Just before Guillermo del Toro, Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and the rest of the Hellboy II: The Golden Army posse raised the roof at the New York Comic Con last week, a select group of media were invited to grill the entire team about their much-anticipated sequel. FEARnet got some inside dish from del Toro, Doug Jones (Abe Sapien), and Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman, about what fans can expect from this mega-sequel that finds the B.P.R.D. agents trying to mend ties between the human race and the imaginary realm.

Guillermo del Toro, Director and Writer

After a four-year span between films, what were you interested in exploring in Hellboy II?

Del Toro: I like the idea of doing a fairy-tale action adventure with a very deep sense of melancholy and loss, which this has. At the end of the day in the movie, it?s not so much about winning and stopping the bad guys as it is about what it does to yourself and how it changes you.

The idea of merging fantasy with melancholy sounds very similar to some of the themes you explored in Pan?s Labyrinth. Is there a thematic connection between the two?

Del Toro: I think this movie is a growth of Pan?s Labyrinth in a way because it was developed at the same time that I was pre-producing Pan?s Labyrinth. I felt they were very related, and at the end of the day, they are the Big Mac and the gourmet side of the same meal?Hellboy being in much broader strokes, but I hope equally as satisfying in its own terms.

In this day and age of CGI overload, you have really stuck to your creative guns and remained a stalwart for practical creature, makeup and sets. With your successes, has that battle gotten easier or harder to justify with the studios?

Del Toro: Yeah, there is certainly the battle of money, because obviously creating a creature and hiring 20 operators to operate it, people tend to say it would be cheaper to do it CG. But it?s also more lazy and people don?t have to think. I feel the physicality of the monsters and the variety of the places is much better if you have something under the lens. I think there is a certain magic there, and losing that is a shame.

What are your favorite creatures in Hellboy II: The Golden Army?

Del Toro: I would single as exception creatures technically, as far as prosthetics and animatronics, Mr. Wink and The Angel of Death ? they are virtuoso technology.

Doug Jones, Actor (Abe Sapien, The Chamberlain, The Angel of Death)

You?ve been such a frequent collaborator with Guillermo, playing the creatures in many of his films. Was your creative connection immediate?

Jones: Well, it started on Mimic back in 1997. I was called in by the creature effects people in LA when they were doing re-shoots. They shot the movie in Toronto, Canada and a tall, skinny guy wore a bug suit up there. So with the re-shoots in LA, they needed somebody [like that]. At the last minute, I got a call to come in and do a night shoot for re-shoots. I ended up working three days and that was when I met Guillermo. On the second day, he sat at the lunch table with me, with his chins in hands, and he said, ?Tell me everything you?ve done.? He was fascinated with me, somehow, because he loves creatures and monsters. He started in the business as a makeup artists and he works with the stuff too in Mexico. I didn?t know that and I found myself talking with a comrade and a peer rather than the ever almighty director. He?s a fanboy, and he was geeking out on my history. He asked what makeup artists I had worked with, and I said, ?Stan Winston, Rick Baker, Tony Gardner, and Mike Elizalde and the gang.? He said, ?Really! I love them, oh!? He said, ?Do you have a card?? I gave him a card and?five years later, they are designing the maquette for Abe Sapien [for Hellboy]. It?s a long, lithe fish man with a certain poise and elegance. One of the sculptors said, ?That looks like Doug Jones,? Guillermo said, ?I know Doug Jones!? He pulled out my card from his wallet and I got a phone call.

Ron Perlman, Actor (Hellboy)

Four years after the first film, did the makeup and prosthetics process get any easier turning you into the red demon, Hellboy?

Perlman: They tried. They bent over backwards but it takes no less than three hours and sometimes up to six. It is what it is. As much as everybody really went to great pains to make me as comfortable as possible to get me through the process, it is what it is. But it?s a small price and there are a lot of people that wish they were in my place.

What?s so special about working with del Toro?

Perlman: To be the recipient of any of the roles that spring from his imagination is a rare, exotic privilege so that?s the jumping off point for everything. It?s been that way since Chronos, which was his first film and my first association with him. We have four films under our belt and it never stops being that way. I have been around some amazing filmmakers, but his imagination is unique to the world. He?s a filmmaker that is in a class by himself. To be one of the colors in his paint box, which is all I consider myself to be, this is the Promised Land. It doesn?t get any better than this. Not all the money or acclaim in the world will trump getting to hang out in the same presence as this guy and be a member of his team.