We chat with author Mike Maihack about The Moonlit Spiral, which is a wildly imaginative, enormously thrilling and deeply felt story of treasure-hunting friends.
Hi, Mike! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Certainly! I’m a cartoonist by day and, well… a cartoonist by night. I’ve miraculously landed into a full-time career of making comics for a living. A dream come true.
I’m a also a full-time husband and father of two boys and three cats. So when able, I love spending time with them, ideally getting outside of the house and/or traveling to new places. On my own I’ll unwind by building a LEGO set, playing The Legend of Zelda, and most recently, Formula 1 (watching it, not actually racing unfortunately).
I also love drawing other things besides comics that hopefully cause a few smiles out here on the internets.
When did you first discover your love for writing and illustrating?
When I was around five or six-years-old, pouring over the Sunday comics in archaic newspapers, doing my best to redraw Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes, usually failing miserably at it, and then deciding maybe it was best to just create my own thing instead.
Your latest graphic novel, The Moonlit Spiral, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
One last treasure to find.
What can readers expect?
Humor; adventure; a lot of glowing snails; at least one or two tiny, adorable creatures; at least one or two giant menacing creatures; riddles to decipher; and hopefully are few other things readers have maybe never seen or read about before.
Where did the inspiration for The Moonlit Spiral come from?
It was inspired by growing up with treasure hunting movies like The Goonies and Indiana Jones and later discovering Jeff Smith’s Bone and the Ghibli work of Hayao Miyazaki. I wanted to mash up the tone and feeling I got from reading and watching all of those things into a story I thought my family would enjoy. Of course, I wrote it with the hope others would enjoy it as well, but my family were at the forefront of my mind as I was creating it. Their voices are interwoven through all of it.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or illustrating?
There’s a section in the middle of the book where the youngest (although, also oldest) character in the story, Quill, takes hold of the travel journal the main trio are logging their quest in. There’s a wonderment and whimsey to her outlook of this exciting new world she finds herself traveling through and it’s presented as a montage of vignettes and entries that emphasize that. They not only were some of the pages I had the most fun illustrating, the entire sequence ended up my favorite of the book.
Can you share some insight into the direction of the illustrative process for The Moonlit Spiral?
Even though I continued to work digitally, I wanted a more traditional look than the graphic novel series (Cleopatra in Space) I was working on before Moonlit. Early on I found a textured brush in Clip Studio that felt very similar to using a traditional one. I think it gave the overall linework a softer feel compared to my earlier stuff and I’ve been using the same digital brush on everything since!
I also opted out of using outlines around the word bubble and panel borders to help the pages breath better, as well as as opting out of using any rulers, straight edges and perspective tools. Just trying to enjoy the process of drawing rather than getting caught up in the technical side of it. Hopefully it helps the pages feel more natural and enhances the playful, colorful world of Helix.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on another creator-owned graphic novel. Although I can’t reveal exactly what it is just yet, I will say it’s nothing like any of my previous books yet exactly the type of story readers might expect from me. I’ll also have a fifth Spider-Man: Mighty Marvel Team-up book out in 2027.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
My goal for 2027 (and who knows if I’ll be able to stick to it) is to read nothing but Manga for an entire year. My first series will likely be Urasawa’s Asadora! which I’ve been collecting as they’ve been coming out. I’ve also never actually read the complete Akira before, so looking forward into diving into that. After that, who knows?
As far as current stuff out there, I recently finished The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik and really enjoyed the character writing in that series. I was able to read an advanced copy of Ben Hatke’s new travel memoir Home/World and found that inspiring both in scope and execution. Chris Schweitzer’s latest comic, Outlaw’s Apprentice, is the type of classic adventure series I wish we had more of out there (and he’s the perfect person for something like that). I thought Frontier, a sci-fi graphic novel by French cartoonist Guillaume Singelin was very good.
I mean, there’s so much. I could recommend books all day. Reading is the best!
You can also find Mike on Instagram and Bluesky.
