{"id":956527,"date":"2026-05-13T07:07:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956527\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T07:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:07:17","slug":"icv2-icv2-interview-mark-london-and-mark-irwin-of-mad-cave-studios-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956527\/","title":{"rendered":"ICv2: ICv2 Interview: Mark London and Mark Irwin of Mad Cave Studios, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mad Cave Studios has been making some aggressive moves recently, including the acquisition of a Star Wars license, so we caught up with Mad Cave CEO and CCO Mark London and President Mark Irwin to learn more. In Part 1 of this two-part interview, we talk about the founding and early years of the company, the layoffs earlier this year, and the publishing strategy. In Part 2<\/a>, we talked about Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, and other licensed titles, the second phase in the Underworld shared universe and other company-owned books, creator-owned releases in the pipe and an important final note.<\/p>\n

Mark (Irwin) indicated in an interview back in 2023 that Mad Cave had been started as a vehicle to publish comics that Mark (London) wanted to create (see \u201c<\/strong>ICv2 Interview: Chris Fernandez and Mark Irwin<\/strong><\/a>\u201d). Mark (London), can you talk about the reasons why you started the company, and invested a substantial amount of money and time, and how it’s going relative to the plan from five years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Mark London<\/strong>: That’s actually a great question; it’s the question that I love the most. Sure, it started that way, but it wasn’t for vanity, let’s put it that way. It wasn’t supposed to be a vanity project where you just try to start your own company so you can put your face out there. It was more a love letter to comics in a way. I really love this; I really enjoy this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I grew up in the late ’80s: animation, books, movies, that was a fantastic time to be mesmerized by all the content that was coming out. I’ve always gravitated towards writing, creating worlds. Early, even before Mad Cave, I had some connections with friends at the university (I went to BU, and then I transferred to Northeastern). At BU, a lot of my friends were film buffs, they were studying film, and we were the type of group that was always writing screenplays, and we wanted to do an indie film. Obviously, the barriers of entry for Hollywood are fairly steep, so we decided to go with comics. That was something that I really wanted, because it was like, “I love this thing so much that I want a piece of it. I want to be part of it.”<\/p>\n

At the beginning, it was only me writing the books because I did not feel confident that we had either the know-how or the track record to take more people on board, especially when they have their own books, when they have their own babies, as they call them.<\/p>\n

People have stories in their heads for 10 years, 5 years, they’ve been in development for 3 years, and then they give it to you, to a publisher that is not experienced, and then everything falls flat and it’s basically your fault.<\/p>\n

I really wanted to build the publisher, but I wanted to take my own risks. I wanted to put out amazing stories, I wanted to put out great storytelling, great characters, but it was our show because we wanted the responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we started growing and people started taking notice, creators were always, “Hey, but don’t you guys do creator-owned books?”\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was, “No, I don’t feel confident.”<\/p>\n

There was a point five years ago (by that point, Mad Cave Studios was already seven) when I told Chris Fernandez, our publisher, “Listen, I think that we peaked. I think that there’s nothing else that you and I can do without bringing somebody more experienced. I think that we’ve laid the ground, the engineering is there, the skeleton is there. I think that we need somebody that can really take us to the next level.”<\/p>\n

That’s when we decided to bring on board Mr. Mark Irwin. It was actually Melissa Meszaros who…I received an email one morning and she was like, “Hey, listen, I have somebody that I think it would be perfect for Mad Cave.” It was Mr. Mark Irwin (see \u201cNew VP at Mad Cave<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

In the first interview with him, he said, “I’m a jack of all trades.” I thought, “Yeah, sure.” No, he was not bragging. He has been a jack of all trades. Since five years ago, you have seen the enormous growth that the company has had. He has been able to guide us to exactly what we wanted when we first started Mad Cave.<\/p>\n

Then we opened the proverbial cave to bring in more creator-owned books. Now we felt confident that we could really, really take care of those creators on the distribution, on the publishing side (see \u201cMad Cave Opens to Creator-Owned Projects<\/a>\u201d). Also, we started dipping our toes into licensing works. Mad Cave has been a little bit of everything.<\/p>\n

The final part of that question is, are you happy with where you are from where you started?<\/strong>
Mark London<\/strong>: Oh, absolutely. We’ve seen the enormous growth, people gravitating towards us, that is fantastic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I know that we’re probably going to talk a little bit about this in detail. The fact that we are working with Disney now is a testament to all the hard work that’s been put into this. So far, 12 years in, the experiences that we’ve had with either licensors or creators have been nothing but positive. We have a good rep out in the streets, and I think that it’s one, because I don’t come from the industry, I’m trying to apply know-how from other industries; and two things: treat others as you want to be treated and treat others as family. That’s what we’ve been doing.<\/p>\n

Being able to keep that plus the enormous growth because of the people that we’re working with, I couldn’t be happier.<\/p>\n

Looking back on our site, on of our first mentions of Mad Cave in 2020 when you got a Diamond deal (see \u201c<\/strong>Mad Cave Signs with Diamond<\/strong><\/a>\u201d). It sounds like you were around for five years before that. What was going on then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs]<\/p>\n

Mark London<\/strong>: I was trying to get into Diamond. I was trying to learn how the sausage is made. It was brutal. Those years were really us tinkering in the proverbial cave, just making a lot of mistakes.<\/p>\n

I remember that we would just print the things, and we made the comics wrong. It\u2019s one thing is to be a fan and another thing to know all the different left and right turns that you have to take when you’re making a comic book.<\/p>\n

Those five years were a brutal learning experience, and particularly because one of the things was that you could go and shop your books around to different comic book shops and they would ask you the first thing, “OK, are you distributed by Diamond?”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No, sir. I’m not.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“OK. Come back when you are.”<\/p>\n

[laughter]<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean? I have a full stack of books and I can leave it here with you. You don’t have to pay me. Just give it to your customers.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No.”<\/p>\n

Then we printed the whole thing and they didn’t have ISBNs. They didn’t have barcodes. It was brutal. [laughs] I could write a book at this point.<\/p>\n

The good thing is that when we got into Diamond, I’m not going to say it was smooth sailing from there on, but we knew our process. Mad Cave is not late with its books. Those first five years really engraved that business sentiment that you have to project as you’re moving forward.<\/p>\n

Before we get into editorial, one other question about the company. There were some layoffs at Mad Cave this year. Can you talk about the scale of those layoffs relative to the size of the company and the reason for them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Mark Irwin<\/strong>: In relation to the size of the company, very, very small scale. Everything that we’ve done since I’ve been here (and I’m sure it was the case before I got here) is always pointing toward the future and pointing toward a better structure and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Over time, we found that in some cases we needed to add things and in some cases we needed to subtract things, it’s really that simple. We don’t love being in that place, but for the health of the company, it was stuff that had to happen. We’re looking toward the future; we feel really confident in our future and excited about the future.<\/p>\n

Mark London<\/strong>: I would add that Mad Cave is in a phase of focused growth. We spent the last year sharpening our slate, deepening our relationship with our partners, investing in storytelling that is resonating with a lot of our fans and retailers.<\/p>\n

Basically, the proof is what you see on the stands today and the deeper relations we are making either with Hollywood or for big licenses. What you see now is where the company is headed.<\/p>\n

Back in 2023, in the Mark Irwin interview, you described the output as a third company-owned, a third creator-owned, and a third licensed. Is that still the mix of your product lines?<\/strong>
Mark Irwin<\/strong>: I would say that it varies from year to year. The reality is that, right now, licensing is having a moment within our industry, so we’re definitely mindful of that, particularly with Disney. Disney has given us access to just about everything, and because of that, we’re definitely leaning in on our Disney relationship.<\/p>\n

That being said, that hasn’t lessened our focus on creator-owned or internal [IP]. There’s just not as many of those books as there are Disney IPs. We’re always looking to see what works best for us within the time period and within the frame of what’s happening in the industry. That goes for creator-owned titles, that goes for the titles that we ourselves produce, as well as licenses. We walk away from licenses, and we walk into licenses. It really just depends on the time and the place.<\/p>\n

What’s your total output look like for ’26 versus ’25? Are you up in number of releases?<\/strong>
Mark Irwin<\/strong>: Last year we were at about 650 total releases for the year. This year, we’re closing in on 1,000. Next year, similar balance. This is where we feel our max output should be. We don’t want to overwhelm the market, we don’t want to overwhelm our people, but we need to make sure that each one of our lines is fairly supported with the right amount of product.<\/p>\n

Click here for Part 2.<\/a><\/p>\n

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