Mark McKenna: Banana Tail's Been Set Loose on the World

Not long ago, I got the chance to sit down with comics veteran Mark McKenna to talk about an exciting new project he had just released -- Banana Tail. A little over a year later, Banana Tail is kickin’ strong and has recently been picked up by Image Comics’ all ages book imprint, Silverline Books. I recently caught up with Mark and got the update on all his goings-on.

Enjoy!

-Alex Rodrik, Editor of Features and Interviews

---

Alex Rodrik: Banana Tail has come a long way since we last spoke. Tell us a bit about what’s happen with our loveable yellow tailed friend.

Mark McKenna: When we first spoke about Banana Tail, I was in talks to do a popup book with a small publisher, who since went in another direction and left me out in the cold for a while. Then I heard about Image doing children books and found that Jim Valentino, one of the founders of Image had a kid’s book imprint called Silverline Books. Once I showed the website and support system I had for Banana Tail, they were immediately interested.

AR: Beginning this month your latest installment of Banana Tail hit Diamond Previews. Tell us a bit about this new chapter.

MM: So here we are, a year after planning the new book with Image, we're finally on schedule to ship to comic shops in April with the new solicitation in the current (Feb) Diamond Previews. Not only has it been solicited, but Image took a full page ad on page 159 and honored it with Image Spotlight for the month.

AR: What inspired the idea for the new title?

MM: "Banana Tail's Colorful Adventure" is actually relating to BTail's best buddy Reena. Reena, is a mood-color changing rhino, so kids can associate mood to colors (i.e. "red with anger", "scared yellow"). I needed to keep Banana Tail's name in the title, even though it could have easily by called "Reena's Colorful Adventure" and actually had that working title for quite a while.

Reena accidentally sits on BTail's prized possession and doesn't know how to tell him, so she changes into an array of colors and BTail tries to solve why she is changing colors.

AR: In this newest installment we are introduced to the loveable hippo Slubb. Tell us about him.

MM: Slubb the hippo was created to be a sounding board for the younger animals who sometimes come to him with problems. Slubb might not always come out with the answers, but he will make them think about how to solve their dilemmas, a good tool for young readers to learn from. He also happens to have a birthmark on his prodigious belly in the form of the island that they live on. A big help when they need to get to different destinations on the island!

AR: How has the children’s book industry differed from the comics industry for you in the past year?

MM: The children's book industry is a completely different animal, then the comic biz, pardon the pun. You can’t just create a children's book and expect it to reach the book stores. For one, finding a literary agent is just as difficult to get as getting a book deal from a publisher.

My numbers might not be accurate, but there’s something like 12,000 children’s books solicitations every month, per major publisher, and maybe only 40 a year that get published out of that. That's overwhelming odds. With a comic book, the bar is set a lot lower.

AR: What’s next for Banana Tail?

MM: OK, so now I have to PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE this book! I know that there are a lot of opportunities to do school and library appearances and there's good money to be made from that, but honestly, I want to make my life easier than doing a hundred school appearances. I really want people to order the books through Diamond (comic shops) and then later in the year (July) find and/or order the book through major book stores.

What I'm looking to happen with the solicit of this book, is to open the door to other mediums and perhaps create brand awareness with BTail in other countries.

The Ace in the Hole for me is the Korean connection I made with an animator over there. He told me a few years ago he wanted to animate Banana Tail in the Asian market because they love monkeys over there. You never know, but the potential to build a brand in another country is very intriguing. I think its difficult to get a new product entrenched in the Asian culture without building it, so his idea is to introduce the books first as an English-teaching tool and hopefully having it branch out into an animated TV show. I could be the next David Hasselhoff!

AR: The art in this installment has undergone a complete change. Why the move from pencils to computer graphics?

MM: When I knew that Image was interested in doing this book with me, I offered them the options of doing it as I did the first book, pencil, ink and color, much like the comic book creating process, or cut colored paper illustrations, or as a computer-generated book. They were very comfortable with me picking any of the three techniques.

The thing that made me choose the CGI technique over the other 2 was really multi-faceted. Computer generated kids books are few and far between, a really untapped direction in children's book illustrations and publishers are always looking for something new and fresh for children's books. Couple that with the deal I made with the animators, who are all teachers down at Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL. My point man and friend, Steve Akehurst, had created a small production company, 4th Armada, with some of their other teachers at the school and they were looking to proverbially get on the map. This opportunity gave them a chance to spread their wings show what they could do and get recognition for it. Also, they did the work for payment all on the back end, which is the deal I made with Image.

AR: Last year you began doing workshop about comics. Are you still doing them? Tell us a bit about them and the feedback you’ve received.

MM: Locally, I do workshops for kids who have an interest in art outside of the conventional art classes offered in schools. In these difficult economic times they are really hit and miss. In some classes I can have 10-12 kids and other times 4 or 5 kids. For me to do these classes I really need to have a minimum of 5 kids in a class to make them make sense for me financially. I was doing 4 weeks, 1 day or night a week for 1 1/2 hours a class.

I was teaching them how to create characters and draw them on comic book boards in a storytelling setting. This was lost on some kids under the age of 12. It’s tricky when you have a broad audience of, say 10-16 yr olds. Each child works at a different level, so there was a big learning curve for me as well as the kids. You end up working with some kids that might may need more help, while the really talented ones don’t ask for help, yet those are the ones that would benefit the most from my support. I know that having a professional comic artist teach kids some aspects of the trade is exciting for the parents.

AR: What’s to come for you in 2010 (in both comics and children’s books)?

MM: Other then Banana Tail being, really, the biggest personal deal of my professional life, I’m also working on the new Dark Horse Star Wars online comic "Blood of the Empire", that is introducing a new online Star Wars video game in March. It’s twelve 7-page increments that will be collected in an 84-page graphic novel in September. I've also been doing some work for Archie Comics which will hopefully continue and still have a condo set up at DC Comics and hopefully they will continue to keep me busy. I just helped out on a double-sized Supergirl #50 which ships this month.