Born as Mark John Buckingham, on 23 May 1966, in Clevedon, England, he initially started working professionally in 1987, on strips and illustrations for a British satire magazine called The Truth, where he first worked with Neil Gaiman illustrating some of his articles. His American debut came the following year as inker on DC Comics' Hellblazer, taking over as penciller from issue 18.
Some of Buckingham's earliest (non-professional) work appeared in early issues of the Clevedon Youth CND newsletter in the early 1980s (c. 1982/83), in which he satirised members of the group in a fun and amusing manner. Copies are now very hard to find, but a few are known to still be in existence.[citation needed]
On the Vertigo Voices: Fables Forum panel at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, Fables creator and writer Bill Willingham announced that he and Buckingham would switch roles in an up-coming one-off, for Fables issue #100: Buckingham would write and Willingham would illustrate.[4]
In July 2012, as part of San Diego Comic-Con, Buckingham was one of six artists who, along with DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, participated in the production of "Heroic Proportions", an episode of the Syfy 'reality'-television competition series Face Off, in which special effects were tasked to create a new superhero, with Buckingham and the other DC artists on hand to help them develop their ideas. The winning entry's character, Infernal Core by Anthony Kosar, was featured in Justice League Dark #16 (March 2013),[5][6] which was published 30 January 2013.[7] The episode premiered on 22 January 2013, as the second episode of the fourth season.[8]