Creator Spotlight: Mike Hearn

Hey all.  Sorry there was no spotlight last week.  I’d just taken my mega test and didn’t care to do it 🙂  But today I share with you my interview with Mike Hearn, creator of webcomic Walter the Wicked.

D: Mike, tell us a bit about yourself.

M: I am about to enter my mid 30’s and am married, happily, to a beautiful woman as into geek properties as me. (Lucky!) We have one daughter who is about to start school and another daughter on the way!

I was raised in the Niagara region of Ontario, but I currently live in Central Ontario and I really love it here. It’s a small town with wonderful, clean nature all around me and just 30 mins from a major city centre. I also spent 5 years living in Elliot Lake (FAR NORTH) not something I can recommend, but I cannot deny that it helped to get me to where I am now.

D: How did you get into art?

M: I wanted a career in art since I was 12. All kids draw, but this is when I knew I wanted to do it for a living. So this is where I steered all of my schooling. Way too long ago, I graduated college for Graphic Design but I have done very little of this creative genre, specifically. Which is good, cause I think I may hate it. I am an illustrator at my core. A few years after college I fell into a career as a product designer. From that moment on my day job has been spent designing awards and trophies. Mostly for banks, but all corporate. It is fun, but often too technical for me to get anywhere near as much enjoyment from it as I do making comics. I work from home, have been for 6 years now. Still not sure how great it is, but it has some nice perks. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the privileges it brings, but I am a very social person, so the isolation can get quite wearing.

D: Tell us a bit about your comic.

M: I started Walter the Wicked just over one year ago. While I was encouraged and inspired by my cousins who draw/write Twxxd.com, the inspiration for Walter, specifically, came from me being a smart ass on Twitter.

WtW posts once a week on Wednesdays… I have thing for alliterations… Also puns, bad/simple poetry, musical parody, magic and monsters. WtW is PG (13), so no swearing/”adult” content, but comical violence and implied gruesome imagery may occur. All cartoon-y, though.

The comic follows the adventures of Walter, an immortal warlock, Smeagor, his right hand, and his minions the Gnoblins, as they torment the town of Prosperton. Walter has the power and potential to rule the world, but he has no desire for it. He wants only to run his “experiments” on the locals. There is an ongoing narrative, but I frequently take breaks from it to tell simpler jokes/gags.

D: What are some of your favorite things about creating and producing WtW?

M: I love making monsters and creatures. One of my favorite running themes on the strip is the ABC’s of Apocalyptic Altars. For the uninitiated, this is basically where I created a completely unique monster based solely on a letter. I also accompany it it with some cheesy poetry and two pieces of “fan art” from existing properties. Often of things I have never drawn before which is also very exciting to me. All in all, just THAT WtW commits me to drawing on a regular basis is extremely important to me. Before the comic, I would go months without drawing anything outside of my day job. It was killing me creatively.

D: How about least favorite?

M: The top of this list is probably the writing. People seem to enjoy Walter, so I guess I do a good job, but it just not something I enjoy doing. I feel I would work better in a collaborative sense in this regard. The commitment is also a bit of a curse. Not so much the time, (of which there is never enough, but I manage there), more in the sense that I am not at all a fan of repetition. Drawing Walter and crew all the time can wear on me. That is probably the biggest reason that I do the ABC’s of Altars and I am also about to introduce a new, occasional, non-Walter set of updates to the strip. The best way for me to keep at this is to keep it fresh. I supposes it can be a bit distracting for people visiting the site, but I am not sure how bad it is. For now, it’s all much more for me anyway.

D: What are your long term goals for WtW? Do you hope to “make it big”?

M: Some may be modest here, but I’ve made it no secret that I see something very special in Walter. I have yet to crack just HOW, but I definitely want to bring Walter to life in a movie or TV series. Until that day, my goals are just smaller. I would definitely like the site to start generating some kind of revenue, but I absolutely refuse to put ads on it. I need to find some time to start pushing commissions and maybe create some super sell-able merch, but both of those require a bit more of an investment of time than I can afford right now. At least in the development/marketing sense.

D: I just had my first kid, so I’m often thinking about whether I’d be comfortable with them reading my comic. Have you thought about that at all?

M: I do indeed consider this when making the strip. Since I firmly believe that content should be available, uncensored, for all tastes, that includes the full family friendly display that is WtW. I grew up on Looney Toons, Animaniacs, Tom and Jerry and that is where I try to keep WtW. I want everyone to be able to appreciate the strip. Not just to build a wider audience, though that is part, but also just not to exclude anyone. Feeling like you cannot approach something because you may find it offensive is not a great experience as a viewer.

Thanks Mike for letting me interview you.  You can also find Mike and WtW on the good ol’ FB, as well as at the links I posted at the beginning 🙂

Hmm… my queue is kind of empty.  Who wants to be interviewed? Creators, readers, anybody?