Prolific Comic & Art Creator David Mack
Interview By Catherine Monahon
Coordinated by Iqvinder Singh
David Mack is a prolific creator whose multi-media style brings added complexity and depth to the stories he tells; in addition to writing and illustrating the Kabuki series, his artwork has been shown in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as in galleries alongside the work of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. He has illustrated album covers, crafted multi-media pieces and given creative guidance for video games. Mack is an expert storyteller, project-juggler, plane-doodler, and collaborator; read on to discover what keeps him inspired, how he turns an idea into a finished project, and what’s coming up next.
David Mack Emmy nom, NYTimes BestSelling Author, Director HBOMax, Writer Daredevil, ECHO Creator, JessicaJonesTV & WinterSoldier film titles. Envoy US StateDept will be at San Francisco @fanexposf Nov 24-26. Fri-Sun
Artist: David Mack
@davidmackkabuki
Catherine Monahon: What mediums do you gravitate toward and why?
David Mack: I love doing so many different kinds of things. I think about the project first, then decide which medium works best. How is this story most powerfully told? Just like with writing – what’s the best way? Third person or first person? Chronologically or not? Realistic or surreal? I like brush and ink drawings from live figures, I am currently using watercolors for the Fight Club paintings, I have stacks of collage materials for stop motion animation… I like very three-dimensional and sculptural things, but I also like the direct approach of watercolor or lines on paper with ink. Mixed media storytelling is about contrast; you do one thing so you can do something very different… kind of orchestrating the reader’s emotions.
How do you keep track of all of your ideas?
Writing and drawing comics, creating opening titles for TV or film, directing music videos, traveling for the State Department and working in refugee camps overseas …To keep track of my ideas, I do a similar system for everything. Every time I have an idea, I make sure to write it down. Maybe I’m working on a project that I’ve written a long time ago and I’m drawing it now; my head is still writing the next story. Even though I have to stay focused on executing something now for a certain timeline, I’m going to have ideas for stuff for the future. I might know that my time is booked up, I might not be able to get to it for two years. Ideas come to you in whatever order they come; I have a filing cabinet with little folders and every time I have an idea for a certain project, I write it on a napkin scrap of paper or I send an email to myself. Even if know that I might not get to the idea for years.
The fun thing about that is, when it finally comes time to do the project, I pull out a file with like… two hundred scraps of paper that I don’t even remember making. Past version of me has given such a gift to present version of me. I’ll pull the ones that are right out and put the ones that aren’t in another place, for another time. I use them to sculpt an outline, so I already have some momentum, something in the outside world that’s outside of your head and propels me forward.
When you actually get a chance to sit… I don’t know if you sit in your studio… I’m trying to envision you at work. What is the vibe of you at work?
My studio in Venice Beach is really nice, working on the deck, with my cats, doing a lot of painting. When I’m there, I’m also doing a lot of meetings; we’re developing Kabuki as a TV series for Sony, I’d be doing meetings all day during business hours and coming back and painting at night.
But I travel a lot. December in Portland, right now I’m actually sitting on a riverbank in Kentucky. Then I’m going to Italy, then South America, then Soviet Areas and North Africa… so I have to make it work wherever I am.
That’s why I’ve been doing a lot of covers the past two years. When I was doing Kabuki myself, it’s a very immersive process. It takes all my time and brain power to keep it on schedule because I was doing every article of it, the writing the drawing the lettering…I’ve been traveling for the State Department a lot, I’ve been overseas, and I’ve been doing a lot of covers because I can work the ideas out on a plane, I can do a quick painting in the hotel room. I’ll just take a photo with my phone, and you can print a cover from that image, actually.
The diversity of the projects you’ve worked on over the years – comic book literature, a NYT best-selling children’s book, movie titles and music videos … you’ve mentioned that this diversity has helped build different tools in your arsenal. What was a “tool” that came easy, and what tool do you feel has been the most hard-earned?
To stay sharp and focused and just for fun, I try to do drawings from life, once a week if I can, my drawing from a live model so it feels like I’m not completely alone in the world, I’m connected to humanity and there is another person kind of giving off a certain kind of energy, it’s a kind of collaboration. I will do very quick drawing directly in ink, because I find that anytime you are drawing from life, I feel a self-imposed to need to draw quickly. Drawing in ink forces me to make a quick decision: what information to leave out, what line to choose. A gallery noticed my work, they felt like it had some kind of relation to figure drawings of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. The drawings ceased to be only research and development, and I put more attention into it. I learned a whole lot more from that. Comic books and other projects are a big sequence of events; one image has to relate to the next image. With the drawings, there were no preconception of what the finished project and what purpose it has to serve. To be completely in the moment without any expectations. I can then apply this skill consciously to other projects.
On the opposite side of that spectrum, the “hard-earned” tool, I did some album art for Amanda Palmer and I’ve been doing her music videos. The first time, I really only had two weeks to complete the music video. I said yes to it…. But I really didn’t know how to do it! (Laughs) It was a great experience. It was intense. I forced myself how to figure it out. I was really happy with the end result of the project. Once I did it, I was ready for the next time, and recently I did a six-and-a-half-minute-long song for her.
So it sounds like the tools that you value the most – pushing yourself with the figure drawing which led to this whole other world and discovery, and then a “just say yes” and figure it out.
Yes – there is the power of no, but there is the power of the yes. I want to do it, I don’t know how, I am going to push myself in the process.
What is your favorite part of your process?
At the very beginning, where it’s just the conceptual stage. You have to have a playful mind and whimsically think of all the possibilities. That’s a really fun stage. You feel untethered to any practical limitations. The hardest part is the middle, when you have to figure it out. But my other favorite part is when it’s 99% finished and all the hard work is behind you. But then you get to do the finishing touches.
In a recent interview, you mentioned that you “tricked yourself into doing the illustrating for kabuki.” Apparently it all started with a four-page spread. Can you say more about this? Why did you need to “trick” yourself?
I was writing this comic book for Kabuki, I thought of myself as a writer, but I didn’t see myself as talented enough to do full comic book art. *What would you say to people who separate fine art and comic book art so fully? Why? At that time I had done a lot of painting and sculpture, but there is such an art to it.. the layout, the editing, the writing… that on top of the mechanics and execution of drawing all those panels… I thought, I need to focus on the writing aspect of it, I should find an expert to do the art. In 1993 I was signing at a comic book convention in Chicago, barely 20 years old, and I met Brian Michael Bendes. We really hit it off! He showed me his creator-owned project, a crime story.
The way he tells the story… when he showed me the mock-up of the book, I took a sharpie – he had thin scratchy lines, and I said, this is a crime-noir story, you should block in and make this a lot darker – I drew on the copy with the Sharpie… he liked that and went to his agent in Chicago and got me a job as his inker! We became a penciler and inker team in 1993! I said, you should draw Kabuki! He was going to be the original artist for the Kabuki series. That freed my mind a little bit. We’re doing this projects, working together, I’m writing the scripts and he’s going to draw it. It freed me up to do a lot of designs, more R&D. Then there was an anthology title at Caliber Comics where we were both being published at the time. They asked me to write and draw an 8 page story. It was only 8 pages, right? The main Kabuki story was going to be a very long story and I did not want to draw it. I only wanted to write it. But 8 pages is manageable… I can work out the look, the costumes, the details, the imagery and the story-telling style. That will be a good example for the “real artists” to look at!
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So you didn’t see yourself as a real artist yet…
Yes, exactly. So I completed it, could see the light at the end of the tunnel. So another 8-page story came up, and another – I did four little pieces. Then I thought… if these were all in one book, this is 32 pages, that’s a whole book! I could do a one-shot of Kabuki as an example for the real artists. *question – is it typical in the comic book art world that artists will share content like this?? Like you would do a one off and someone else would pick it up ? readers are cool w that? It sold pretty well, good enough that they said hey, you know, do another one… and that is how I tricked myself.
I see a slight connection to the way you keep track of your ideas. Small steps, it’s not a big thing. Then, oh I have 32 pages actually… I’m good.
I would really recommend this to anyone, if they want to do comics, or probably anyone else… They say, hey, it’s a 10-volume epic spanning volumes and time… they come up with these large ideas, the truth is it’s so big that I think the majority of the people never get to these large ideas. But if you commit to a 4 page story, that’s something you can reasonably finishing in a weekend. And teaches you to economically tell the story. In comic books, real estate is very valuable. Unlike film, where people can talk as much as the want… in comics, every time someone talks, that takes real estate away from the visuals. Start with a four-page story, trick yourself into getting something done. Keep making these little chapters.
How was your transition from the comic book world to the fine art world?
I definitely felt like they were different worlds, with some overlap of people who appreciate both things. But a lot of stuff is like that – TV and film and comics, music videos and album covers… there are people in both worlds. For instance, I got invited to a design festival called OffFest. I think I was the only person there who didn’t work digitally – photographers, filmmakers, new media, and digital design… the giants of design. I felt like I was a very different kind of person. The cool thing was, I hung out with different kinds of people. I spent time with a producer for credits – a few months later I got a call from her… she clued me into a project last minute. I was just about to get on a flight for Fiji for Thanksgiving… the flight is like 12 hours, so the whole flight I drew all my ideas, I inked the drawings on the beach, took a photo with my phone, and sent it to her and she turned it in, magically they chose our proposal, and we got to make the main titles for Captain America the Winter Soldier. That’s just one example… if I hadn’t gone to this design festival, I’d have never made that connection. People think I got to do the titles because I was already in comics, but it was all through a different channel, through the world of design.
I think that’s true of a lot of things these days -genres are blending, ways of communicating are blending, and you are putting yourself at the crux of it, keeping yourself open to creating. Do you teach?
I just spoke at Art Center in Pasadena, CA. One of my best friends is an artist named Kent Williams. He was a big influence on me, even when I was like 12 years old. He does work in comics but right now he does work with large oil paintings. He teaches at Art Center and I was invited there to speak. I do a lot of talks at colleges and universities. I also work with Visionaries Voices and Thundersky, studios for artists with certain challenges, Autism or a variety of other challenges. It really gives those artists an opportunity to express themselves in the way they want to, and to be seen for what they can do rather than to be seen for how they are different or what they can’t do.
What is your position with the State Department, by the way?
They call me a Cultural Ambassador. I work in the embassies, the officers will have a pretty stacked schedule for me, someone in Washington will work out the idea, connect with the embassy staff in that country, we’ll travel to different cities doing various projects, we work with a third party, CVE, Countering Violent Extremists. They contacted me, I received an email from someone in the State Department. When I was in the former soviet areas and the country of Georgia; the guy there told me that though they didn’t have any experience with comic books, they had a rich culture of fine art; he thought I could be a good bridge from mixed media fine arts into storytelling and other things as an access point for people we were visiting at that time.
“I’ve taught at the School for the Deaf in Tunisia, Georgia (country) Singapore, as well as special needs schools, I’ve taught in prisons in former Soviet areas, refugee camps, and border areas. Places where the State Department wants to reinforce their commitment”
I’ve taught at the School for the Deaf in Tunisia, Georgia (country) Singapore, as well as special needs schools, I’ve taught in prisons in former Soviet areas, refugee camps, and border areas. Places where the State Department wants to reinforce their commitment…The agenda: to interact with at-risk groups and make them less susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups. To remind them of the stories that they have, their own unique experiences and how they can express them. In Tunisia they don’t really have a tradition of comics, but they have a rich art tradition. I would teach them how to visualize sequences… there was a therapy aspect of it, too. I was in HDR camps with people who had fled Iraq, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, people with really disturbing stories, you know, their families had been wiped out. Teaching them how to tell their story and own it.
What is the power of these storytelling tools?
I get a sense that… for instance, for Visionary & Voices and Thundersky Gallery, there are a lot of artists there who are non-verbal. After years of just creating their own work and then being able to relate to the world through the vehicle of their work, they come out of their shell! They have something they want to share with people, they want to talk with people. They become very outgoing, whereas before it was the opposite.
I was at the School for the Deaf in Tunisia, I was doing some quick drawings to get the group warmed up, and people were signing for me to draw certain things. This one woman very frantically started signing. They said, oh, she wants you to make this really big house. I was drawing with a pen and ink really quickly.
So I went for it, and they came up to me after. That girl has been in here a long time. We know that she can understand… but she has never used sign language before. We always try to get her to do it, and suddenly she jumped in and out-signed everyone to get my attention. Those types of connections are amazing.
Once you have the tools, or you see that they exist, you realize you have something that you want to talk about.
I’ll tell you a very personal story about what comics meant to me as a kid. I had a father who was very different. That was a long time ago so they didn’t diagnose people as on the spectrum but when I saw the movie Rainman, I thought oh wow, that’s my Dad. He doesn’t actually have a conversation with you, but he will dump large amounts of knowledge about trains or buses or airplanes in place of a conversation. It’s either, I need you to do this for me, or he’s downloading information. I talked to my brother about this years later, and he said yeah Dad is somewhere on the spectrum. And it made me think, when I was a little kid, I was kind of like my dad.
I didn’t understand social cues in the way other people understood them. I didn’t know what expression to make when I’m saying certain things. There was always a strange disconnect. But when I would read comics, I could see the words people were saying and I could see the facial expression and the body language. To me, that was a diagram. Okay, that’s the kind of visual cues you are supposed to have when you have a conversation. So when I started drawing that myself, it was even more detailed learning process. All those choices you have to make, working it out on paper
You had mentioned in other chats that your mom is a teacher, and her creative materials that she had around inspired you as a kid. But is sounds like your development as an artist and writer was propelled not only by having arts and crafts around, but by this learning tool that provided an avenue for communication
You know, that was a huge part of it – but I should also say this. There were a lot of things that I enjoyed as a kid. But a lot of things that I was doing, I would get negative reinforcement from the adult world. If I was drawing, I would get more positive reinforcement. The other stuff I liked to do was physical and animated. I was a rough-and-tumble character. I liked playing with fire, shooting guns and arrows. At one point I wanted to be a stuntman, so I would practice. I took it very seriously. I had a very thin line from the idea to making it a reality. If my mom was driving I would jump out of the moving car…We would set ourselves on fire, and jump off the roof onto a mattress. But if I was quietly making notes on paper….I got more positive reinforcement for that.
But you could depict that action without getting berated for it.
Right.
What kinds of story pulls you in and make you want to tell it?
I think when I’m telling a story it is most powerfully felt if it is somehow personal to me. When I was writing the Daredevil character, the Echo character, and even the Wilson Fisk character. I put a lot of stuff from my own childhood in that story. I do that a lot. It’s by no means a documentary, but it’s a way to explore yourself throughout he story. Even with Kabuki, I can relate to each and every character, even Aegis. You write to figure out stuff for yourself. A lot of people have the idea that you have stuff figured out first, and then you make the art of it and then you write it… but really, the meaning and knowledge and understanding shows up in the process.
What is a recent failure that you’ve learned from?
Oh wow. So the first thing that comes to mind… I did the new video for Dashboard Confessional… The cool thing was I was on a flight from Japan to Singapore, I started talking to my neighbor on the flight and it turns out he was the lead singer, Chris Carrabrash… we talked for a lot of the flight, I showed him the Amanda Palmer music video I had just done, some of the Jessica Jones stuff. He said, hey, you should do our video for We Fight. I figured I meant in the next couple of years. I got a phone call later that week from his record company, they wanted the video within the month. We worked out the details and I jumped right into it. But it wouldn’t quite work; I was drawing him in a sequence, but the lip-synching wasn’t quite matching up. I quickly realized I needed help. I hired a specialist to help me edit it; an artist in Singapore, we ended up editing it as I traveled.
You recognized you needed to rely on another expert…
Absolutely, they were a huge help. We ended up collaborating on a few other things, and next time I do a video I will for sure call her in to edit a video.
How do you keep your mind open to inspiration?
A lot of times there are deadlines. I have current obligations and a limited amount of time to get something done. But at the same time, I’m having all kinds of ideas. It’s a matter of taking a break from the thing you are working on. If you are having a moment that you’re not sure, a lot of times… it’s not just work hard, it’s work smart. Not just putting in hours at the drawing table, sometimes you need to step away, and that’s part of the process. Your brain is still working on it. Letting stuff come to you, is that part of the process… going for a walk, clearing your head, getting some exercise, letting stuff come to you. That part is just as important as springing into action.
Doing something else that is more playful, keeping yourself in a whimsical state of mind, letting things come to you. If someone else can do it, let them do it. But if I’m the only person who can do it, I should be doing it. That’s how I stay focused on my own book for so long. That said, from the very first Kabuki novel I got the offer to write the Daredevil at Marvel Comics. That was a new challenge; up until that point I had created the characters entirely. But with Daredevil, a character who had been around since the 60s, it was a twofold challenge: how to be respectful to the rich history that the creators brought to the character while also doing something with the character that hadn’t been done before, that was completely unique.
I really like working collaboratively. Working with Marvel, it is always a collaboration, because I’m collaborating with the history of the character and what every has brought to it already, I was writing it, someone else was drawing it, coloring it… I got to write a character called Echo, she was in Avengers, in a whole bunch of stuff since… I also wrote the origin of Wilson 5th the King Pin, and the germ of that idea made it to the first season of the Daredevil television show in Netflix. So I got to be on the set of that series, the Jessica Jones series, based on a comic book that we did in 2001… I did the cover and interior work, so I did the work for the credits, and we got nominated for an Emmy, I would have never dreamed that that would come it.
What is a current collaboration that you are specifically excited about?
I’m glad you asked. My understanding is that this week – I think tomorrow – is a release of the collected volume of a new creator-owned series. Brian Mendes and myself… when I was writing Daredevil I introduced Brian Mendes’ work to Joe Cassatta, who was drawing the Daredevil story and is now the editor and chief. Brian became one of the top writers for Marvel for many years. Recently he had a near death experience; when he was lying in bed, extremely sick, one of his regrets was that he and I had worked together on several things, but we always talked about a creator-owned project. When he got better, he got in touch with me. He said, let’s do this immediately. I want to do this series. Okay, we’ll do it a year or two from now. He said, no, this year. December? No, he said – April. The series is called Cover.
Now, we had another creator-owned project originally. But at the end of 2017 I was involved in an event in Libya in which a lot of the people I was working with… the local militia came in and captured a lot of the people. I told Brian about these kinds of events, and he suggested we change course. He wanted to create a fictionalized version of these kinds of events I was telling him about. Now, I had wanted to do a very non-fiction memoir about all my State Department work, so at first I was a bit resistant. But Brian was inspired, and really believed in the project.
So what are you excited for in the next year?
Well, the Cover series just came out last month. I’m developing the Kabuki TV series with Sony, it’s the 25th anniversary of Kabuki. I’ll be overseas doing State Department work in Tunisia.
I’m signing SanFrancisco @fanexposf THIS week! Nov 24-26. Fri-Sun. ORIGINAL ART!
JAPAN Show Reel of my work, music videos I directed, film titles, Emmy Nom, Ted Talk, & more!
