Hip Hop has been influenced by comic books almost since its inception, with the two art forms having connections rooted in storytelling while being created by creators often viewed as outsiders. The symbiotic relationship between Hip Hop and comics is now decades old, and the expression of admiration between the mediums has never been louder than it is today. There are plenty of great examples of modern comic writers and artists whose creativity has been shaped by Hip Hop, but if we examined a comics/Hip Hop Venn diagram, we’d find Mike Del Mundo at its center.

Del Mundo, a Toronto-based comic artist, has been infusing his work with Hip Hop influence both figuratively and literally. Like a lot of his peers, comics drew Del Mundo in during the 1990s, with books like X-Men and Spawn catching his eye. Hip Hop stole his heart shortly after, introducing him to a new form of expression that stuck with him throughout his college years: breakdancing. Del Mundo carried all that with him into his career as a comics artist, having now created artwork for almost every major publisher over the decade plus span of his career. In that time, he has worn his heart on his sleeve, putting his love for Hip Hop right on the page. That love was recognized, Del Mundo was essentially hand-picked for an assortment of Marvel Comics’ Hip Hop variants, and it even led to the artist being hired to draw album covers for rap artists like Marco Polo, Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist, and Czarface.

In short, Del Mundo doesn’t just occasionally connect comics and Hip Hop with his work. His comics work is Hip Hop, and his Hip Hop work is comics.

Over a decade into his career in comics, Marvel is celebrating Del Mundo’s distinct artistic voice by teaming with Clover Press to produce an art book that chronicles his career called The Marvel Art of Mike Del Mundo. There’s a Kickstarter that’s now live which will crowdfund production of the art book. To celebrate his career, both at Marvel and beyond, I linked up with Del Mundo over Zoom to discuss his art, how the various elements of Hip Hop influence his brand of illustration, and how his style has made him one of comics’ most unique talents.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You were born in the 1980s, right?

Mike Del Mundo: Yeah, 1981.

We can look back at the ‘90s as an explosive time creatively for both the comics industry and Hip Hop music. Tell me about the ‘90s for you and where you found comics and Hip Hop for the first time.

Del Mundo: Okay, so ‘90s comics for me are definitely the Image guys. So Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and Whilce Portacio. Those are three guys that I remember vividly because my first books were X-Factor. Issues of X-Factor from #64 to #69. That was my very first X-book. Then I just wanted to discover more of it. My first discovery of Jim Lee’s X-Men was Uncanny X-Men #275, the big giant size annual, and that was the art that got me into comics. 

I feel like I came into comics at the peak. Getting Uncanny X-Men #275, and then it jumped because I wasn’t going to comic book stores yet… I was just going to variety stores and discovering things, so I would only get a few books every month or so. I would go and it would jump three or four books from the last time, so I missed issues. So I went from #275 to #281, which was the combination of the Blue and Gold X-Men teams, and that led to Jim Lee’s full X-Men run. I’m taking everything like a sponge at this moment, and I came into it at the big rise of those comics. So, that’s when my discovery of comics came in. It was crazy. 

Then for Hip Hop, I guess it’s around the same time, but I’m trying to figure out if it was happening vice versa. 

I think comics started first.

Your excitement for comics was first and then you found Hip Hop?

My discovery of Hip Hop was later. I do remember buying my first cassette tape. It was Apocalypse 91. 13. And the only reason I bought that tape was because I overheard my older godbrothers talking about it and being like, “Yo, this is the shit and there’s a parental advisory (sticker)!” And I’m just this little kid wanting to be a badass, so I’ll take a cue from that. I’ll go to the shop, get my allowance money or whatever, and buy that tape. 

Mind you, buying a Public Enemy tape as a child was mind-blowing because it went over my head. I didn’t know what was happening, man. I didn’t know anything about revolution and social issues and all that. I was coming from watching (Teenage Mutant) Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and all that stuff. Listening to that, I don’t know if it sunk in as much. 

I don’t know if I remember exactly the time I knew I loved Hip Hop, but my very first albums were  Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest and Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. 14 A lot of this was because you’d hear the singles on the radio, right? So I’d get my parents to take us to the mall and try to persuade them into buying this shit that had a parental advisory on it. I remember wanting to get the Midnight Marauders album and trying to tell my mom, “No, they don’t swear. They’re the legit kind of rappers, alright?” (laughs)

I think everyone has a parental advisory story like that. It’s a rite of passage. And now we play the edited versions for our kids. (laughs)

Del Mundo: I don’t know if this is a good thing to share (laughs), but yeah, I used to put my two year old to sleep to “Shook Ones.” 

She was going to sleep to Mobb Deep.

(laughs) That’s hard!

My son shares a birthday with Andre 3000, 15, so the first song I played for him in his hospital bassinet was “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” by Outkast.

Del Mundo: That song is just legendary, man.

It kind of became his lullaby for a couple years. If I needed help getting him to sleep I’d throw that on.

Del Mundo: You know what? It is kind of a lullaby. A hype lullaby. That’s sick, man.

Speaking of birthdays, man, I share my birthday with Q-Tip. 16

Must’ve been meant to be! I’m sure that feels kind of full circle for you with the work you’ve done, and that makes me think of the Public Enemy tape you mentioned. That’s a full circle accomplishment too with Apocalypse 91 being the first album you bought and then you did the cover artwork for the Z2 book.

Del Mundo: Yeah, man, it was for the anniversary of Apocalypse 91. They were doing it as promo for the anniversary of the album. It’s kind of weird. I feel like sometimes I’m in The Matrix because you have Z2 coming up to me and saying, “Yo, we want you to do a cover for the Apocalypse 91 comic book,” and I’m like, “You guys don’t even know that that was the first cassette I ever bought.” It’s insane. And to your point about Tribe and Marvel, I’ve got Axel Alonso hitting me up to do the Hip Hop variant covers. They ask me to do a Midnight Marauders cover and I’m asking, “How do you guys know that’s one of my top five albums?” 

It’s crazy.

That is crazy. It’s kind of like that idea of whatever energy you put out you get back to you, right?

Del Mundo: Yeah, it’s just really cool to even think that Marvel at any time was like, “Let’s do Hip Hop cover homages.” It needs to be the right place and time for that. And you need the perfect Editor-In-Chief that’s a Hip Hop head. That’s a one time deal, man. You know what I mean?

I’m sure we could have an entire conversation about just Hip Hop and your connections to it, but I want to cover all our bases with your artistic influences first. You said Jim Lee’s X-Men and some of the Image Comics books were impactful for you. I work in a comic shop and I can see that impact in a lot of artists making books today. You mentioned Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, and Todd McFarlane as the guys who caught your attention. Were they also the comic creators whose work had the biggest effect on your art?

Del Mundo: Yeah, Todd was a huge deal for me because I was buying his Spider-Man runs at the time. And then I find out this guy’s Canadian, so there’s this kind of trickle effect of, “Oh, this guy’s Canadian? Canadians could do this shit?” (laughs) And I’m Filipino, and my dad tells me, “Portacio is a Filipino name.” And I’m like, “Really? Filipinos could do this shit?” I was already into these guys’ work, so then finding out that there’s some representation there was really cool.

And I’m just taking it all in, being super excited. I’m still trying to figure out this comic thing. Like, I’m still trying to understand going from a #1 issue to #281. Then all of a sudden Image happens, and you’ve got those guys doing their own books. My mind’s just exploding at this time. I’m just loving it and taking it all in. So, those are the three guys.

How old were you when you visited your first actual comic shop?

Del Mundo: Probably the same year or around the year when (Uncanny X-Men) #275 came out. Let me double check the year.

It’s 1991.

Okay, ‘91, so you were ten years old when you hit your first actual comic book store.

Del Mundo: Yeah, It’s got to be around either ‘91 or ‘92 where I discovered comics. Like I said, it felt like everything was happening so fast.

When I look at your work I feel like I can feel how Hip Hop influences your art style. And not just in the references you include, but how it actually affects what you draw and how you draw it. I don’t feel like I see a heavy Image/’90s influence, though. Is the Image influence more of an energy or vibe, or is there something visually that I’m not picking up on?

Del Mundo: I think there’s always going to be a sense of something’s there, but you might not see it. The way I look at it, my art journey is always going to have a different influence from whatever I’m looking at at the time or what I was learning from. So pretty much the way I look at it is you got Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, and McFarlane as my OG people that I would look at and try to emulate. And I think as a kid that always sticks with you, whether it’s a certain pose that I always use, right? Or a certain way that I hatch. I mean, I feel like I hatch as heavily as they did, but not the way it looked in the ‘90s. But I still feel like there’s gonna be a sense of Jim Lee in there or Whilce.

All that stuff is in me, but at the same time I’ve also added a whole bunch of other influences, so it’s an amalgamation and that’s why it’s harder to see. One of my biggest, biggest influences is Chris Bachalo. You might not see the influence right then and there, but a lot of my poses have this Bachalo influence to it. The way they’re posed, or the way they’re just standing, always has a little bit of a Bachalo influence to it.

His style to me feels like manga meets street art. Oftentimes, his figures have these exaggerated proportions and really expressive faces. You can feel the weight of them. His Wolverine sticks out to me. He was kind of slouchy and low to the ground.

Del Mundo: Yeah, you feel the weight and you feel the form and I love that about him. The thing I love the most about Bachalo is that he just seems like he’s having fun. He’s going to make this thing look like this and he doesn’t give a fuck. I like artists that have that mindset. You know what I mean? 

And the craziest thing about Bachalo is he’s not big on rap. I thought he was a Hip Hop dude. When you look at his art, it looks like there’s some Hip Hop influence there. I read an interview with him when he was doing the cover artwork for the Wu-Massacre album, and I remember him saying he wasn’t really a Wu-Tang fan. He was more a White Stripes fan. And I’m like, “That’s unexpected, but that’s really interesting.” 

Another thing that stands out to me about your style is there’s a real painterly quality to it. It’s not painterly in the same vein as say Alex Ross or Julian Totino Tedesco, though. Your work feels more street art influenced. It ebbs and flows based on the material, I’m sure, but there’s a softness to some of your lines, and an almost fuzzy effect used in certain areas. It reminds me of aerosol spray. Is that graffiti influencing you?

Del Mundo: Yeah, maybe. I don’t know if it’s graffiti influencing me as much as it is animated movies. And it depends on the work or “phase” I’m in too. A lot of my work during the Thor run with Jason Aaron and the Spawn run I did with McFarlane was me trying to do some sort of Secret of NIMH coloring. I was trying to bring that kind of animated look into comics, so the backgrounds would be more painted and blurred out. 

That’s where you get a lot of the softness. I’m really big into atmosphere. On my Instagram I jokingly call myself the “Dry Ice Operator” because I add this dry ice effect everywhere, even if it doesn’t exist in the story. It helps give a sense of separation of the foreground, middle ground, and background. That’s another thing. Because I do things digitally, I’m able to add in those atmospheric elements. 

I don’t know if he’s a major influence, but that feels very Mike Mignola. He’s always got such a clearly defined foreground, middle ground, and background. And a lot of times he would have smoke, or some kind of rubble or debris to create that separation.

Del Mundo: Adding some dimension to the piece, yeah. I love Mignola too, man.

I want to stay on street art, though, because it’s all over your work. You’ve got the Miles Morales cover where he’s spray painting on Kingpin. You’ve got a variant cover for Assorted Crisis Events where there’s the guy on the playground, and there’s tags all over the ground and on the play structure.

Del Mundo: Oh, we were all doing it. I had a cousin that was my age that would always come to our house with something new. So it’d be, “Yo, I do graffiti now.” And then we all started doing graffiti, you know? Not good graffiti, but it was the beginning of doing pieces and learning about  that culture. So that was an influence even from way back. That’s just that Hip Hop influence or the street influence. Then he would come back with, “Hey, I’m a DJ now.” And then we start messing around with turntables. And his DJing led to, “Okay, now I break.” And that’s what I took in.

But yeah, graffiti is highly influential because I’ve been around it all my life. There was this big event, 416 Graff Expo, which was this big Hip Hop event in Toronto way back. It would be graffiti artists painting on walls all over this one block of street, and there would be DJs there and  b-boy ciphers. I was just immersed into those forms of art. You know what I mean? Even  b-boying influenced the way I draw.

Yeah, we’re going to talk about b-boying (breakdancing), for sure.

Del Mundo: With all that stuff, it feels like I’m living in The Matrix (laughs). Like, everything kind of seems to have this same form, and then it just kind of shapes into something different.

I think it speaks to the elements of Hip Hop, right? It’s not just music. It’s not just lyrics.  Breaking is one of the foundational elements, and graffiti is a foundational element. So, personally, when I talk about seeing Hip Hop influencing your work, I mean all of those things.

Do you think painting with friends or watching your friends paint influenced the way you layer colors or is that just how you learned to digitally paint?

Del Mundo: Yeah, for sure. Hanging around a lot of graffiti artists throughout my years and seeing them, seeing their pieces, I have definitely taken inspiration.

When I look at graffiti and when I see what they do, it’s inspiring seeing them be so open to what they’re going to do that day. They’re just like, “Yeah, I’m going to fuck with circles.” And their piece will revolve around circles. And there’s no mindset of, “No, I can’t do this.” Whatever comes to mind, they’re going to do it. Whereas when you’re doing a comic, especially if it’s work-for-hire type stuff, there are certain restrictions when it comes to the character.

Yeah, there’s no editor out in the streets telling dudes what they can and what they can’t paint.

Del Mundo: Exactly. When you look at the way graffiti artists mix colors, they’re excited to be like, “I’m going to fuck with greens, pinks and blues today. And I’m going to add these crazy shapes within the letters,” and all these things they’ll do with no limits. So I look at that and it’s more of an inspiration to remind myself to think that way, and to be more open with my style.

I’m glad you brought up coloring. The effects and textures you cook up, paired with your color use, makes me think of graffiti even more. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, though. Do you or did you have other artists you look at for painting or color inspiration?

Del Mundo: When I was learning how to paint the main influence was what everybody’s influenced by, right? I was looking at, like, Norman Rockwell and JC Leyendecker, and guys like that.

I’m not sure I’d ever pick that out looking at your work.

Del Mundo: Yeah, so I was trying to basically do the hack version of Rockwell. I guess from there it became an amalgamation of like Norman Rockwell, Chris Bachalo, the ‘90s heads, like Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio, and then also graffiti art. All that, the whole feeling of it all coming together.

A lot of the textures you achieve come from the different digital brushes you use, right? You mentioned the “dry ice,” and we’ve talked about aerosol spray and stuff. Do you have digital brushes that you’re going to regularly to achieve those looks?

Del Mundo: Yeah, I have one brush that I use for the “dry ice” effect. For other stuff I’m constantly changing. I get bored. I have to find something that is going to excite me again and usually that happens when I’m just like, “I don’t feel good drawing right now.” Usually it’s because I’ve gotten used to the styles that I’ve been working with, so then I try to discover something new and something exciting. Just a way to render differently again. That’s why you see a change in styles, because I’m like, “Shit, this is cool.” And then I’ll do a whole bunch of covers with it. 

And eventually I’m going to be bored again. (laughs)

You can see those shifts across your work, for sure. Sometimes it feels like there’s a new tool you’ve discovered and added to the arsenal. Other times, it feels like a certain influence is showing through more than the others. It’s always cool to feel like you’re watching an artist evolve or become excited about something new.

Del Mundo: I find it to be more like divine intervention for me. Like, it’s never something I’m conscious about. It’s more like I’m a mad scientist. I want to just experiment with things all the time, and see something different or cool. I find that new cool thing and then I want to apply that to everything I do at the moment.

I’ve been doing a lot of life drawing recently. I’ve been experimenting with different textures or brushes to see how they work for faces and stuff like that. I love life drawing because it’s so open. You don’t have to consciously be like, “How am I going to make this work?” It’s more forgiving.

Would you ever try to tackle a whole book analog? Just pencil, ink, and paper?

Del Mundo: I’d love to, man! There was a point where I was messing with the Miles and Kingpin stuff and I was like, “Man, this could work analog.” It’s just the time. I’m so used to doing things digitally and getting things done.

Speaking of that, do you see that Miles cover as the culmination of your graffiti influence? It’s more than just inspired by graffiti. It’s Miles literally painting on the Kingpin.

Del Mundo: The editors at Marvel hit me up for that. They wanted me because I guess they thought I did graffiti. They wanted me to do a graff version of a Miles cover. I told them, “I don’t do it, but I know, like, the best dudes that fuck with graffiti.”

So I hit up my boy Bacon, who is one of the kings of Toronto’s graffiti scene. Also, we rolled together back in the day when we were all breaking and doing graffiti. I hit him up and he was excited about it, man! He likes Miles, and the graffiti artists, man, they love that painting scene in the (Into the Spider-Verse) movie. He says they love that movie because they stayed true to that culture. So he was excited to do it. I told him, “I just need your letters because I can’t do letters and shit.” I didn’t want him to do so much work, so I was going to use his letters and then I’d color it. And he was like,”How about instead of me just doing the letters, how about we do it on a wall?”

So that Miles variant cover is actually on a wall.

I mocked it up and he painted the whole thing. I kind of mentioned it before, but I actually did that traditionally. I was into pencil crayons at that time, so I did the art for Miles and Kingpin like that. And then I scanned it, moved everything around digitally, and then he put it on the wall. He repainted everything. And I remember bringing it up to Marvel like, “Yo, we’re gonna put this on a wall. Is that cool?” And they’re all like, “We’ve never done anything like that before.” Hearing that, I had to do it. I said, “Yeah, we’re doing this on a wall and I’m going to be the first one to do this.” So that’s a very special cover to me.