Marcos Martín became interested in comics at the age of four, reading Spanish translations of the licensed Italian Disney comics and various issues of Kirby/Lee's Fantastic Four that belonged to his older sister. In Martín's own words, "She liked them because Sue Storm would change her hair every once in a while and things were happening besides the battles".[2] He also read translations of Asterix, Tintin, and Mafalda, a popular comic strip by Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado.
Until the age of fourteen, Martín wanted to become a comic book writer, but then he decided it would be easier to break into the industry as an artist.[3] He drew his first comic at the age of seventeen for the school while spending his senior year in upstate New York; it lasted two issues.[2] Upon returning to Spain, Martín majored in painting at the University of Fine Arts in Barcelona.
Career
Martín's first professional work was the creation of covers and illustrations for Spanish reprints of various Marvel Comics by Cómics Forum, where he first met fellow artist Javier Pulido (the company was famous for discovering new talents who would become widely known in the American market such as Salvador Larroca and Carlos Pacheco a few years earlier).[3] After University, Martín went back to New York to show his portfolio and get work at either Marvel and DC; eventually, he was assigned on a short story in The Batman Chronicles:
Here is the honest truth. I did my first work there, my first job, the Batman Chronicles [#12] job in '97, living in NY during those 3 months. I got that job partly because I met Mark Waid in Spain and he thought my work was wonderful. He wanted me to do a mini series with Devin Grayson. So what happened was that Devin’s editor was the Batman editor, and that's how I ended up more or less at the Bat Offices. I did that story and they hated it. It was horrible! This was the first time I was doing comic books, aside from the thing that I did in high school. I hadn't drawn any comic books at all. I had done covers and illustrations but no sequential art at all so I had no idea what I was doing.
What happened was that, yeah, it was a mismatch [with the inker], but there was a reason for that. They didn't like the pencils at all. What they did was that they tried to... I remember the editor’s words... “Spice it up with the inker”, which basically meant the pencils sucked and they needed to fix it somehow. So they got this inker who I think was also an artist and he basically used my pencils as layouts to do his own stuff. It was tough for me but perfectly understandable because my work was pretty horrible. However, I still think I did my best having to draw 18 pages in 18 days.[2]
After that, Martín returned to Spain yet again and spent the next year working on a new comic Houdini with future screenwriter David Muñoz for Planeta-DeAgostini's Laberinto imprint. The series was unfinished and unreleased as the imprint was closed before the first issue could hit the stands.[1][3][4] In 1999, Martín went back to New York, but had more trouble finding work after the Batman Chronicles experience. Eventually, he was asked by Javier Pulido to step in as a fill-in artist on the book Pulido had been working on at the time, Robin: Year One. He did a few more fill-in jobs[5] and eventually was allowed to pick a writer for his first full project, which ended up being Batgirl: Year One with Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon.[1][4][6] Martín also enlisted his friend and fellow Spanish comic artist Javier Rodríguez as the colorist for the book.
In 2013, Martín founded Panel Syndicate,[7][8] an online publisher of DRM-freepay what you wantwebcomics in multiple languages, to release his and Brian K. Vaughan's creator-owned comic The Private Eye. The series has received critical acclaim and media attention for Martín's art and for its role as one of the first DRM-free, pay what you want comics by creators of Martín and Vaughan's caliber.[9][10] In July 2015, it was announced the series will be collected and released in print through Image Comics.[11]
