Cork comic writer: 'When I got the Marvel email, I had to step outside to compose myself'

From an early age, Wilton native Gary Moloney was captivated by stories and the world of comics.

As a child, he could hardly have imagined that his life-long passion for writing would one day lead him to create stories for Marvel Comics - his childhood favourite.

“I’ve been writing and telling stories since I was very young, whether it was to entertain myself, my family, or my friends, whether that was making things up on the fly or writing things down on the back of a copybook,” said Gary.

It was a Cork City Library initiative that opened the door for Moloney’s hobby to take shape.

“When I was in transition year in 2008, Cork City Library put on the first of its graphic novel projects, and this is something that they’re doing to this day every year, where they get a group of teen writers and artists, and they bring a professional writer and artist in to coach them and show them how to put together a series of short comics.”

Moloney says he had no idea what a comic book writer did or how they worked, and initially thought he might be a cartoon artist.

“I’ve been reading comics since I was young, but I didn’t know how they came together. I drew my own comics as well, but my strength lay in writing; I had no idea how a comic script came together. I didn’t understand the formula.”

Thanks to Cork City Library, he started to understand what it would be like to be a writer.

“I saw what a comic strip looked like, and I loved the storytelling mechanisms that you can only really do in comics, because it’s that mix of the words and pictures. In terms of the pacing of it, in terms of being able to pause, and for the reader to be able to control how long they stay on a particular image, it fascinated me. I decided I really wanted to write comics in some shape or form.”

Moloney says there was something in the water in his school, Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown.

“Of the comic writers who are writing professionally from Ireland, two of us come from that school.

“Rory McConville, who is a prolific professional comic writer, was a year ahead of me in school, so there was something in the water there. They really encouraged writing, and the school took part in another Cork City Library writing project called the Unfinished Book Project.”

Once the door was open, Moloney wrote consistently and co-founded the small-press collective Limit Break Comics in 2017, which led to his big U.S break.

“I got a break in the U.S with my own book, When The Blood Has Dried. It is a fantasy spaghetti western about an adventurer who committed terrible acts in her past and tries to escape that life. While she manages to escape for a while, eventually, years later, that life comes knocking on the door again.

“I had spent many years self-publishing comics, short stories, and larger anthologies, so breaking into the U.S comic world means a lot.”

Moloney was then hired to put an Irish twist on an old icon, Flash Gordon.

“The year I was hired, they were doing a reboot for the character’s 90th anniversary. I studied law and Irish at UCC, and it always bugged me that comics, like Asterix, were being translated, but there was nothing with flair, like Batman or Spider-Man.

“When the opportunity to translate the modern Flash Gordon strip into Irish arose, I was so delighted.”

When Marvel contacted Moloney, he says he could not believe that he was getting to be part of a world he had been reading for so long.

“When I got the email from Marvel, I had to step outside to compose myself and figure out what was happening.

“I got into comics to tell stories; it didn’t matter whether I was telling my own or someone else’s, but some part of you always wants to play with the characters you grew up with, and that meant so much to you.”

Marvel is a large entity with many characters that together form a tapestry of stories. Did Moloney have much creative freedom? He says Marvel was collaborative from day one.

“The editors came to me because they had read When The Blood Has Dried, and they wanted me to bring that sensibility to their characters.

“You are playing within a shared universe, but they came to me with a character, Hit-Monkey, who hasn’t had as many comics as, say Spider-Man, so there was a lot of scope there to do my own thing. We were reintroducing him after he’d been out of comics for a while, but had had this successful TV show on Disney Plus. The comic gives fans the chance to spend more time with him.”

Moloney, who works in the legal profession alongside his comic work, admits that he may have been inspired to enter law by Marvel’s iconic fighting lawyer, Matt Murdock.

“It is not untrue to say Matt Murdock was an influence; everyone knows that Daredevil is one of my favourite characters. Anyone who reads Hit-Monkey will see that the villains he goes up against have a connection to Daredevil.

“If it was the only chance I got to work in the Marvel Universe, I wasn’t going to not touch on that.”

Read more about Moloney’s work at limitbreakcomics.com