This ended up in the morgue when Kroenen resurrects. The DDT guys were covering the Kroenen puppet with a very light plastic sheet because they didn’t want crap to deposit on the silicone. When I saw that, I said, “Give it to me for real.” What I did is, he wakes up with the sheet attached to him, and as he takes a few steps, he steps on the plastic sheet, it pulls down, and it reveals his face. Then we go behind the screen, and instead of him, you just see the screen, and his silhouette in plastic, and then he comes out. So that made it into the movie somehow.

On the facing page is Abe Sapien and his two lenses on one side, and one lens on the other. One day, one day, it’ll happen. I have faith. The respirator is not exactly like it is in the movie, but it’s pretty close.

And you can see the lock in the safety deposit door that is the entrance to the BPRD.

On the bottom [opposite]: I originally had the idea for a mechanical collar on Kroenen that injected through clockwork—injected a substance into his brain to keep the corpse alive. But then I came up with this notion of a ridiculous wind-up. I said, “It makes as much sense as a syringe.” I liked the idea of a really elaborate wind-up that is massaging his organs as he moves. It’s an oblique reference to a guy in a James Bond movie that I saw when I was a kid—the clock that massages a little mechanism that awakens him from the dead.

MSZ: Then you have him saying, “It’s so easy!”

GDT: Just a ridiculous statement. Like, “It’s so easy to stay alive after you’re a corpse. Boys and girls, order your injection today!”

^{DDT created a number of concepts for the syringe that would hold the mysterious, life-giving substance before the idea was abandoned in favor of the wind-up mechanism seen in the final film.}

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 39B}

^{Originally, Kroenen was to be kept alive through regular injections administered by a clockwork mechanism.}

–The “bad guys” emerge from mirrors or shadows.

–Post-cognitive. He knows what already happened

–Stainless steel pistons move in unison.

Abe with his water goggles and external respirator

–Railroad signals on the train or subway tracks.

–Shot of Kroenen’s syringe. Camera turns 360° and then cuts!!

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 37A}

–Huge [images of bullet cartridges] from the Samaritan

–There are idyllic photographs of Nazi youths in Kroenen’s room.

–Kroenen’s hand with flesh interface.

INTO THE FLESH

The hand is heavily adorned.

– Skull-faced mask. Room with asbestos modules.

–1920 industrial Gothic.

^{Ron Perlman posing as Hellboy with Big Baby in a publicity photo for Hellboy II.}

GDT: Well, first of all, as you can read on the top left [opposite], one of the things that I wanted to do with the Samaritan was to create huge ammo for the revolver. Huge bullets. But originally I wanted it to be an automatic weapon that would eject the shells. And we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find a way to design it properly. But we kept the idea of the shells being huge.

Ron is a big guy. He has a huge head and huge hands, so the gun looks normal, almost, in his hands. So I had to create the Big Baby in the second movie for it to look like a big gun, and the bullets of the Big Baby are the size of a baby’s bottle, and they have a baby bottle inside.

Then there is a Kroenen hand on this page, which is literally, if you go back to the earlier drawings of The Left Hand of Darkness, the Monte Cristo hand [see page 258]. And, again, it’s a matter of “I want that image. I don’t care where it comes from.” [laughs]

Then several designs for the mask, and the idea of him having no eyelids and no lips. I wanted him to be like the embodiment of S

Then I wanted something that looked 1920s but high-tech, sort of like the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t do it.

^{Kroenen’s lair was designed to have a 1920s high-tech, Gothic feel, reminiscent of the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.}

^{BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 150}

^{Hearkens back to ideas del Toro explored for his semi-mechanical, lethal protagonist in an early, unmade project called The Left Hand of Darkness, an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.}

* Shootout in a henhouse for M.C.

* In exp./storeroom hens S.

Mechanical Prince model 2714591 Pat.Pend

(1) and (2) cavities ready for eye insertion.

See ref. manual for more.

(6) Sideways gear for head movement.

(3) Crystal electromagnetic cavity w/organ

(5) Gold-Plated thoraxic shell

* “Where have you Been?” / ”Ranging over THE EARTH, from end to end. “The Lord give and the Lord takes away” “Why is life given to those who find it so bitter, they long for death but it does not come…” Book of JOB.

GDT: Over here [opposite] is Kroenen coming out of the floor like a ghost. That was a very nice idea, but we couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it, because he became physical. Originally I had this idea that he and Rasputin were able to come out of the shadows. And Rasputin does. If you watch the movie, in the mental asylum, the guard uses a flashlight, closes the door, and Rasputin comes out of the shadows.

MSZ: That’s very, very cool. And, again, you’re using very interesting palettes with the blacks punctuated by whites and reds.

GDT: Yeah. What is interesting with the pages in this notebook is that I started trying to do little compositions on each page. The blood helps now and then, as well as the little Lovecraftian symbols here and there.

MSZ: What’s this detail in the margin, underneath the blood splatter?

GDT: Those are little bells—glass bells that I saw in National Geographic or something. They are used to shoo away spirits. I thought the shape was beautiful. I drew them because I don’t like photographing stuff. That’s one thing that is very curious—I hate photographing. For many years my wife said, “Why don’t you take any family photos?” And I said to her—I know this sounds like an affectation, but it isn’t—I said, “I can’t just photograph something. I need to say what is in the frame, what is the color.” You know, contrary to Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was such a great photographer, and he found everything. I can’t. I have to fabricate everything in the image. So whenever I see a drawing, or I’m in a museum, and I see something I like, I could take a photograph, but I do a sketch in the notebook instead.