An Interview with Spider-Man Artist Marco Rudy

Best known for his meticulously detailed line work as seen in comic books such as Uncanny X-Men, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, Swamp Thing, and The Shield, Marco Rudy is a Toronto-based artist from Mozambique. I recently spoke to him about his transition from a comic book fan to a professional artist working on some of fandom’s most popular characters.

Hope: Can you tell me a bit about the projects that you recently worked on?

Former leader of the X-Men, Cyclops. Art by Marco Rudy

Marco: Well, the last one, the more out-there one, was Marvel Knights Spider-Man which  I just finished last year, and an Uncanny X-men book which I finished about 10 days ago.

Hope: How did you get involved in the Marvel Knights Spider-Man book?

Marco: I was getting close to finishing my run on Swamp Thing and DC was changing their creative team. I had asked them if they wanted me to remain, but they wanted a different art direction. So, in 2012 at Toronto’s Fan Expo, I ran into Steven Warker who was the Spider-Man editor at the time. I let him know that my run was ending, and I was interested in working for Marvel since I hadn’t before. It’s funny, I only thought they might offer me a fill-in and after that maybe do something lengthy, but they flat-out gave me a Spider-Man mini-series. It was very hard to not say yes!

Hope: Were you nervous working on such an iconic character?

Marco: I think, when I was drawing the last issue. It hadn’t dawned on me when I was doing the book, as they were giving me such control over the artwork. In fact, even for my next project, Marvel stands with me. I don’t know if this is the same for everyone else, but they told me “If you have an approach that will work for the story, justify it, tell us why you chose that approach, and do it”. When I’ve been working on a page I’ll look to the side and just can’t believe that I did this with Spider-Man. It was surreal, but I loved it.

Hope: You’ve worked with Marvel, and DC before that, what other publishers have you worked with?

The Shield, Archie’s patriotic superhero. Art by Marco Rudy

Marco: The work that I did that got me into comics for real was an Image Comics book called After the Cape, with a Canadian creator, Howard Wong. After that, I did some covers for Boom for about six months, but work was pretty low. So I got an agent because I was desperate, I didn’t have work, I didn’t have an apartment, I didn’t have anything. So, my agent told me that he could get me work at DC and after 2-3 weeks he got me work on the big crossover event Final Crisis. That was my first Big 2 (Marvel/DC) comic book project. After that they offered me a three-issue mini-series. And during issue 2, they offered me an exclusive contract for another series, The Shield, which was an Archie Comics superhero.

Hope: That character is huge, he’s been around for such a long time.

Marco: He was Captain America, before Captain America. That was pretty cool. This was the book at DC where they gave me the most control. It wasn’t selling very well so they pretty much let us do whatever we want. It was probably the most fun I’ve had. We ended at issue 10 after a year. I remember the writer wrote the last issue in 4 hours, and I drew and inked 22 pages of the comic in 16 days. Not because there was a deadline but because I was that enthusiastic about it! There was a lot of cool stuff we included in the last issue, a lot of easter eggs.

Hope: I know you’ve been a fan of comics for a long time. Can you tell me a bit about your early experience with comics?

Marco: My folks hated comics. They always told me that they would stifle my creativity. I was very creative when I was younger and would shy away from people just to draw. At that time, it was a very insisting factor with my folks that comics were bad and video games were bad.

I always remember when I was 7 or 8 in Mozambique, a cousin of mine brought me a Wolverine comic from Portugal. It was a Frank Miller/Chris Claremont mini-series, the one they adapted into the movie. That issue impressed me a lot, it was the story where he decapitates a person, so that was bad for my folks obviously. At the time, I was reading Tales From the Crypt which a friend of mine would always bring over to read. We would read them and write stories to that effect, for which we won writing awards at school. Again, my folks were not very happy since the stories were about werewolves and whatnot.

I kept looking for more comics, but they were very hard to find initially. So, this friend of mine had the comic books and had the video games – such a terrible influence- so I started reading his. I read X-factor, the original one by Walt and Louise Simonson. That got me hooked. After that, every time I went out to buy groceries…some of the groceries were not groceries. Until my dad found the hidden drawer and set fire to my comics. They were very insistent on me reading ‘actual’ books. Which I was, but I also loved comics.

I never knew I could actually work in them. Back then, we would get a lot of European bande dessinée, but American comics were one or two at the newstand. Otherwise you’d have to go to South Africa or Portugal for more. So every chance I got I hoarded the comics for myself. And I drew mini-series, all about bam-bang-pow, and stuff like that. But drawing comics in Mozambique is less plausible than working for NASA. It’s just not something that happens. It wasn’t until I drew my first DC book that I realized “OK, I can actually do this now!”

Hope: You said that Howard Wong got you into the business, can you explain that?

DC’s Swamp Thing. Art by Marco Rudy

Marco: Back when I was studying architecture in university in Brazil, most of my teachers told me that because of my approach to architecture, I should work in comics. In all of my class presentations, I would destroy the buildings with dragons and Godzilla and eventually the Silver Surfer would come around. I joined Deviantart because of that, and immediately after that I had people approaching me to work with them. One was an American who had an interesting premise for a non-profit book, called Corrective Measures. And everything starts the same way, someone saying “I have a project, it’s not going to be profitable, but it’ll put you in the market”. I was just too excited to think that it could be a scam. Gladly, it wasn’t. Through the forums associated with this comic, I met Howard Wong who had the premise for After the Cape.

Hope: That’s crazy! It’s every artist’s dream, to post images on deviantart and have it lead to a lucrative career in comic books.

Marco: It was pretty fast. But lucrative, it wasn’t, until I got to DC. While I was working on the Image series, I became sick with malaria and was taken off the project. For a year after it was very hard to find work, until I met Rafael Albuquerque from American Vampire. I was at his studio for the duration of 2008, when I attended a Brazil convention and met my future agent who got me work at DC.

Hope: How has your style evolved? Your recent Marvel work is incredibly detailed, has this always been evident or is it new?

Marco: Even at the beginning, I always wanted to do something different from what other people were doing. One of the artists I studied was J H Williams, and that led me to check out older artists like Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, and Jim Steranko. I learned that each artist had his own language, and many showed art that wasn’t as often used in modern comics. Which I don’t blame any artists for. You have to do 20 pages each month, so it’s like fast food. Gourmet fast food, but still fast food! I thought maybe I can change just a little bit and make the fast food more interesting. It was when I was doing The Shield that I decided to experiment a little bit and I found that I can tell a story using all of the page, and not just the panel. And ever since then I wanted to tell a story with the layout, with the captions, getting music inside the page, whatever I could do that would translate the mood into the story.

I’ve been forcing myself through this, but some editors don’t like that. Especially if they know that you can do a quality product that is not so out-there, some will push you to do that. I refused a comic project where they had a set of editorial rules that I just didn’t want to do, especially when I was reading books like Alias with Jessica Jones, that featured such real characters. Even though I loved the project, the approach they wanted was not something I could take part of.

Hope: You have an upcoming project with Marvel, can we expect you to have leniency with your artwork in the future?

Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man. Art by Marco Rudy.

Marco: Yes. Everything changed with the Marvel Knights book. I was approached and asked if I could do the same thing with different characters. At the RAID party during Fan-Expo 2013, I was talking to Dark Horse editors about how creators have more control over telling the story, and what the public’s perception to that was. They were very excited in my ramblings about that. That encouraged me, and I continue to be encouraged when people approach me and say “I really like that you did your art this way, when not many people are doing it like that”. To which, I respond “This has always been done in the past! We should be doing this more and more!” And we are. The indie scene right now is where a lot of the more interesting comics are coming about and the big publishers are taking notice of that. They are asking these artists such as Chip Zdarsky and Jeff Lemire to draw stories in their own styles.

Hope: Can you tell me anything about the new Marvel project you’re working on?

Marco: There’s not much I can say! One of the characters that I was really eager to draw in this book isn’t even featured! And I was disappointed because that was one of the main reasons I wanted to draw the book. It’s a single character that has an old romance with a character I liked, but it’s over and that sucks. I can’t say much more without spoiling the book though, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks to Marco for speaking to me about his inspirational rise in the comic book industry. I can’t wait to find out what secret Marvel project he will be working on next! You can see more of Marco’s artwork on his deviantart page, or follow him on twitter at @Marco_Rudy

Marco Rudy, comic book artist