Saturday, March 06, 2004
Mark Bagley - The Interview
By Denny Haynes
Mark Bagley is one of the hardest working and most prolific pencillers in comics today. He has been working in the comic industry for over 16 years now after winning Marvel’s Try-Out Contest, sometimes with two issues a month on the shelves. You can find his gorgeous illustrations in Marvel’s smash comic Ultimate Spider-Man.
DMH: How do you keep up with illustrating 2 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man a month, eighteen issues a year?
MB: Well I have an extra house I can’t afford, so it’s a matter of necessity…no, I’m just kidding. I can do 18 issues a year and not kill myself, 2 issues a month is too much, but I like working. I put in a lot of hours at my desk because I love what I do. Illustrating 18 issues a month on a comic book I really enjoy is hardly work. And now I’m going to be doing this and the Hulk Movie Adaptation so it is a little more stressful, but I’m managing.
DMH: How do you balance penciling 2 issues a month?
MB: I’ve never done 2 issues a month for more than a while, especially without the work suffering. I can keep it up for a period of time, which is why we are only doing 18 issues a year; to provide a breather.
DMH: Why were you originally scheduled to only do the first storyline, and why did you stick around for the long haul?
MB: The reason I was only scheduled to do the first story arc was because it was pitched to me as a mini-series, and basically it was given to me as an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’m always looking for extra work, but I didn’t really want to do this project because John Byrne had just finished his revamp of Spider-Man, which had gone over as well as a fart in church. I also didn’t really know anything about Brian Bendis or how good a writer he was since I don’t read a lot of comics or alternative comics, but it was pitched to me as you need to do this project or else. I literally turned it down twice, but Jemas really wanted me and he was persistent so I finally agreed to do it.
I started working on it, and I’m not crazy about working off of full scripts so I was a little nervous about that and didn’t really enjoy that aspect though I’ve come to appreciate it, and I had completed 4-5 issues before the 1st one came out and it looked great! The coloring, paper, and inking came out beautifully. I started getting into Bendis’ style of writing, but I was content to just do the six issues and even turned Marvel down twice when they offered me the book as an ongoing series. Well I was talking to a friend of mine whose opinion I respect and he told me, “You need to do this.” So, I called Marvel up and told them I’d do it.
It’s funny because Ralph Macchio gets a call from Bill Jemas asking, “Who the fuck fired Bagley?” and Ralph is telling him, “No, no he quit!” Marvel had actually hired Leonard Kirk in the interim, like the day before, so they had to call him up and let him know that I was staying on the book. I apologized to Leonard, who is now working on JSA, after he told me this story, but this stuff happens to everyone in the business.
And I look at the first four or five issues and I know I could have done a better job if I was more excited about it or realized what I had in my hands to play with. I’m just really enjoying working on Ultimate Spider-Man and that’s why I’ve stuck with it.
DMH: Well it sounds like it turned out for the best for both of you. Does Bendis still do a full script?
MB: Yeah, it’s a full script, but I’m becoming a lot more relaxed about altering a sequence to make it more visually appealing. And if you look at my book compared to the other books Bendis scripts you can tell the differences in the storytelling. I try to be careful about what I change though because I don’t want to abuse this trust, and I respect what Bendis does, but I’m the storyteller, I’m the one responsible for the visuals. So far he’s never had a problem with any of my changes. And he’s not one of those guys who scripts the story and doesn’t go back to look at the art, like some guys I’ve worked with who will put their words on top of the art no matter what is depicted. Bendis is willing to tweak, shift, or even change his script and there have been sequences recently where he had dialogue written in, but on the strength of the art he dropped the dialogue, and that is a nice compliment.
DMH: How much input do you have in the storytelling?
MB: Storyline wise?
DMH: Yeah.
MB: None, I’m not involved in it that way. I visually design the characters, but I’m not a writer. I like being able to sit at my desk and just draw, yeah there is laying the story out, but I don’t have any interest in writing. I don’t know if Brian wants more from me, he’s never said anything about it. It’s a pretty good working relationship.
DMH: Has Bendis written anything that you disagreed with or wish he hadn’t done?
MB: I’ve really enjoyed pretty much everything Brian has done. There’s always 40,000 ways you can take a story and Brian has to pick one. I thought it was really cool that Captain Stacy and Aunt May were flirting and it sucked when he was killed. I even started drawing Aunt May a little bit younger, cuter; an attractive 50 year old woman. I wish I had done that to begin with, but I couldn’t get out of my head the scrawny, old lady she’s always been depicted as and also I jumped into this project one foot at a time. I hadn’t really committed to it when I first got it, but this last year or so I’ve really gotten into this book.
DMH: What are your thoughts on the preconceived notions that seem to come with Ultimate Spider-Man by the fans? That people “know” what’s going to happen, because the story has already been told.
MB: That’s been one of the minor frustrations with being on this book; we haven’t introduced any new villains. A lot of the stories have been retellings of the old stories, but with a lot of updating and a whole lot of tweaking to make it fresh. If you really look at them, on the surface they seem very similar, but when you get down to the core of it, it’s very different. The Kingpin storyline is more of an exploration of Peter, as a kid, trying to deal with adult situations, not a superhero fighting the Kingpin of Crime.
DMH: Now Bendis has said a new villain is on the way in Ultimate Spider-Man.
MB: Yeah, I think that’s going to be in issue 41. I don’t have the full script in my hands yet, but he should be sending it soon, he’ll describe the character then I’ll start on the character’s designs.
I’m drawing issue 38 right now, which wraps up the Venom story. There isn’t a lot of action until the last two issues, prior to that it’s the unfolding drama between Peter and Eddie.
Issue 39 is an all talk issue where Aunt May is in the psychiatrist’s office and Peter is talking with Nick Fury. I’m really excited about drawing this issue because I’m at a stage where I like to draw the emotional stories. I want to get better drawing emotions on faces.
DMH: Does Bendis challenge you?
MB: Bendis challenges me in the sense that he’ll send me a script that’s full of dialogue and I have to come up with something visually interesting.
DMH: How hard is it redesigning the classic characters that we grew up reading?
MB: It depends upon the character. Some just jump right out and there’s no problem at all, like Doc Ock.
Before I was doing the book, Marvel asked me to do some character sketches, some redesigns. I wasn’t too worried about it; there was no pressure because I didn’t think they’d ever really be used. I thought they might be used for promotional purposes, but now you see them on napkins and lunch boxes. I did a series of 14 character designs of Spider-Man as a 15-year-old and I thought they weren’t going to be published and they ended up everywhere! It was the same for the designs I did of the bad guys. I don’t think Bendis had any plans to use Electro, but he liked the sketch I did and he decided to include him in the story.
Some of the characters are more difficult, like Kraven. I didn’t do that big of a change to Kraven because Brian wanted to keep the lion’s head on his chest. Venom is going to be a bit different looking, he’s got the same basic look, but he is a totally different character so he going to look a lot more feral, more warped out looking. It doesn’t show up in the covers, but you’ll see it in the interiors.
DMH: The design for Venom piqued my interest in how Bendis would explain the origin of Venom when he looks like the symbiote he found during Secret Wars.
MB: It’s not going to be a symbiote at all, as shown in recent issues. I was very pleased with the Venom storyline. It might piss off some of the comic purists, but it’s a really, really good story. In my opinion, it’s a much better story then the Green Goblin storyline--the whole premise of the two characters. I could never really get into the hulky Green Goblin. I drew it as best I could and the story reads fine and I understand what Brian was doing with it, but it didn’t appeal to me nearly as much as Venom’s story. The idea of exploring Peter’s heritage, the Parker’s and the Brock’s as friends working on this project together is interesting to me.
DMH: What is your artistic process in designing the Ultimate characters?
MB: Well with someone like Gwen, Brian gave me a verbal description of this hot chick, who’s into goth. I’ve got a daughter who’s 18, and I’ve seen her friends, and I was just trying to draw a chick with an attitude. I found some of my daughter’s old YM magazines and looked at today’s fashion and Gwen just jumped out on the page. I specifically tried to make her look a lot different from Mary Jane. As I was drawing her I was thinking a young Madonna, kind of long in the face, a longer, straighter nose then you usually see on a girl, and I had already drawn Captain Stacy so I just tried to draw what his daughter would look like.
I read online some guys say Gwen and Mary Jane look exactly alike except for their hair color. And I’m looking at these two girls wondering how anyone can say that--Mary Jane has this perky little nose, big round eyes and an oval face while Gwen has this long face and nose.
Character designs sometimes just come to me without even thinking about it. With Captain Stacy, I was thinking Clint Eastwood in his forties. I wish Captain Stacy had hung around awhile, I liked the look of his face. He was fun to draw. It’s funny when you work so hard on a character, and then boom he’s gone and you’re thinking, “wait a minute he’s dead!”
The Rhino design just sprung from the page. I didn’t do another drawing, just one Rhino sketch, which I think will be in the hardcover. It was really cool and I only got to draw him in one issue, and only four panels.
Others like the Green Goblin were very difficult. Brian wanted me to put the Goblin in a tunic and big massive robes, and I worked my butt off to come up with a look for this Green Goblin character and I finally came up with something that was okay, but it was tough.
DMH: Is it the same with storylines are some easier to illustrate than others?
MB: It’s always like that. Some storylines are easy, boom, you connect with it, other times you have to sit there and struggle. You’re doing pages and you know they’re not as good as they could be, but you’re just not that involved with it. I had a hard time drawing the impostor storyline, something about it just didn’t sit right with me, but it ended up fine. I had trouble getting into it making it harder to draw. The Venom story on the other hand, I was just tearing through it, and it’s not because it’s Venom because I’m sick to death of drawing Venom. I had my fill drawing him when I was on Amazing Spider-Man. If I never draw another Venom or Carnage it would be too soon. In fact, at conventions I do sketches for free except for Carnage and Venom I charge $50.
DMH: What are your thoughts on that time period in Amazing Spider-Man?
MB: By the time I was done with Amazing Spider-Man I was so burned out on the characters. They were bad times, and it’s not because of the Clone storyline, which turned into a nightmare. You have four different books telling the same story, because back in the day you had to have an “event,” and it’s just miserable as a creator and it has to be worse for the writer. The stories were nobody’s vision, it was a collaborative effort and as an artist you either don’t start or finish the story. You have four different artists and one of them usually is not as good as the other three, or they just weaken the entire process.
The funny thing is some people just love those stories. My daughter loves Maximum Carnage, she has the trade paperback, and loves rereading this story. She’s in college now, but she’ll still read this book that she read when she was 13. And I run into this all the time. You would be shocked by the amount of people who have tattoos of Carnage or Venom. The sales of Ultimate Spider-Man went way up with this Venom storyline.
I hated the idea of having four different Spider-Man titles. That’s the one nice thing about doing 18 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man a year because it comes out often enough that there’s not this long wait between issues. People who want the next issue don’t have to wait very long and be distracted by a bunch of other Spidey titles. It’s a real plus having a book that’s just Brian’s and mine, we get to tell the entire story at the end of the day.
DMH: What advice would you give an artist who’s struggling to complete their pages?
MB: I imagine I’m 22-years old again with a hammer in my hand, it’s 95 degrees in Georgia, and I’m banging nails for a living--and I got a kid. You think about all the people in this world who have a job that is hard, that hurts their body, hurts their mind, and you wake up every morning thinking, “Ugh, I have to go to work.” Even when I’m struggling with a page I’m in my air-conditioned house with the radio playing, singing at my desk doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was 9 years old. Regardless of how horrible a story is I still have it better then 95% of the other people.
I think everyone who gets into comics should have to spend a summer in Georgia banging nails for a living thinking this is what they’ll be doing the rest of their lives. I have no patience for guys in this business who complain about how hard their work is. I have no sympathy for guys who can’t get work because when times were really good they were screwing around. There are so many writers, pencillers, and inkers who back in the day, when we were selling a million issues, would take a project and quit halfway through. They would hold onto the book for a month and tell the editor, “sorry I was hired by Image,” or whatever and now are crying they can’t get work.
I am far from the most talented guy in this business but there’s not many in this business that are as disciplined as I am. There are guys in this business that I really respect because of how they treat the work. For example, John Romita and John Romita Jr. put out a quantity and quality of work that show they are really working hard. Fans want a monthly book, or more frequent, that when they walk into the store they’re excited it’s out again and guess what it’s the same writer, the same artist. I think that gets really shortchanged in this industry.
DMH: Where did you acquire this dedication
MB: I was raised in a military family. My father taught us discipline, the importance of getting a job, that if you want something you work for it and no one owes you anything; you earn what you get. I grew up on comic books, with great power comes great responsibility, you work hard, and I got this weird idea of working towards what you want. I joined the Army for three years so that I could get the GI Bill and go to art school. When I was banging nails for a living I would come home and draw every night.
I decided when I finally broke into comics to treat this as a business. That they could depend upon me, and I’d give them what they want in a timely and professional manner. A lot of people come into comics or any creative field with the idea of, “Oh, I’m an artist, the mood has to be right.” That’s bull, this is a job, get it done.
By Denny Haynes
Mark Bagley is one of the hardest working and most prolific pencillers in comics today. He has been working in the comic industry for over 16 years now after winning Marvel’s Try-Out Contest, sometimes with two issues a month on the shelves. You can find his gorgeous illustrations in Marvel’s smash comic Ultimate Spider-Man.
DMH: How do you keep up with illustrating 2 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man a month, eighteen issues a year?
MB: Well I have an extra house I can’t afford, so it’s a matter of necessity…no, I’m just kidding. I can do 18 issues a year and not kill myself, 2 issues a month is too much, but I like working. I put in a lot of hours at my desk because I love what I do. Illustrating 18 issues a month on a comic book I really enjoy is hardly work. And now I’m going to be doing this and the Hulk Movie Adaptation so it is a little more stressful, but I’m managing.
DMH: How do you balance penciling 2 issues a month?
MB: I’ve never done 2 issues a month for more than a while, especially without the work suffering. I can keep it up for a period of time, which is why we are only doing 18 issues a year; to provide a breather.
DMH: Why were you originally scheduled to only do the first storyline, and why did you stick around for the long haul?
MB: The reason I was only scheduled to do the first story arc was because it was pitched to me as a mini-series, and basically it was given to me as an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’m always looking for extra work, but I didn’t really want to do this project because John Byrne had just finished his revamp of Spider-Man, which had gone over as well as a fart in church. I also didn’t really know anything about Brian Bendis or how good a writer he was since I don’t read a lot of comics or alternative comics, but it was pitched to me as you need to do this project or else. I literally turned it down twice, but Jemas really wanted me and he was persistent so I finally agreed to do it.
I started working on it, and I’m not crazy about working off of full scripts so I was a little nervous about that and didn’t really enjoy that aspect though I’ve come to appreciate it, and I had completed 4-5 issues before the 1st one came out and it looked great! The coloring, paper, and inking came out beautifully. I started getting into Bendis’ style of writing, but I was content to just do the six issues and even turned Marvel down twice when they offered me the book as an ongoing series. Well I was talking to a friend of mine whose opinion I respect and he told me, “You need to do this.” So, I called Marvel up and told them I’d do it.
It’s funny because Ralph Macchio gets a call from Bill Jemas asking, “Who the fuck fired Bagley?” and Ralph is telling him, “No, no he quit!” Marvel had actually hired Leonard Kirk in the interim, like the day before, so they had to call him up and let him know that I was staying on the book. I apologized to Leonard, who is now working on JSA, after he told me this story, but this stuff happens to everyone in the business.
And I look at the first four or five issues and I know I could have done a better job if I was more excited about it or realized what I had in my hands to play with. I’m just really enjoying working on Ultimate Spider-Man and that’s why I’ve stuck with it.
DMH: Well it sounds like it turned out for the best for both of you. Does Bendis still do a full script?
MB: Yeah, it’s a full script, but I’m becoming a lot more relaxed about altering a sequence to make it more visually appealing. And if you look at my book compared to the other books Bendis scripts you can tell the differences in the storytelling. I try to be careful about what I change though because I don’t want to abuse this trust, and I respect what Bendis does, but I’m the storyteller, I’m the one responsible for the visuals. So far he’s never had a problem with any of my changes. And he’s not one of those guys who scripts the story and doesn’t go back to look at the art, like some guys I’ve worked with who will put their words on top of the art no matter what is depicted. Bendis is willing to tweak, shift, or even change his script and there have been sequences recently where he had dialogue written in, but on the strength of the art he dropped the dialogue, and that is a nice compliment.
DMH: How much input do you have in the storytelling?
MB: Storyline wise?
DMH: Yeah.
MB: None, I’m not involved in it that way. I visually design the characters, but I’m not a writer. I like being able to sit at my desk and just draw, yeah there is laying the story out, but I don’t have any interest in writing. I don’t know if Brian wants more from me, he’s never said anything about it. It’s a pretty good working relationship.
DMH: Has Bendis written anything that you disagreed with or wish he hadn’t done?
MB: I’ve really enjoyed pretty much everything Brian has done. There’s always 40,000 ways you can take a story and Brian has to pick one. I thought it was really cool that Captain Stacy and Aunt May were flirting and it sucked when he was killed. I even started drawing Aunt May a little bit younger, cuter; an attractive 50 year old woman. I wish I had done that to begin with, but I couldn’t get out of my head the scrawny, old lady she’s always been depicted as and also I jumped into this project one foot at a time. I hadn’t really committed to it when I first got it, but this last year or so I’ve really gotten into this book.
DMH: What are your thoughts on the preconceived notions that seem to come with Ultimate Spider-Man by the fans? That people “know” what’s going to happen, because the story has already been told.
MB: That’s been one of the minor frustrations with being on this book; we haven’t introduced any new villains. A lot of the stories have been retellings of the old stories, but with a lot of updating and a whole lot of tweaking to make it fresh. If you really look at them, on the surface they seem very similar, but when you get down to the core of it, it’s very different. The Kingpin storyline is more of an exploration of Peter, as a kid, trying to deal with adult situations, not a superhero fighting the Kingpin of Crime.
DMH: Now Bendis has said a new villain is on the way in Ultimate Spider-Man.
MB: Yeah, I think that’s going to be in issue 41. I don’t have the full script in my hands yet, but he should be sending it soon, he’ll describe the character then I’ll start on the character’s designs.
I’m drawing issue 38 right now, which wraps up the Venom story. There isn’t a lot of action until the last two issues, prior to that it’s the unfolding drama between Peter and Eddie.
Issue 39 is an all talk issue where Aunt May is in the psychiatrist’s office and Peter is talking with Nick Fury. I’m really excited about drawing this issue because I’m at a stage where I like to draw the emotional stories. I want to get better drawing emotions on faces.
DMH: Does Bendis challenge you?
MB: Bendis challenges me in the sense that he’ll send me a script that’s full of dialogue and I have to come up with something visually interesting.
DMH: How hard is it redesigning the classic characters that we grew up reading?
MB: It depends upon the character. Some just jump right out and there’s no problem at all, like Doc Ock.
Before I was doing the book, Marvel asked me to do some character sketches, some redesigns. I wasn’t too worried about it; there was no pressure because I didn’t think they’d ever really be used. I thought they might be used for promotional purposes, but now you see them on napkins and lunch boxes. I did a series of 14 character designs of Spider-Man as a 15-year-old and I thought they weren’t going to be published and they ended up everywhere! It was the same for the designs I did of the bad guys. I don’t think Bendis had any plans to use Electro, but he liked the sketch I did and he decided to include him in the story.
Some of the characters are more difficult, like Kraven. I didn’t do that big of a change to Kraven because Brian wanted to keep the lion’s head on his chest. Venom is going to be a bit different looking, he’s got the same basic look, but he is a totally different character so he going to look a lot more feral, more warped out looking. It doesn’t show up in the covers, but you’ll see it in the interiors.
DMH: The design for Venom piqued my interest in how Bendis would explain the origin of Venom when he looks like the symbiote he found during Secret Wars.
MB: It’s not going to be a symbiote at all, as shown in recent issues. I was very pleased with the Venom storyline. It might piss off some of the comic purists, but it’s a really, really good story. In my opinion, it’s a much better story then the Green Goblin storyline--the whole premise of the two characters. I could never really get into the hulky Green Goblin. I drew it as best I could and the story reads fine and I understand what Brian was doing with it, but it didn’t appeal to me nearly as much as Venom’s story. The idea of exploring Peter’s heritage, the Parker’s and the Brock’s as friends working on this project together is interesting to me.
DMH: What is your artistic process in designing the Ultimate characters?
MB: Well with someone like Gwen, Brian gave me a verbal description of this hot chick, who’s into goth. I’ve got a daughter who’s 18, and I’ve seen her friends, and I was just trying to draw a chick with an attitude. I found some of my daughter’s old YM magazines and looked at today’s fashion and Gwen just jumped out on the page. I specifically tried to make her look a lot different from Mary Jane. As I was drawing her I was thinking a young Madonna, kind of long in the face, a longer, straighter nose then you usually see on a girl, and I had already drawn Captain Stacy so I just tried to draw what his daughter would look like.
I read online some guys say Gwen and Mary Jane look exactly alike except for their hair color. And I’m looking at these two girls wondering how anyone can say that--Mary Jane has this perky little nose, big round eyes and an oval face while Gwen has this long face and nose.
Character designs sometimes just come to me without even thinking about it. With Captain Stacy, I was thinking Clint Eastwood in his forties. I wish Captain Stacy had hung around awhile, I liked the look of his face. He was fun to draw. It’s funny when you work so hard on a character, and then boom he’s gone and you’re thinking, “wait a minute he’s dead!”
The Rhino design just sprung from the page. I didn’t do another drawing, just one Rhino sketch, which I think will be in the hardcover. It was really cool and I only got to draw him in one issue, and only four panels.
Others like the Green Goblin were very difficult. Brian wanted me to put the Goblin in a tunic and big massive robes, and I worked my butt off to come up with a look for this Green Goblin character and I finally came up with something that was okay, but it was tough.
DMH: Is it the same with storylines are some easier to illustrate than others?
MB: It’s always like that. Some storylines are easy, boom, you connect with it, other times you have to sit there and struggle. You’re doing pages and you know they’re not as good as they could be, but you’re just not that involved with it. I had a hard time drawing the impostor storyline, something about it just didn’t sit right with me, but it ended up fine. I had trouble getting into it making it harder to draw. The Venom story on the other hand, I was just tearing through it, and it’s not because it’s Venom because I’m sick to death of drawing Venom. I had my fill drawing him when I was on Amazing Spider-Man. If I never draw another Venom or Carnage it would be too soon. In fact, at conventions I do sketches for free except for Carnage and Venom I charge $50.
DMH: What are your thoughts on that time period in Amazing Spider-Man?
MB: By the time I was done with Amazing Spider-Man I was so burned out on the characters. They were bad times, and it’s not because of the Clone storyline, which turned into a nightmare. You have four different books telling the same story, because back in the day you had to have an “event,” and it’s just miserable as a creator and it has to be worse for the writer. The stories were nobody’s vision, it was a collaborative effort and as an artist you either don’t start or finish the story. You have four different artists and one of them usually is not as good as the other three, or they just weaken the entire process.
The funny thing is some people just love those stories. My daughter loves Maximum Carnage, she has the trade paperback, and loves rereading this story. She’s in college now, but she’ll still read this book that she read when she was 13. And I run into this all the time. You would be shocked by the amount of people who have tattoos of Carnage or Venom. The sales of Ultimate Spider-Man went way up with this Venom storyline.
I hated the idea of having four different Spider-Man titles. That’s the one nice thing about doing 18 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man a year because it comes out often enough that there’s not this long wait between issues. People who want the next issue don’t have to wait very long and be distracted by a bunch of other Spidey titles. It’s a real plus having a book that’s just Brian’s and mine, we get to tell the entire story at the end of the day.
DMH: What advice would you give an artist who’s struggling to complete their pages?
MB: I imagine I’m 22-years old again with a hammer in my hand, it’s 95 degrees in Georgia, and I’m banging nails for a living--and I got a kid. You think about all the people in this world who have a job that is hard, that hurts their body, hurts their mind, and you wake up every morning thinking, “Ugh, I have to go to work.” Even when I’m struggling with a page I’m in my air-conditioned house with the radio playing, singing at my desk doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was 9 years old. Regardless of how horrible a story is I still have it better then 95% of the other people.
I think everyone who gets into comics should have to spend a summer in Georgia banging nails for a living thinking this is what they’ll be doing the rest of their lives. I have no patience for guys in this business who complain about how hard their work is. I have no sympathy for guys who can’t get work because when times were really good they were screwing around. There are so many writers, pencillers, and inkers who back in the day, when we were selling a million issues, would take a project and quit halfway through. They would hold onto the book for a month and tell the editor, “sorry I was hired by Image,” or whatever and now are crying they can’t get work.
I am far from the most talented guy in this business but there’s not many in this business that are as disciplined as I am. There are guys in this business that I really respect because of how they treat the work. For example, John Romita and John Romita Jr. put out a quantity and quality of work that show they are really working hard. Fans want a monthly book, or more frequent, that when they walk into the store they’re excited it’s out again and guess what it’s the same writer, the same artist. I think that gets really shortchanged in this industry.
DMH: Where did you acquire this dedication
MB: I was raised in a military family. My father taught us discipline, the importance of getting a job, that if you want something you work for it and no one owes you anything; you earn what you get. I grew up on comic books, with great power comes great responsibility, you work hard, and I got this weird idea of working towards what you want. I joined the Army for three years so that I could get the GI Bill and go to art school. When I was banging nails for a living I would come home and draw every night.
I decided when I finally broke into comics to treat this as a business. That they could depend upon me, and I’d give them what they want in a timely and professional manner. A lot of people come into comics or any creative field with the idea of, “Oh, I’m an artist, the mood has to be right.” That’s bull, this is a job, get it done.
