Benjamin Marra is a Toronto-based illustrator, comic book artist and visual designer. He has published his own comic, Night Business, as well as graphic novels for Fantagraphics. Marra also created, with art director Matt Dorfman, the cover for the latest edition of American Illustration, AI35. It’s a brilliant, apocalyptic, nightmarishishly graphic scene; Marra says, “we wanted the cover illustration to feel like album covers from bands like Megadeth or Metallica.” This provocative cover will debut on November 3 at the AI-AP PARTY and BIG TALK in New York City.

MY LIFE:
I've been drawing since I can remember. My father is a great artist, although he’s been a professional scientist for 40 years. But I probably get my interest in art and storytelling from him.

I went to school at Syracuse University’s College for Visual and Performing Arts and received a BFA in Illustration. Steven Heller gave me my first real illustration gig (as he did for many young illustrators) for The New York Times Book Review. I went to SVA’s Illustration as Visual Essay program for my MFA.

I moved to Philly and continued to struggle with drawing to develop my process. I had several breakthroughs there for illustration and making comic books. I decided to make a sketchbook to serve as my portfolio, each spread of pages being a finished illustration. I returned to New York and had an illustration job with Rolling Stone which ended up being at the center for a major lawsuit between about a dozen state governments and big tobacco.

I continued to make comics and those projects informed my illustration work in enormous and countless ways. I self-published my comics under my own publishing company, Traditional Comics, and that led to working with Fantagraphics on my graphic novels. I feel as though my work has returned to my teenage years. All of the approaches I use are the ones I attempted to master in my adolescence.

I worked in the newspaper industry as an informational graphic artist for seven years, and I’ve worked for MLB.com as a visual designer for almost 10 years. I also teach a class exploring the function of character in narrative at SVA’s MFA Visual Narrative program. I’ve worked as a professional illustrator: about 17 years now (holy smokes time flies). As a comic book artist—about a decade.

MY WORKSPACE:
I work from home in the den at a big desk made of teak.

HOW I MAKE MY ILLUSTRATIONS:
The simple answer is I draw the image in ink and then color it in Photoshop. But how I draw eternally shifts. Sometimes I draw digitally with a Cintiq, sometimes with ballpoint pens, sometimes with a Winsor-Newton Series 7 brush and Hunt 102 crow quill, sometimes with a sharpie marker. I try not to over plan anything. In fact the work I make that’s the most interesting to me is when I draw straight with ink, without planning the image in any way.

MY FIRST BIG BREAK:
My big break was creating, writing, drawing and publishing my first comic book, Night Business. The process to make that story a reality taught me more about how I work than any other project. But it was my work and experiments in my Philadelphia sketchbook that solidified my image-making philosophy. And I never would have created that if I didn’t hear that Steven Heller liked looking at illustrators’ sketchbooks more than their portfolios, since sketchbooks were where the real art was created.

MY INFLUENCES:
Jack Kirby is probably the biggest influence on me (and most of our modern popular culture). There are many others: Giotto, Piero Della Francesca, Hans Holbein the Unger, countless anonymous Medieval painters, Raymond Pettibon, Martin Ramirez, Lawrence Hubbard, Ken Landgraf, John Jacobs, Darick Robertson, any Black-and-White Boom comics from the 80s, Paul Gulacy, Jim Steranko, Wally Wood, R. Crumb, Chester Gould, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee (and Scott Williams), Ron Lim, Frank Miller, Rob Liefeld and any Extreme Studios comics, any illustrators from TSR in the late 70s and early 80s, Todd James, Christy Caracas, Frank Frazetta, Simon Bisley, Richard Corben, Gary Panter, Dash Shaw, David Mazzuchelli, Abel Ferrara, Michael Mann, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Mario Bava, basically any Giallo, Euro Horror, Eurotrash, or Exploitation movies, Paul Verhoeven, John Waters, and Russ Meyer, Jack Vance, Philip K. Dick, Lee Child, Vince Flynn. There are probably a hundred more.

MY MOST ADMIRED CREATIVE PERSON:
Dan Clowes. He tells the stories he wants to tell and participates in the successful translation of them into other mediums.

MY CREATIVE INSPIRATION:
Real Deal Comix, any Ken Landgraf comic, almost any Image comic from the early 90s.

THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF WORKING ALONE:
Time. Having enough time in my life to tell all the stories I have in my brain.

A MEMORABLE ASSIGNMENT FROM THE PAST YEAR:
Doing the cover for American Illustration! Though working with Grant Morrison on a story for Heavy Metal magazine was pretty fucking awesome. And providing drawings for an ESPN 30-for-30 short animation about Elvis Presley’s obsession with racquetball was also cool.

DREAM ASSIGNMENT:
Doing the cover for American Illustration was a dream assignment. Otherwise I’m already working on my dream assignments: I’m finishing off my comic Night Business for next year, after which I have several other comic book projects lined up along with my next graphic novel for 2018.

HOW I CREATED THE AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION 35 BOOK COVER ART:
Matt Dorfman emailed me out of the blue. He said he’d been invited to design the book and asked if I want to help with the illustrations. I said yes instantly. Matt and I have been friends for more than 20 years. We met our first year at Syracuse and were roommates for three years there as well. We both studied illustration at Syracuse. We’ve collaborated before, but not on a project this big and I’m eternally grateful Matt would think of me for the gig.

I created the final illustrations digitally, drawing it on a Cintiq with Manga Studio, and did the colors with Photoshop. American Illustration director Mark Heflin gave us the directive to really push ourselves. He wanted us to make sure we distinguished our cover from past book covers. We had a lot of freedom and that enabled Matt and I to expand our imaginations. Matt and I had several discussions about the cover image. We came up with a playlist of songs we felt like were consistent with the tone we wanted to express. I developed a list of possible elements to include in the image. Then I started sketching out individual parts and assembling them into some kind of design. I sketched out the image, received approval, and began the final drawing, inking it in many stages over a few days. Then I worked on coloring the illustration.

Matt had a vision and a central concept regarding oppositional forces that we wanted to support throughout. We wanted there to be a tension between the design of the slipcase versus the cover illustration. We are both fans of heavy metal and other power music and we wanted the cover illustration to feel like album covers from bands like Megadeth or Metallica.

MY FAVORITE ART DIRECTOR:
Matt Dorfman, of course. He’s an amazing communicator, he understands illustration and how to draw out the best work from illustrators, and his simple, direct suggestions improve immeasurably an illustrator’s original ideas.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE ILLUSTRATORS:
Lawrence Hubbard never ceases to receive total admiration and respect from me. His work melts my mind. His drawings come from a pure place of creativity and art-making. They’re created without any doubt and total confidence. The work is willed into reality with any materials close at hand, and this gives the work a great power, because it was created for no other reason than to see it exist. It’s made with honesty and compulsion.

OTHER WORK:
Comic books are my true passion. To write and draw my own stories is all I want to do.

HOW I STAY CURRENT:
I just make the work I want to see and enjoy making. If others connect with it and want to hire me to make pictures that’s cool. But I would never alter my approach for an external purpose. Creating work that satisfies my creative compulsions is the only thing that concerns me.

HOW I PROMOTE MYSELF:
Comic books are a great portfolio. They demonstrate an ability to tell a story with pictures. They demonstrate an ability to draw a myriad of required subjects. They demonstrate an ability to conceive of a project as a unified piece with a consistent aesthetic. But also I post to Instagram and other social media platforms. I try to update my website and blog as much as I can. Otherwise I don’t worry too much about self-promotion, taking more of a Howard Roark approach.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE STARTING OUT:
Mike Witte told me something when I was starting out that was very helpful: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. In addition I would say: Don’t worry about getting jobs, worry about making work that inspires you to make more work. Don’t make work for others or make stuff you think other people want to see. Find a process for making images you enjoy—since you’ll be doing it a lot, make sure it’s fun. Try to rid yourself of second-guessing. Make work that is decisive and confident. Emotional investment in your own images is more powerful than technical facility. Draw things you love or hate. Be bold; do not make safe work. Do not aspire to be in the middle— you will be forgotten.

See more Benjamin Marra illustrations and comics, new work and updates:
Benjamin Marra website
Instagram: @benjamin_marra
Blog
Twitter: @_benjaminmarra_