Mark Matcho (c. 1965- ) is an American illustrator. You can see his pictures in the New York Times, Esquire, BusinessWeek, Mother Jones, Time magazine and others. He draws in a retro 1940s comic book style.
He comes from Washington, DC and has lived in New York, Oakland and, currently, Pasadena.
In 1985 he gave up being a short-order cook to become a freelance illustrator. He recalls:
They laughed when I turned in my hairnet. But someday I’ll show them all.
His drawing style: the clothes, hairstyles, cars, planes, etc, seem like they are from the 1940s. Even the drawing style itself seems to be from the 1940s! Yet people use computers, iPods, mobile phones and all the rest. It gives his pictures a strange sort of timelessness.
Influences: He does not tell us how he learned to draw, but it seems like it came from copying comic books from the 1940s, particularly Superman, Archie, Captain Marvel and Tintin. His style, though, is generally cleaner and less busy.
Period: I tried to find out what year his drawings are set in. It most closely matches the look of things from 1947 to 1950 with maybe five years on either side of that.
But he does not directly copy anything from that period. Instead he copies cartoonists whose ideas of how things look come from that time. But Matcho is affected by his own time too, so there are fewer hats, shorter skirts, less styled hair and more streamlined cars than the 1940s had. It gives his drawings the strange in-betweenness that drew me to them in the first place.
Race: Since I talk about race and representation on this blog, it would be odd if I did not point out that nearly all his people are white. Like 99% of them. They are generally middle-class men who play golf, live in the suburbs and work in the city.
What makes that strange is that Matcho himself never seems to have lived in such a world: New York is 45% white, Oakland is 37% and Pasadena, 53%, none of them anything like the whitebread world he draws.
Even the magazines and newspapers his work appears in do not seem to be that white – maybe 90% to 95% white but not 99% – so it does not seem to be coming from them or their art directors either.
Instead it seems to come from the 1940s comic books themselves, which were very whitebread. Blacks and Asians were rare and often only appeared in a stereotyped way that is no longer acceptable among whites. As with the trains and everything else, he is not so much drawing the world he knows, but the world as presented in a 1940s comic book.
Imitators: Matcho has at least one shameless imitator: Chris Gash.
Other pursuits: Matcho likes to take pictures with his Chinese camera and play with Flash. One Flash movie he made was “Google Maps Street View: The Movie” (2007). A simple yet cool idea.
See also:
- Mark Matcho at drawger.com – currently his most up-to-date website
- Brand Video interview with Mark Matcho – from December 2011, a year after I wrote this.
- Chris Gash
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – another retro world that never was
- atompunk
- Default Human Being
- Covarrubias – another illustrator
- McDull – cartoon pig from Hong Kong
Although derivative, Matcho’s artistic style is throwback-cool — taken on its own. I can look at it and enjoy it as I would an Archie’s comic book, and the anachronistic aspects are interesting. I’m glad you featured examples of Matcho’s art on your blog because your prose forced me to think about the guilt I sometimes feel when I view certain movies and TV sitcoms set in the 1940s and 1950s and set in America, with their melodramatic, vivid colors and whitebreadedness. Watching those films and programs, the realities of what my ancestors (the majority of them — i.e., the Black ones) were experiencing in this country during those decades. Then I allow myself to think how many white people, way back when, lived in small towns with very few if any Black, Latino, Black-Latino, and Asian people.
When I first saw Matcho’s work on your blog, I thought: Uh-oh, Abagond is about to give us a twist soon. I kept reading with trepidation. I really thought you were going to tell us that Mark Matcho is Black, biracial white and Black, quadriracial … well, you catch my drift. The point is, your points are insightful.
Sometimes I even like to dress retro (specifically 1940s-50s) but never do I don a pair of white gloves, for some reason. Yeah, you know, the more I think about Matcho’s art, I’m glad that people of color can’t be rolled up like a canvas and burned out of existence or simply erased like a pencil drawing as if we weren’t created in the first place.
Having gone to school to learn illustration, graphic design, etc, this style of drawing was always interesting to me, especially the retro style. I usually try to ignore the lack of POC’s and brain storm them in.
You will notice that in that era Blonds were not the preferred beauty.
interesting, never heard of mark matcho. there is no wikipedia article that i know of.
It seems he imagines a white fantasy land….
“As with the trains and everything else, he is not so much drawing the world he knows, but the world as presented in a 1940s comic book.”
- right now, all I can think about is Post WW1 propoganda
( but wthout the blatant racism).
This style reminds me the introduction of a PC game Fallout .
This post is right up my alley!
Never heard of this guy, tho. Looks like he’s heavily influenced by franco-belgian “ligne clair” -style (clear line). Herge (Tintin) and Yves Chaland are two very well known artists of this style. Since it’s a predominantly European style, it’s no surprise to me that he portrays mostly white people. Of course it would be interesting if he’d included other ethnicities as well.
I think that his work resembles Daniel Torres, a spanish artist, who’s most recognized work is the sci-fi adventures of “Rocco Vargas” http://lambiek.net/artists/t/torres_d.htm
In addition, Matcho’s work looks to me just a derivative of the aforementioned European artists. What they have in common is that they all harken back to pseudo 40′s-50′s. Not the real thing, just the imaginary retro time period. I don’t see his work original at all. His style is more related to fairly recent European artists (Herge being the ‘founding father’), based on artists who never lived in the 40/50′s themselves.
I personally love 50′s design and “googie” architecture.
II happen to like the creative humor that is so much a part of his style and hope he will get into animation via commercials. I feel that he is an untqapped gold mine of creativvity looking to branch out into ther venues.
Good lluck.
Fred Dugger
Do we know what his racial / ethnic background is?