The common thread running through the films of Guillermo del Toro, from his 1993 horror feature debut, Cronos, to his 2006 Oscar-winning parable, Pan's Labyrinth, is his deep affection for gruesome-looking beasts. "There's nothing I enjoy more than creating fables about monsters, human or otherwise," Mr. del Toro said in a recent phone interview from London.

His latest movie, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which opens Friday, gave him plenty of new monsters to play with. In the follow-up to his 2004 comic-book adaptation, he imagines a collision of the natural world and a world of magic hidden in the fringes of urban life. "What if tooth fairies were illegally imported in containers to work menial jobs in garbage collection?" Mr. del Toro said. "What would happen if trolls were just bag ladies collecting stray cats for eating?"

That's the opening to a brief but great interview with del Toro in the Times, but more interesting is the accompanying slideshow feature, in which del Toro talks about the artwork he created for Hellboy II. In the pre-production stage of each of his films--whether they're artsy fare like Pan's Labyrinth or pulpy fun like Blade II--del Toro creates some truly stunning and inventive artwork, usually accompanied by hand-scrawled notes in both English and Spanish. If the pages over at the Times are any indication, Hellboy II is gonna be visually spectacular.