All's well that's Rockwell: Mitch Gerads on the weight of midcentury influences at Fan Expo San Francisco

Not to shake things up by sharing comics gossip, but if you’ve spent more than two seconds on the comics internet or within DC comics circles over the last decade, there’s a good chance you might have heard of this guy named Mitch Gerads. With an art style that took the scene by storm combining mid-century style and a dynamic new kind of digital feel, it’s an easy sell that Gerads is one of the most unique of the comics mainstream in the contemporary age. But where does that come from? And for that matter, where does the spark of ingenuity stem from when an artist is harking on halcyon days of art marketing past?

Popverse was fortunate to sit down with Gerads at his table at Fan Expo San Francisco to discuss how the mainstream can come to accept such a bygone era of art, and how harnessing the propaganda of mid-century advertising doesn’t always have to make for propaganda itself.

Popverse: Mitch, before we get started on anything else, talk to me a little bit about your process. Because I have heard that you do something kind of interesting with gray scaling when it comes to your coloring.