We are delighted to be joined by Mark London. Mark is the CEO/CCO of Mad Cave Studios, Maverick, Papercutz, and Nakama Press. He is also a creator and writer. He is the writer of Battlecats, Honor & Curse, Hunt. Kill. Repeat., Revolution 9, Hour of the Wolf, Exit City, Endless Night and Honor & Curse: Eternal. With the release of Honor & Curse: Eternal on the 25th of this month from Mad Cave Studios, we got to chat with Mark all about the series.
Hi Mark, it’s so lovely to have you with us again.
Mark London: Thank you, Shabbir. Always good to be back with you guys. ComicBuzz has been with us for a long time, and I never take that for granted. These conversations are genuinely fun for me; I get to talk about things I care deeply about with people who actually get it.
Could you tell us about the origins of Honor and Curse?
ML: It really started with an obsession. I was deep into Japanese mythology, feudal Japan, the Iga and the Koga ninja clans, tengu folklore, and I kept thinking about what it would mean for a man to be completely owned by something he didn’t choose. Not just haunted by it. Owned. Genshi came out of that. This young ninja, carrying a demon inside him, trying to live by a code of honor while something inside him operates by completely different rules. The more I wrote him, the more I realized I couldn’t tell his whole story in one series. There was just too much there.
Who is Genshi Sakagura?
ML: He’s someone who should have everything figured out, the training, the discipline, the purpose, and yet nothing in his life is settled. The Tengu changes that. It doesn’t just make him dangerous; it makes him question who he actually is underneath all of it. Is he the ninja or is he the curse? I think that’s a question a lot of people relate to, even if they’d never put it in those terms. We all have something inside us we wrestle with. Genshi just wrestles with his a little more literally.
Did you always want to continue Genshi Sakagura’s story after Honor and Curse?
ML: Absolutely, because I never really let go of him. Even while we were wrapping up the original series, I was already thinking about what comes next. There’s a mythology built around Genshi that we only scratched the surface of. When the Underworld Universe started taking shape, it became obvious that Genshi had a specific role to play in that bigger world, not just as a legacy character but as someone whose story actually deepens the whole thing. Eternal is me finally getting to go to those places I’d been saving.
What made Jaime Infante and Fran Gamboa the right artists for Honor & Curse: Eternal?
ML: I’d love to take credit for that pairing, but honestly, it was Mike Marts. He’s the one who put us together, and he was right, as usual. There’s a difference between someone who draws well and someone who thinks in images. Jaime is both. I’ll send him a script, and what comes back, sometimes I don’t even recognize my own scenes in the best possible way. He finds something in the stillness that I didn’t write. And Fran’s colors are doing a whole separate job, not decoration, actual storytelling. The demon sequences, especially, there’s a sickness to the palette that gets under your skin. I needed someone who could hold two completely different worlds in the same book and not let either one feel fake. That’s hard. They make it look easy.
What is it like having Mike Marts as an editor?
ML: Mike makes you better, and he does it without letting you take shortcuts. He’s been in this industry long enough that he’s seen every trick, every workaround, every way a writer tries to skip past a hard story problem, and he calls it out every time. But he does it in a way where you walk away energized, not defeated. He genuinely loves the craft. You feel that. Having him on Eternal (or any of my books for that matter) meant that when I handed in a script, I trusted that whatever came back was going to make the book stronger. That’s not something you take for granted.
Genshi Sakagura in Honor & Curse: Eternal is not the same Genshi Sakagura in Honor and Curse. What can you say about that?
ML: Time has done things to him. The Genshi in the original series was fighting to understand himself; he was reactive, still discovering the shape of the curse, and most importantly, still figuring out who he was inside. The Genshi in Eternal knows. He’s lived with it. That changes a person in ways that are hard to describe, but you feel it immediately when you read him. He’s not chasing answers anymore. He’s dealing with what the answers cost him. That’s a fundamentally different story, and honestly, a more interesting one to write.
Would it be fair to say that there is not only a tonal shift but also a visual shift in Honor & Curse: Eternal compared to Honor and Curse?
ML: It’s heavier. That’s the simplest way I can put it. The original burned bright and loud visually. This one is more like a slow burn. Jaime gives scenes room to breathe in a way that matches exactly where Genshi is at this point in his life. And the color palette Fran built for this is darker, more restrained; it kind of sneaks up on you. You don’t notice it consciously, but it’s doing a lot of work. I guess that the books grew up with Genshi.
For any readers who are not familiar with Honor and Curse and Underworld, is Honor & Curse: Eternal a good jumping-on point?
ML: 100%. We designed it that way on purpose. If you’re coming in fresh, issue one gives you everything you need to know about Genshi, what the curse means, and what’s at stake. You won’t feel like you showed up to a movie halfway through. And if you have read the original, there are going to be moments that hit different because of that history. But the story works either way. We’d never build something that locked readers out; that’s just bad comics, in my humble opinion.
Do you think that Honor & Curse: Eternal has evolved from Honor and Curse due to you growing as a writer?
ML: Definitely. I look back at the original, and I can see myself learning in real time, figuring out pacing, figuring out how to build mythology across issues, even figuring out how to trust an artist to tell half the story without putting it all in the script. By the time I came back to write Eternal, I had a lot more reps. I know when to slow down now. I know when a scene needs one more page and also when I’m overwriting. That restraint, and I didn’t really have it early on. Eternal is quieter in ways the original couldn’t be. Oh, and having Mike Marts in my corner is the cherry on top.
As a writer, was it important to you that returning to write Genshi meant that we see more layers of his characters and his mythology?
ML: That was non-negotiable. If we were bringing Genshi back just to revisit the greatest hits, I wouldn’t have done it. There had to be new territory, not just plot, but an actual new understanding of who he is and where the curse comes from and what it wants. Eternal goes places in the mythology that the first series was only gesturing toward. The tengu lore, the lineage, what it means that Genshi was chosen, all of that gets opened up. That’s the only version of this story I was interested in telling.
In the bigger scheme of things, how do you view Genshi Sakagura compared to your other created characters at Mad Cave Studios?
ML: He’s foundational. Genshi was one of the characters that helped define what kind of company Mad Cave Studios was going to be, what kind of stories we believed in. We have incredible characters across all four of our imprints now, characters I love, but Genshi was early. He helped set the tone. And the fact that we’re bringing him into the Underworld alongside Victoria Jaguar and Mister Nemo, that’s a statement about how much we believe in him for the long haul.
How does Genshi Sakagura and his mythology fit into Underworld?
ML: He’s the oldest thread. Most of what makes up the Underworld Universe is rooted in the modern world. These are characters whose stories are shaped by today. Genshi connects the universe to something much older. His mythology predates everything else we’ve built. That gives the whole universe a kind of depth it wouldn’t have otherwise. The sense that this conflict between the human world and the supernatural world isn’t new. It’s been going on for centuries. Genshi is the proof of that.
What more can you tell us about the future of Honor & Curse: Eternal?
ML: Things get bigger. Not in terms of spectacle necessarily, though there’s plenty of that, but in terms of what the story is actually about. The revelations coming in the back half of the series are things I’ve been building toward since the original. There are answers coming that readers have been waiting for, and I promise those answers come with new questions that are even better. Everything in this series matters. I mean that literally, since we didn’t put anything in there that doesn’t pay off.
Any message for the ComicBuzz readers?
ML: Just, thank you. I know that sounds simple, but I mean it. Every reader who picks up a Mad Cave book, who takes a chance on a story they might not have heard of, who tells a friend, that’s what keeps us going. Honor and Curse: Eternal exists because readers believed in the original. Come back for this one. Bring someone with you. I think it’s the best work we’ve done on this character, and I can’t wait for you to read it.
We would like to say a big thank you to Mark for chatting with us and wish him the best of luck for the release of Honor & Curse: Eternal.
