From the Congo to the End of the World

There’s a moment in this week’s episode where JP Mavinga describes White Sky — his new series from Image Comics — not as a post-apocalyptic epic, but as “the story of one small family trying to survive.”
That reframe hits differently once you hear how he got here.
White Sky has all the markings of genre spectacle: a haunted, shattered America, a sky gone white, dread that crawls off the page. But what JP is actually drawing — what he’s always drawing — is something quieter. A father. A daughter. The specific weight of keeping someone alive when the world stops making sense.

To understand why that theme runs so deep, you have to understand the man drawing it.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, JP moved through Africa, Europe, and North America before building a 25-plus-year career as a professional illustrator and concept designer. He studied sequential art at SCAD. He spent years at Sideshow Collectibles as a senior concept designer and art director, translating flat ink into three-dimensional form — learning exactly how far a character’s visual language can stretch before it breaks.
That’s a very specific kind of expertise. And it shows up on every page of White Sky.

In this conversation, JP gets into the mechanics of it: how an artist moves a reader’s eye across a page without them ever realizing it’s happening. The difference between drawing brutal action and drawing quiet grief. How ballpoint pen work taught him to commit. And why crossing continents — losing footing, rebuilding, crossing again — shaped not just his life, but his visual instincts.

If you’ve ever felt something from a comics page before you understood why, this episode is the explanation.

White Sky — Image Comics
Writer: William Harms
Artist: JP Mavinga
Colors: Lee Loughridge

To keep up with JP, visit https://mavinga.com/​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​