Hero Maker

Here’s How Artist Loyiso Mkize Turned His Childhood Vision Into a Super-powered Business. Time to Draw Some Inspiration.

- Kieran Legg

He never had a superhero who looked like him or spoke like him. In the small town of Butterworth (in the Eastern Cape, miles from the nearest city), Loyiso Mkize’s childhood heroes, exploding from the pages of X-Men and Batman comic books, were characters from other countries, planets or dimensions. They catalysed a successful career as an artist, but they also planted the seed of a crazy idea: what if he could bring a real South African superhero to life? What if he could give future generations a role model who would change the way they viewed themselves?

In 2015, he took a leap of faith – trading the safety of a full-time job, and the comfort of a familiar lifestyle, for the promise of fulfilling his childhood dream.

The Spark Mkize’s home studio is bathed in natural light from a large window, the warm glow illuminating stacked canvases and a sketched storyboard of half-formed ideas for the next issue of his comic book. A plastic trail of paint tubes, squeezed almost to the last drop, lead towards an unfinished portrait of Nelson Mandela (“It’s for a client,” he explains). The room smells of oil paint. In here, Mkize is in his element. He’s a man who can never sit still – he transitions between media, painting one hour and then sketching the next. It’s this constant energy that has characterised his career, from his early days working on a local comic book to exhibiting artworks around the country.