1. What initially drew you to comics?
Like a lot of people my age, it was the old ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN TV series starring George Reeves, which was in perennial afternoon reruns in the early 1960s. The first comic book I remember buying with my own money was WORLD'S FINEST # 112 ...it co-starred Batman and Robin, which led me to BATMAN and DETECTIVE and of course the house ads for other DC comics drew me in even deeper.
Even before that, I was an avid reader of the newspaper comic strips, particularly fond of Lee Falk's THE PHANTOM and Milton Caniff's STEVE CANYON. The concept of telling stories through visuals and graphics seems to have been baked into my DNA.
2. Please tell us about Death Hawk and any other titles/characters you’d like to share about.
DEATH HAWK started out as a back-up feature in STAR RANGERS, a SF comic series I was writing in 1987 for Adventure Publications. Adam Hughes was the artist on the first two short stories and a few months later, DEATH HAWK#1, so there's a degree of historical significance there...Adam's first full-length comic story.
DEATH HAWK is about a space-spanning self-styled “salvage expert” and his partner, a protosymbiotic creature known as Cyke...Adam called him “an intelligent blob of goo.”
The series was very much in the “space western” mold, and in fact DEATH HAWK is thought to have influenced Joss Whedon's FIREFLY.
Markosia Enteprises compiled all of the stories in a single volume and released it as DEATH HAWK: THE COMPLETE SAGA in 2019. Artists Rik Levins and Jeff Slemons completed the storyline I had begun with Adam so many years before.
As fond as I am of Death Hawk and Cyke, I'm even happier about LAKOTA, a graphic novel that I began back in the 1990s with legendary Marvel and DC artist, Jim Mooney right before the direct market crash.
Thanks to the artistic geniuses of Chris Nye and Jason Kimble, that book was finally finished and released in the summer of 2021, again by Markosia Enterprises.
3. What do comics allow you to do as a storyteller?
At best, you can tell an epic story within 20 pages...if you were writing the same story in prose, it might require 300 pages. Also, since I use the thumbnail/layout method to create the story, I'm like a storyboard artist for a big-budget film.
I find that more enjoyable than writing scripts or even novels.
Writing novels is a solitary business...I spent many years producing Mack Bolan, Deathlands and Outlanders novels so when the opportunity came to collaborate with artists again, I jumped at the chance.
Over the last six years since my "return" to comics, I've been blessed to work with such awesome talents as Jeff Slemons, Chris Nye, Pat Broderick, Jason Kimble, Pablo Marcos and Dell Barras.
I'm working with Dell right now on two projects: OUTRUNNERS: GODS AND MONSTRUM and LAKOTA: SERPENT OF AZTLAN. Both are great fun.
4. Where can we find more information about your work?
Unfortunately, “Gremlins From the Kremlin” --Russian hackers—crashed my long-time site, MarkEllisInk.com...however, I do have Facebook pages (including a new dedicated MarkEllisInk) as well as Amazon Author, Wikipedia and Fantastic Fiction pages.
I also have a Good Reads page under my pen name of James Axler.
Comments