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Fairy tales and folklore. We all grew up with them, no matter where we're from. In most cases, we don't know where the stories came from or who wrote them, but along the way, across the centuries, there are chroniclers and authors that manage to organize, streamline, and in some cases, re-write these stories into a condensed manner which helps them stand the test of time and be passed down to future generations:

Hans Christian Andersen.

The Brothers Grimm.

Charles Perrault.

Walt Disney.

Now, a new player enters the field, and I'm all for it: Mike Mignola.

"For a long time I have wanted to create a place where I could concentrate on very loose adaptations of folk and fairy tales," Mignola tells Nerdist recently. "I’ve worked a lot of that stuff into Hellboy but really wanted to do them as their own thing. And as I do feel that I’ve done about everything there is for ME to do with Hellboy, it felt like now was the right time."

As Mignola says, his massive Hellboy ouvre is chock-full of fairy tales and folklore woven into it - but the shadow of Hellboy looms so large on all of those that its hard for them to stand on their own as stories. That's why Mignola's new publishing imprint, Curious Objects, where he can do standalone stories that can either just be short stories or just turn into their own sprawling universe a la Hellboy (if he and we, the fans, want it to). 

It all kicks off with the new anthology Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Unknown Lands.

"I’ve always loved these old stories, I feel like I’ve been sliding more and more in this direction. So it seemed like just a natural step to concentrate on the stories themselves rather than one central character," says Mignola.

Unlike someone like Walt Disney (the man, and eventually the company), Mignola isn't looking to modernize these old pieces of folklore and fairy tales - he wants to peel back the layers closer to the roots.

"My goal isn’t usually to present monsters in a new way. If anything I’m usually trying to go backwards, to go back to the folklore roots of the characters," says Mignola. "The real joy for me is going back to old stories, and discovering so many fantastic creators that are largely unknown. Those are the things I want to play with—those are the stories I want to tell."

This isn't something new, or something that started just with Hellboy. Looking back at Mignola's career so far, you can see this kind of storytelling - taking fairy tales and adapting them to his style - going back over 40 years. He's done it with Dracula, he's done it with Pinocchio, and he's done it with Frankenstein. 

When asked about why he's drawn to these kinds of stories to re-interpret, Mignola says its boils down to "horror and humor" - which when you see him say it, makes all the sense in the world given the work we know him for. 

"Hard question to answer – or an easy one – basically everything about those old stories inspires me – the strange logic of the stories – the magic and the fantastic creatures," Mignola tells GamesRadar+. "A weird combination of horror and humor which is just my favorite sort of thing."

"I feel very at home in this kind of world and feel like this is the perfect place for me. 40 years of doing comics was preparation for creating this world."

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.