As Hellboy fans are well aware at this point, Guillermo del Toro‘s plan was for his Hellboy II: The Golden Army to spawn a follow-up that would turn his vision into a trilogy, but alas, he just couldn’t get the funding necessary to make it happen. That’s why the franchise was rebooted this year with Neil Marshall’s Hellboy, which likely won’t be getting a sequel either.

The iteration of Hellboy that exists in the world of Mike Mignola‘s comic books is of course separate from both the del Toro universe and Marshall’s film, and Mignola plans to keep it that way. Speaking with Screen Rant this week, Mignola explained the simple reason why he was never into the idea of turning del Toro’s scrapped Hellboy 3 into a comic book series.

“I think del Toro mentioned it to me once, and I said no,” Mignola told the site. “I think, let the comics be the comics. Comics are confusing enough for people. Let’s not have two different versions of the Hellboy comic out there.”

He added, “My vote would be (to say) no.”

Both comic franchises and movie franchises have indeed become confusing and messy, with multiple different iterations and continuities existing at the same time, so it’s sort of refreshing to hear that Mignola wants there to only ever be one version of Hellboy in the world of comics. An admirable stance, even if we’d love to at least be able to *read* del Toro’s Hellboy 3.