1. What initially drew you to comics?
What drew me to comics as a collecting hobby had pretty much everything to do with my Uncle Tim, who was an avid Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Archie, and DC Comics reader and as a young teen he used to allow me to read his comics which I was totally into. From there it went to taking my other young cousin and myself to stationery stores where we would spin the racks in search of cool covers and that started my collecting hobby.
As far as following a professional career, I was a creative type in high school. I made Super 8 movies where I would direct my "actors" in genres of things I loved. As a movie fan, be it a Clint Eastwood western or Dirty Harry cop drama, I would create a story and with a $20 budget would figure out how to get the best results on film. When it came time in high school to decide on a career path, my guidance counselor directed me to a film/art school in NYC, The School of Visual Arts... It was those connections at SVA that eventually directed me to the comic biz.
2. What stories/people have shaped you as the creator you are?
Certainly the Perspective teacher at SVA, who was also the new talent coordinator at DC Comics. After a few meetings with him I was told if I pursued this path I would eventually make it work for me..
Also, the legendary Spider-man artist John Romita was a pivotal force for me. John became the Art Director at Marvel and back in the early 80's offered me a job at Marvel as a full-time art corrections staffer. Without me accepting that opportunity, I would have never created the path forward.
3. You have created extensively -- any particular character, book, or storyline that is most meaningful to you?
The books that meant the most to me were the ones that had some life-altering event in them or a character I loved or a creator that I grew up wanting to be or respect immensely. The Silver Surfer comics were special for me to read as a fan. Parallax: The Final Night, JLA: World Without Grown-Ups and X Men Unlimited #4 were all storylines that were high points for me for one reason or another.
4. Please tell us about your creative process.
As mainly a comic book inker in certainly in the past 20 or so years, the process has changed to mostly the digital age and world wide web. Since the inception of comics back in the 1930's, because of the assembly line in comics(Writer, penciller, inker, colorist, letterer) unless you live near each other, mailing the original art was a real thing. Marvel and DC comics had accounts with Federal Express and once the pencil art was created, it would then go to a letterer who would letter directly on the artwork and then, barring the editors mediation, send it off to the inker, who would send it to the editor in office. The coloring would be done by hand with colored dyes and sent to a color separator as a final creative component.
Now, the art rarely has to leave the creator. Pencils are scanned at a high resolution and emailed to the inker who prints them out as what is called "Blue Lines," inked and rescanned and sent to the next guy in line and so on.
Blue Lines are a digital process where when the pencil art is received, is altered in what is called a "non-reproducible blue line". That blue is what the inker sees and inks and when the art is rescanned into the scanner, drops out the blue pencil plate and gives the final ink result to the next guy on the totem pole.
Creatively as an inker, generally, I should get 3 weeks to ink a 22-page comic book, which comes to roughly a page a day. Of course, that's if a perfect circle is in order. The trickle-down from writer to penciller to inker many times lose days and affects the overall timeline.
5. What do you envision next in your work and in the comics field?
I'm certainly in the twilight of my career, I've 37 years in comics but haven't worked for either of the Big Two since 2012, and my career is mostly wrapped around comic con appearances, personal comic projects such as my Sci-Fi Combat Jacks, my kids' IP Banana Tail, and more recently the NFT market.
Visit Mark McKenna at https://www.markmckennaart.com, https://bananatail.com/, and on Twitter @MarkMcKenna419
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