Mark Wheatley: Graphic Novelist & Insight Studios Founder

Mark Wheatley is an award-winning graphic novelist whose work runs from Breathtaker and Mars to museum exhibitions and the Library of Congress. He builds pages around what the eye isn’t shown. The rhythm, the gaps, the decisions that happen before a line ever hits the paper. We talked about pacing, clarity, and the instinct that tells him when a page finally feels inevitable.

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When you're building a page, where does the story actually start for you. The first panel you draw or the moment you decide what the reader won't see?

A page is only one part of telling the story. By the time I’m breaking anything into pages, I’ve already worked out the emotional beats, the style that supports the story and characters, and most of the other structural pieces. But I can still get surprised at the layout stage. Watching the panels take shape might tell me I need more research on a background detail.

Telling the story is priority one, but the page also has to hit visually. I’m always looking for a way to give the page impact and unity. All of that is flashing through my mind while I’m sketching, and most of it is happening below the surface. The drawing is in my fingers. When it looks right, I move on. Decades of experience get reduced to something that simple.

You've worked across comics, design, film, and music projects. What's the invisible thread that stays the same no matter the medium?

Emotion. Truth. Mood. Rhythm. Pace. Surprise. Delight. Intensity. Calm. Contrast. Mystery. Revelation. In many ways, the creation process is always exactly the same.

Comics rely on what happens in the gutters between panels. How do you decide what to place on the page and what to force the reader to imagine?

When I began creating comics, I was looking for a formulaic solution. Deadlines and schedules push you toward wanting some level of predictability. In practice, every story is different.

My personal take on this is that the reader’s mind is the best theater. They’re better at convincing themselves than anything I can show them. I think old time radio comedies and dramas are possibly the pinnacle of storytelling because of this.

So I show what absolutely must be shown and leave the rest to the reader’s imagination. It is far more important to be clear in telling the story and not confuse the reader. That is probably the best guide to what should be shown.

Your work has spanned decades of shifts in style and technology. What part of your process has stayed unchanged because it only works in the quiet, analog way you do it?

Thinking. Imagining. Visualizing. Have an idea before you begin. Advances in technology make it very easy to push a button and get a result. But using a result like that is not creation. It’s a reaction. It is vital to imagine the end result before ever interacting with the technology. Otherwise, the creation is machine generated.

When a script or concept comes in, what's the first moment where you feel the world click into place. The point where the design stops being choices and becomes inevitability?

If I am left to my own choices, I can usually get to that point within three days of developing the project. It might never really happen if a client is micromanaging. And there are projects so challenging they resist coming together right up to the end. Then a simple good choice will suddenly crystallize it. The only consistent thing is that I never stop doing my best to make each project exceptional. If creation was predictable, it would stop being fun. Every project is like riding a bucking bronco, trying not to get thrown and maybe tame the beast.

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For Mark, craft lives in the part no one can point to. The choices that disappear into the page. The instincts that only surface when the drawing finally feels inevitable. That’s the invisible work that holds everything together.

Learn more about Mark at:

• Website

• Studio

• Publisher