Profile of Minnesota Cartoonist: Doug Mahnke

By Britt Aamodt



DOUG MAHNKE
You don't make it in comics
without discipline. No one's looking over your shoulder to see if you're
keeping your end of the bargain: translating the writer's script into page
layouts, and knocking off pages at a rate that ensures you'll make the printing
deadline. The publisher has to trust you to get the work done. "But some
artists are total flakes," says Doug Mahnke who's been an artist,
specifically a comic book artist, for the past 30 years. "Trust me on
that."
Mahnke didn't always have
discipline. He was one of those natural talents for whom art came easy. He
could dash out a drawing and still have time to pick up a game of baseball or
kickball. He was also a natural athlete. "I think it was athletics that
kept me from being the two-headed kid in class. You were odd if you were into
comics because collecting comics was such an extreme narrow focus, and it
consumed you," he observes. He never once considered dumping the monthly
comics habit, his Spider-Mans and Hulks, nor his determination to become
the superhero next door.
"My first desire was not to
be a comic book artist but a superhero. When I was in first grade, I became the
character Soap Man," says Mahnke who, though born in Arizona, spent much
of his childhood in Kansas. "I got two plastic bottles and filled them
with soap, then I duct-taped them to my wrists. I had a cape, everything I
needed to be a superhero. But I couldn't find a whole lot of villains in my
neighborhood."
By ninth grade, Mahnke and his
parents were living in Burnsville, Minnesota. The artist credits Pat Woolf, his
art teacher at Metcalf South Junior High School, with "giving me the tools
to grow as an artist for the rest of my life." Mahnke was drawing a human
figure in class. Pat Woolf looked over. "The legs are too short," she
told him.
"Like a lot of kids who are
used to their families telling them how good they are, I said, 'No, they're
not.' She said, 'Yes, they are.' She could tell I was mad." The teacher
grabbed art books off the shelf and opened them to figures similar to what
Mahnke had drawn. "I looked at the proportions in the book and compared
them to my drawing and I thought, You
know what? She's right. Absolutely from that point on, I was indifferent to
whether I was good or bad. I thought I'll never get better at what I do if I
don't accept the fact that I have a lot of work ahead of me."
Despite an early fascination
with superheroes, Mahnke never considered a career in comics. He was working as
a T-shirt artist in an amusement park, and engaged to be married, when he
happened upon a life-changing article. The article detailed the ascent of a
well-known comic book artist, John Byrne, and, more pertinently, Byrne's
six-figure income. "This was in the late '80s, when things were really
ramping up in comics, and people were making big money. I'm thinking, I could use that kind of money. But I
hadn't drawn comics in years."
That didn't matter. Mahnke put
together a portfolio of comic book art and sent it off to every publisher on
his list. He mailed his work to the art directors, not knowing enough about the
industry to realize you don't submit work to art directors. By a strange twist
of fate, the art director at Dark Horse Comics didn't toss his portfolio.
Instead, Mahnke's work was filed in a cabinet, where it was discovered by a
talented young writer, John Arcudi, in need of an artist.
Arcudi and Mahnke teamed up on Homicide and again on The Mask, which most people remember
from the 1994 movie starring Jim Carrey. Arcudi and Mahnke's run on The Mask began in 1989 with the
character of Stanley Ipkiss, a neurotic milquetoast, who turns into a madcap
super-being when he wears the green mask. Writer and artist stayed with the
Dark Horse series through the mid-90s, a span that documents in the pages of The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back Mahnke's
significant growth as an artist, an evolution he's continued at DC Comics,
working on such titles as Major Bummer
, Black Adam: The Dark Age,
Storm Watch: Post Human Division, JLA, Batman,
Seven Soldiers of Victory: Frankenstein,
Superman Beyond and Final Crisis.
"My art has changed so
much," he reasons, "because I made a commitment. I talked to my wife,
'I don't know what's going to happen in this industry. I got no guarantees.' I
remember using these specific words: 'I want to always be relevant. I can't be
afraid to change what I do and grow as a comic book artist.'"
And if Mahnke didn't start out
with discipline, he has it now. "Doug can get an insane amount of work
done if he has to," says Patrick Gleason, a fellow comic book artist with
whom Mahnke shares a studio in Forest Lake, Minnesota. "His work ethic is
extraordinary," says Gleason. So extraordinary that after receiving a
concussion in an auto accident, rather than go to the hospital, Mahnke sat down
at his drawing table.
"I had a deadline the next
day. I promised the editor I'd get the work done," Mahnke recollects.
"I can't even tell you what was going through my mind. I didn't sleep. I
just sat there. My eyesight was messed up. Everything was goofy, but I got it
done."
###

Writer

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