Mark McCracken Interview

DIVINE AUTHORITY

-by Joe Churney

Divine Authority began when artist Jamie Apgar approached his cousin Mark McCracken to collaborate on a comic book project. In their younger days, Jamie was impressed with the elaborate stories Mark would conceptualize while playing with action figures. Together they established Midnight Warriors: the flagship title of what was then known as A.M. comics (Apgar/McCracken, a.k.a. ‘After Midnight’).

Since then, Divine Authority has established a loyal fan base and expanded to include other titles such as -Girl!, Icebox, The Nameless One, Rank in Hell and more. Not only is Divine Authority a way for Mark McCracken and others to promote their own creator-owned projects, D.A. also exist as a labor of love.

I had the chance to pose a few questions to D.A. publisher and creator Mark McCracken:

Joe Churney: What are some of the hardships and challenges of publishing/promoting your work?

Mark McCracken: I think one of the biggest challenges for me is getting highly invested in a project that never sees fruition. Collaborating with artists on a level where we are only hoping to promote our work and try to garner profit, and not offering a page rate in a traditional employer/employee setting, everything is based on motivation. Sometimes an artist will be "gung-ho" about a project, rip through 7 pages, and then taper off and decide to quit because they don't have it in them to finish the book. I actually have a book I am sitting on now, a solo one-shot for a character from Midnight Warriors, for which the opening scene has been drawn by three different artists and never finished. With a project like this, I am disappointed, because I like the script, it's integral to the story of the character, and I want to see it printed. With other stories it's actually beneficial they never saw fruition because it's given me the opportunity to revamp the concept continually, making it into something far better than it had been before. A potential ongoing series, "Spyne", has fallen into this situation, and each time it's lost the artist and been re-written, I've always added something new to the story that makes it all the more unique and interesting.

Lately I've been working primarily with artists online and it can be stressful trying to get a feel for people simply from words, but it hasn't stopped me from trying. Just this year I found an artist with amazing potential, Fran Ros, who's already blazed through most of an issue of Midnight Warriors that I am dying to see available in-print.

Another hardship we've suffered in the past was mistreatment by a printing company.

J.C.: Do you have a regular print schedule for your books?

M.M.: We don't have a regular printing schedule. When Jamie and I first started out, we wanted to be monthly. Then we realized it was pretty impossible. And that was back when our lives weren't so busy. Now I find myself and all of the aritsts have school, work, and their personal lives, so it's really difficult to put out anything on a regular basis. It also depends on the motivation factor, too. I try to script a project while an artist is working on it, that way I can tailor to their strengths and include any new ideas I've come up with in the meantime. I hate a script that gets "stale" waiting on an artist, so Ive found this method of scripting to be very beneficial to me. I personally like to have several new issues of a series out each year.

The easiest way to guarantee this is to stagger artists, so that each issue isn't necessarily drawn by the same artist. This works well with -Girl! because it is a comedy, originally drawn in traditional manga style, and from issue #5 & upward I have tried to script each issue as a self-contained story, without requiring the readers to have read the issues that came before in order to enjoy the story. With a series like Midnight Warriors it is a little more difficult because I try to keep the art style more realistic, the issues flow one into the next with a lot of continuity-heavy plotlines. What I have tried to do to alleviate this is to work ahead. While at the moment I am completing the present issue, Midnight Warriors#10, with Francesca, I am also working on a storyline encompassing MW#12-16 with Edgard Aedo, for which he's already finished the first part and is working on the second. This way, by the time we reach #12, we will have several issues completed by Edgard to release in a row without needing to sub artists to keep release dates closer.

J.C.: What have been some of your personal favorite stories that you have published?

M.M.: My favorites are always the stories yet to be, because I feel as time goes on my writing only gets better.

Of what we have printed so far, I liked -Girl!#1 because it introduced what I considered to be a fairly unique concept for a heroine, and in #6 (presently at Ka-Blam!, soon to be in my hands) I put added emphasis on the fact that each of -Girl!'s personalities beleive they are the prime personality and the others are the splits. I also have a special interest in #6 because it is based on a true story of my experience with a certain major retailer. It was easiest to weave it into -Girl! as a common plotline is the fact that -Girl! cannot keep a job because she is constantly shape-shifting into her other selves.

I liked Midnight Warriors #3 because it introduced Ray, one of my favorite characters of the series, and also included a lot of hints toward ongoing plotlines that most likely went unnoticed for the time being. The once certain plot elements are revealed in future issues, re-reading the back issues will offer a lot of new insight, readers will start to pick up on things they didnt notice before. MW#6 probably could have been told better (it was actually written prior to #3-5 as Andy Sullivan was working on issues in advance while he was a Marine away from home), but I thought it was unique to have a character afraid of their own birthday, and then finding out why was such a huge shock and so tragic you wanted to vomit. I plan to touch back on this storyline in MW#14 & 17, shedding some new light on the story with some added details, and it will of course be relevant to what is going on at present tense in the story. It leads into one of the biggest plot twists we've had in the works since Day One.

J.C.: Tell me a bit about your future plans for Divine Authority.

M.M.: First of all, I would like Divine Authority to have a wider variety of books. Right now we primarily print Midnight Warriors and -Girl!. "One Wrathful Bastard" is driven by Jim Sullivan and I am waiting until it gets going before we bring in a guest penciler to further the series. I would like to make the upcoming "Divine Authority Presents" a prominent project. The concept of asking only a small contribution per issue from artists ( 8 pages) has proven a better motivator, and will see the fruition of completed issues on more of a regular basis. Also, it will showcase several art styles and themes within each issue to give readers a sampling of our universe with each issue. Within the next few years I would like to see some of my longtime projects see print, and there is also a project I have been sitting on for about five years, never actually writing it because I want it to be my best work, and I have a feeling someday soon i will be ready to get started on it. I think the concept is very original. I'd like to think it is what -Girl! could have been if I wanted to make it an adult horror book. The series is tentatively called "Psychotik".

Second of all, I would like to attend more conventions as guests. So far we have remained fairly local, attending cons in Southern Tier NY, as well as Wizard World conventions. I've expressed interest in FanExpo up in Toronto, and someday soon I'd like to do San Diego Comicon.

I think the greatest challenge with doing cons is getting several artists to travel there as well, since they sell the book more than I do. If not for the artists bringing my story to life, no one would read it. The art is what people want to see and when it comes to autographs, they want to meet the artists, and I don't blame them. We were definitely squeamish about conventions back when we were printing them ourselves and they were completely B&W, and now that we're printing professionally it's a matter of having more books available and a variety of themes. We definitely have more to offer now than we did last year, and next year I hope for even more.

________________________________________________________

If you would like to check out any of the Divine Authority books for yourself, please feel free to drop by their website at www.DivineAuthorityComics.com

and check out their myspace profile page at http://www.myspace.com/divine_authority.

Note: We were made aware of a misspelling in Mr. McCracken's name and it was promptly corrected. We apologize for this mistake.