a monster, the Yule Cat, and the season came from there, as the winter holiday season is classically rich territory for ghost and monster stories.”
Before starting his script, Smith extensively researched the Jólakötturinn, aka the Yule Cat. “I wanted to have it tie into the existing folklore, but also present a different version for Hellboy’s world,” he explains.
“Art-wise, I imagined some different d
