GDT: Mephisto’s Bridge was based on a novel called Spanky by Christopher Fowler. It was a Faustian tale about a guy who makes a deal with a devil, but the devil doesn’t want his soul, he wants his body. He says, “You have no soul, but I can use your body to live for another hundred years.”
The main character is this guy who thought he deserved everything but did nothing to get it, expecting that because he is a good guy, he should get the girl, the money, the car, the apartment. So this demon comes in and offers to help him get all that, and then he gets it and it’s unsatisfactory because he didn’t earn it. And the demon knows this, and he says, “You didn’t want the car; you wanted the respect. You didn’t want the girl; you wanted the love. You didn’t want the apartment; you wanted the reward for your efforts.”
Spanky, the demon, was this slender, almost beautiful creature that was kind of made of moving pieces when he was out of his host. It’s one of my favorite designs I’ve ever made. I wanted him to be very ornate. Right here [opposite], pre-anything, are the roots of the Faun, and the Hellboy creatures, and Hellboy himself. This is where it all comes from, this basic form.
When Spanky is in his host, a transformation occurs. For that design, we started archangels, which are represented with a mouth on each feather, or with an eye on each feather. And the idea was that each of the demon’s feathers would have an eye that represented a soul he had taken. So he was a walking epic. He was literally a lot of people together.
Mephisto’s Bridge is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written and has some of my favorite designs, too.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 161
* Spanky with wings (?) Based on Odilon Redon.
The wings against the light, blocking the sun with “Flare”
* Someone scratches or breaks the glass in a window that they’re going to open when they remember that it’s the 9th floor!!!
* Reinforce or change the Billboard Fight A III
* Wings with layered colors or uniformly steel black, “blued” like a gun.
* Rusty pendulum clocks hanging from a sheet on the roof
Step over a cross at the b.o/ritual.
Could be of Shadow/Light.
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 173
* Lottie goes to St. Lazarus, a feather falls out, the beating of enormous wings is heard.
* White, milky eyes zombified. . . “Harryhausenly” Everyone looks at the same place.
* The apparition of Joey with computer “ripple” like intensely colored little flames and like the halo of a fire virgin.
* Joey with CGI crash marks.
* Mollusk. “Spanish Shawl” (NUDIBRANCH)
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 113
* Voice-activated light dimmer in his APT
* “I’ll race you little Faust. . .”
* Spanky has tentacle-like “legs” that “open up” into two parts.
* IF/STOP but for a MONITOR with a magazine dummy.
* Sometimes we trick people this way or the other but sometimes. . . truth is the tool to use, as simple as that”
* You’re a couple of years 2 late.
* Whole new ball game pal.
* Y’re like me, You are. . . X.
* Spanky: “Jus’ Call me a therapist”
* “Martyn, I haven’t been all bad 2 U have I?”
The texture of Spanky’s skin is “in motion.”
SQUISH!!