'Lip Hook' (2018).
Mark Stafford is a London-based cartoonist/illustrator, who has become known in the British indie comics scene for his stories with an eerily macabre tone and atmosphere. Besides work for magazines and anthologies, he has worked with Bryan Talbot on the Dark Horse graphic novel 'Cherubs!' (2013), and with David Hine on 'The Man Who Laughs' (2013) 'Lip Hook' (2018) and 'The Bad Bad Place' (2019). In addition, he has been the longtime cartoonist in residence at the London Cartoon Museum, as well as a designer of beer labels, theater posters, t-shirts, graphics and record covers.
'The Unquiet Grave'.
Early life
Mark Stafford was born in 1970 in the coastal resort town of Bournemouth, where he spent one year at the local Arts University. In 1990, he moved to London to study Graphic Design, but never finished the education. Trying his hand at cartooning, he joined the now-defunct Comics Creators Guild, which pushed him into the world of small press comics. While contributing to fanzines like Comics Forum, he self-published comic books and DIY zines like 'Botulism Banquet - A Compendium of Carcinogenic Canapés', 'Scenes From Books I Have Not Read', 'Coin', and 'Tinhorn Galoot', as well as the two-part sketchbook 'Something Wicked/Something Waiting' (2022).
Early influences on his work were Brian Bolland, Richard Corben and Moebius, while later on he also enjoyed more expressionist artists like José Muñoz, Kaz and Gary Panter. Further inspirations for Mark Stafford have been Mad's Will Elder and the Swedish filmmaker/underground cartoonist Max Andersson.
'Chicken Killer'.
London Cartoon Museum
In 2006, Stafford became the Cartoonist-in-Residence at London's Cartoon Museum, where he was initially involved in the monthly Family Fun Days, and produced artwork for worksheets and other educational material. Later on, he has been working on his own projects in the young artists gallery, while interacting with visitors. His work with the Cartoon Museum introduced Stafford to more classical artists like Ronald Searle and Ralph Steadman, who also became influences on his work.
'Cherubs!' (2013).
Cherubs!
On occasion, Stafford would meet the British comic artist Bryan Talbot in London's night life, and show him his work. After a while, Talbot asked him to collaborate on 'Cherubs!', a graphic novel project about five cherubim who are falsely accused of Heaven's first homicide, and then escape to New York in pursuit of the renegade archangel Abbadon on the eve of the Apocalypse. Working on this 200-page supernatural comedy-adventure under Talbot's supervision was a fruitful training ground for Stafford, who up till then had only created short stories. First published in comic book format by Desperado Publishing in 2007, the full graphic novel was released in 2013 by Dark Horse Comics in the USA.
'The Bad Bad Place' (2019).
Collaborations with David Hine
With 'Cherubs!', Stafford first came to notice by a mainstream audience with his grotesque and macabre artwork, combined with eerie narratives and black comedy. This style truly came to blossom through his collaboration with writer David Hine. Their first joint production had been an adaptation of 'The Color Out Of Space' in Self Made Hero's 'The Lovecraft Anthology Volume One' (2011). They then moved on to produce a successful series of graphic novels, starting with 'The Man Who Laughs' (Self Made Hero, 2013), an adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1869 novel 'L'Homme Qui Rit', about the injustice and inequality within Britain's political system. The book has been translated into Spanish and Italian through Tengu Ediciones and NPE.
Their next collaboration was 'Lip Hook: A Tale of Rural Unease' (Self Made Hero, 2018). Set in a faraway town on the British Isles, amidst mist-shrouded marshland, the story deals with the arrival of a dangerous and mysterious woman and her wounded partner-in-crime, who quickly corrupt the male population of the otherwise quiet town. Stafford and Hine's 'The Bad Bad Place' again explored the theme of "urban unease" through the story of a modern community called Faraway Hills built on the site of a far older town. After its 2014-2018 serialization in the 'Meanwhile' anthology by Soaring Penguin Press, the graphic novel was released in book format by the same publisher in 2019.
'Kangkangee Blues' (2017).
Collaborative projects
Through the British Council and the Arts Council Korea, Mark Stafford has participated in a couple of projects in South Korea. The first was 'Sonnet CXLV', a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare sonnet with the Korean poet Bo Seon Shim, produced for the Council's 'Shakespeare Lives!' event. In 2017, the second project was a joint effort by both Councils and the Kangkangee Arts Village, and focused on the Yeongdo ferry town of Busan and the declining steel industrial area of Sheffield, England. As part of the Busan-Sheffield Intercity Art Project, various artists, cultural organisations and residents exchanged with each other to create an "Art Village". Stafford's contribution was the pantomime comic 'Kangkangee Blues', a tragic love story of 24 pages, first published online on the Arts Village site. It was subsequently released in print in South-Korea (2018) and, with the assistance of the Lakes International Comics Art Festival, in England (2019).
Another collaborative project was 'Arranging Love' (2021), a 20-page comic book (with worksheets) in collaboration with the academic Raksha Pande to illustrate her sociological research paper about attitudes to arranged marriage within UK based Punjabi communities. In 2022, Stafford co-created the strip 'Loss Of Habitat' for Cardiff University's All Is Not Well: Comics About Care project, working with the writer Ryan Prout to visualise a story about homelessness and river pollution.
'Quin Returns' (Broken Frontier Anthology, 2016).
Graphic contributions
Over the years, Mark Stafford has contributed stories to many comic anthologies, including 'The End' (Strange Attractor, 2011), 'The Lovecraft Anthology Volume One' (Self Made Hero, 2011), 'The Mammoth Book of Skulls' (Robinson, 2014), 'The Broken Frontier Anthology' (Wave Blue World, 2016) and 'The Golden Thread' (Bugboar Press, 2018). In 2014, he also contributed to Ravi Thornton's Broken Frontier Award-nominated 'HOAX Psychosis Blues', a multi-creator graphic memoir based on the poetry of the author's late brother Rob.
'Clash of the Behemoths' (from: Salmonella Smorgasbord).
Among the many collective comic books and magazines, often horror-themed, with Mark Stafford's contributions have been Peter Hogan's 'Black Forests', the 'Pocket Chiller' library (creating the one-shot 'Ripple in the Dark' with Douglas Noble, 2021), Headache, SKRAWL, Heavy Metal, Heavy Rotation, The Corbyn Comic Book, Adventures In Science, Shots, Save Our Souls, Moose Kid, Wasted, Northern Lightz, Dangerous Ink, Scenes From the Inside, War: The Human Cost, Department of The Peculiar, Minimum Wage, Hot Jazz, Alisik, Sentence, The Avengefuls and Zone. In 2023, a collection of Mark Stafford's solo comics was published by Soaring Penguin under the title 'Salmonella Smorgasbord'.
Illustration and design work
Besides comics, Mark Stafford has designed beer labels for breweries like Brixton Buzz and Dominion, record covers for Whose Records and 2D puppets and other artwork for the Carnival of Objects theatre company. He has also been a cartoonist for Animal Aid, a UK animal abuse defence society.
Self-portrait.