Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, Comikaze Expo, dark horse comics, Dynamite Entertainment, entertainment, Mike Mahew, The Star Wars

Talking With Mike Mayhew A Long Time Ago In A Comikaze Expo Far, Far Away

Published Wed, 05 Nov 2014 16:00:00 -0600

by Hannah Means Shannon

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By Cameron Hatheway

The Star Wars was not only one of the best reads from Dark Horse of the past year, but also one of the best unofficial What If?'s of recent memory. Mike Mayhew was the artist extraordinaire of the series, and excelled at walking the fine line of 'nostalgia' and 'fresh take' on one of the best known properties in the world. He was kind enough to chat with me at Comikaze Expo this past weekend.

Cameron Hatheway: The Star Wars was such a brilliant idea, and a unique view of what could have been. What was the pressure like to take a property so universally well known and loved and erase everything you knew of it and start from the ground up?

Mike Mayhew: Well the pressure was that I wanted people to be able to compare this equally to the movie. That's why I went for a cinematic approach: I really wanted to create sort of an even playing ground for this and the film as much as possible. So that was a lot of pressure obviously, because you're going up against one of the most memorable movies of all time, so how do you compete against that and you're one guy. That was a challenge, and a lot of the design aspects fell on my shoulders. I really had to think in terms of "How as a whole is this going to work against a collected group of all these Hollywood masterminds that ended up making one of the greatest movies of all time?"

CH: How much of the 70s and everything before that influenced the designs and illustrations in The Star Wars? Did you put yourself in the mindset of all the things that were happening at the time?

MM: I was the perfect audience for Star Wars when it came out—I was 7—and I was already a huge sci-fi and horror geek. I had been raised on Planet of the Apes and Star Trek, and all sorts of stuff like that. So it was really easy to put myself in 1974 and sort of imagine the sci-fi film landscape and the influences, and I was also thinking a lot in terms of concept artists from Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune like Moebius, and Chris Foss, and H.R. Giger and thinking in terms of "What if I was one of those guys and some young 70s director came to me?" Like some independent filmmaker and said "I have this crazy idea for a movie!" It was really easy for me to go back in a time machine and put myself there.

CH: How did you first become influenced by photo-realism? Was there a certain artist or piece of work that really gripped you and didn't let go?

MM: Photo-realism for me had always been my thing. I was always more of a Neal Adams guy than Jack Kirby when I was a kid. Now I like Jack Kirby a little bit more. So I always had that bent towards realism. When I was like 16, Watchmen and Dark Knight were out I was trying to tell my friends "Comics aren't just for kids, they're for grown-ups too!" I was always looking for that sort of maturity in comics, in a way. When I was a kid there was a lot of Norman Rockwell around and illustrators, and stuff like that. So I was thinking of their process and knew they used photographs and things like that. When drawing comics like Zorro or Vampirella, it just became a practical necessity to cast the roles and shoot pictures of people to keep things consistent and it sort of enabled my artistic process in a way.

CH: What's next for you now that you've conquered a galaxy far, far away?

MM: Right now I'm doing a ton of painted covers for Dynamite Entertainment and Marvel, painted commissions—I'm really working on my painting game recently. And looking for that next big series that might be on the horizon. There were a couple things that didn't quite work out, but something's going to click. Also in the meantime I'm working on a creator-owned book that's a real departure: it's sort of like a cartoony comedy and I've been writing it myself actually. So I'm hoping to have that sort of ready to release at some point in the next year or so.

CH: If fans want to know more about your upcoming projects, where can they find you online?

MM: You can find me at MikeMayhewStudio.com, and there's buttons on there where you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, I'm posting stuff multiple times a day: new artwork, links to things, all sorts of stuff.

Special thanks to Mike for taking time out of his busy Comikaze Expo schedule to talk all things The Star Wars and influences with me.

Cameron Hatheway is a reviewer and the host of Cammy's Comic Corner, an audio podcast. You can read his comic adaptation of George Lucas' The Howard The Duck on Twitter @CamComicCorner.

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