Talking with Mike Willcox, Artist of ‘The Lost City of Heracleon’

Last week, you might have seen our advance review of BOOM! Studios’ graphic novel, The Lost City of Heracleon. Well, this week, we are happy to say that we got a chance to interview with both the writer, Bruce Livingstone, and artist, Mike Willcox. Be sure to read both ahead of the release on August 29th.

BNP: From a visual standpoint, The Lost City of Heracleon is so visually distinct in how it tells the story of Lou and Shiro. Can you walk us through your own artistic background and the tools you utilized to make these beautiful spreads? Mike: Classical. Japanese woodblock printing. Posters. Comics. Studying Old comics.  I am self-taught but have learned a lot of classical techniques from friends and mentors over the years. I teach myself through books and other resources. I used to be much more involved in realism painting, but pen and ink has always been part of what I do. I ended up doing a lot of concert posters and that sort of led me down a road to this style of working. I would make pen and ink drawings and then layer behind them with the same principles as Japanese woodblock printing. Which is a very similar process to making comics the old-fashioned way. So for this project, I started with Hot Pressed watercolor paper, I wanted the book to be a specific size, so I would measure out the dimensions and bleed area and draw that in prior to doing my pages for the week. I would pencil in the artwork, then ink it, then photograph it and put it i…