Hellboy: The Storm #2, pg 8. Merlin curses Gruagach.

Merlin curses Gruagach.

I was back and forth on this page for over a year. I really wanted a matching pencil/ink page from Mike and Duncan's run on Hellboy, but I also loved this page. I was hoping to find the penciled counterpart to this page, so I contacted Mark at Splash Page, but it ends up there isn't a penciled piece. Here's the response I got from Mark:

"With Darkness Calls being the first time working with Mignola, Duncan drew the pencils on a separate page so he could have Mike look them over before he inked them (and he wasn't working digitally as much then). By the time he had gotten to the Storm, the pair was confident enough with each other that Duncan laid his pencils out digitally, printed them out in bluelines and then inked over them on the same board so there are not separate pencils on another board. The inks are the only original that exists for the page."

So what to do? I ended up picking up this page, AND a pencil/ink set I liked. The added bit about their evolving process was just too cool to me.