Michael Cho: Cartoonist & Illustrator
- Mar 19
- 3 min read
Michael Cho works across editorial illustration, comics, and book covers, with projects for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, White Noise, Action Comics, and Detective Comics. His practice is built on early decisions about reduction, framing, and tone; the structure exists long before the image feels finished. We talked about empty space, off-frame thinking, color as structure, and the invisible choices that let the viewer do part of the work.
Your covers often hinge on how you use empty space. When you’re laying out a page, what decides how much you leave untouched?
It’s an organic process, and it changes with each composition. The only “rule” I follow in most cases is giving myself a set amount of time to play around and remove elements after I’ve come up with a reasonable sketch. My general philosophy of art is to reduce, simplify, and keep things “raw.” So even if a sketch seems good, I always give myself time to play and see if I can remove elements and create an even better, fresher image.
You pull from mid century illustration without slipping into nostalgia. When you start a new piece, what’s the choice that keeps the image feeling current instead of retro for its own sake?
This is a good question and one I think about often. I am definitely influenced by mid-century modern illustration and design. However, I don’t have a desire to slavishly recreate the past—I did that very early in my career as I learned the language of the art of that era. These days, my goal is to update that language and move it into the present. I live and create in a different world than the illustrators of the 1950s, shaped by different influences and events, and using different tools, so it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
I look to the past for inspiration, but I’m not beholden to it. I try to take the thinking and approach that existed in mid-century illustration and apply it to modern tools and modern image-making, merging and updating it, hoping to shape the past into the future.
Your figures always feel like they’re standing inside a bigger world just outside the frame. What cues do you add around them to suggest that space without fully drawing it?
That’s an insightful observation. One of the things I learned early was not to just build an illustration within the frame, but to consider what exists outside the frame and how it impacts what’s there. So I think of trees outside the frame and how they cast shadows on the ground inside the frame. Things like that.
Another important thing I learned was that suggesting things in an image is far more “real” to the viewer than drawing them completely. A drawing of Times Square with all the cars and traffic signs rendered completely will never evoke the sense of being there the way a few well-placed paint strokes will. The viewer fills in the missing detail in their mind and sees things in the image that aren’t really there. I like giving the viewer the chance to “complete” the drawing in their mind, making for a more evocative and engaging image.
Your limited palettes do a lot of shaping. What’s the moment you commit to the one color that’s going to carry the mood?
My work process is designed to allow me the maximum amount of flexibility with colour, so I can change anything at any time. In order to do that, I have to keep to a small palette and balance the colours well. I try to use colour to evoke emotion and mood or, failing that, excitement.
Usually I go in thinking that I know what colours I’m going to use. Then by the end, I’ve changed it completely. That happens almost every time. So I don’t really know when that “moment” is going to come until it does. I know it when it happens, though, because I’m always waiting for the “aha” moment when the picture comes together. Sometimes that happens early, sometimes it happens at the eleventh hour. It’s always my favourite part of coming up with an image.
When a drawing looks clean to everyone else but still isn’t right to you, what’s the first adjustment you check before you call it finished? My general philosophy is to reduce to the essentials. I dislike work that’s slick and over-rendered with too many filters and effects. I’m always trying to return to that friction between an image that’s too raw and one that’s just right.
When Michael talks about illustration, he’s talking about decisions made before the image feels finished. The space left untouched, the elements removed, the cues that let the viewer do some of the work. The invisible work lives in those choices, shaping how the image holds together without ever calling attention to itself.
Learn more about Michael at:
• Website
