Mike Mignola was born in 1960 in Berkeley, California and grew up in nearby Oakland, the eldest son of a tough and leathery cabinetmaker. His fascination with ghosts and monsters began at an early age (he doesn't remember why) and reading Dracula at age 12 introduced him to Victorian literature and folklore from which he has never recovered. Besides comic books, Mike worked on Francis Ford Coppola's film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), as a production designer for the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and was the Visual Consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008). Mike lives somewhere in Southern California with his wife, daughter and cat.