Mike Del Mundo loved drawing and comic books ever since he was a kid, but the award-winning, Toronto-based comic book artist — known for his extensive work with Marvel — says he didn't think about comics as a career until he was in college.

Coming out of high school, Del Mundo wanted to get into animation. He applied to the renowned animation program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., which is one of the top programs in the country, sending graduates to places like Disney and Pixar. Unfortunately, his grades were "terrible," he says. "And maybe I wasn't the best artist at the time." He was rejected from the program.

Instead, Del Mundo went to George Brown College in Toronto, majoring in design. He says that although it wasn't his first choice, winding up in that program became a "lifesaver."

"I met people that were actually passionate about comics at the time," he says. "While I was doing design, I was also drawing comics … and then I went full force into being like, 'You know what? I like design, but I really want to pursue [comics].'"

In 2009, he went to Fan Expo in Toronto, where aspiring comic artists had a chance to get their portfolios reviewed by Marvel editor C.B. Cebulski, who's now Marvel's editor-in-chief. Cebulski liked what he saw, and gave Del Mundo a shot at drawing covers for the industry juggernaut. Del Mundo says that he had the confidence to show his portfolio to Marvel thanks to a "delusional mindstate that thought, 'Yeah, I could do this.'" But, in retrospect, he feels like he was very fortunate to get the gig.

"When I'm looking at the work that I was showing around when I got the gig at Marvel, I still feel like, 'Man, I kind of lucked out,'" he says. "I was showing pieces that weren't really comic-centric, like movie fan art and stuff like that. But on the blessings of C.B. Cebulski — who has this great eye for talent — he saw something. And he hooked it up, and from there, I just got better and better."

Del Mundo first made his name in the comic world doing cover art. His covers were nominated for multiple Harvey and Eisner awards — the comic world equivalent of the Golden Globes and the Oscars — and won him a Joe Shuster Award, honouring outstanding achievements by Canadian comic artists. He subsequently moved on to drawing interiors, working on titles like X-Men: Legacy, Elektra, and Weirdworld.

He says that covers tend to be more fun, but interiors offer more interesting challenges.

"There's a little bit of freedom with covers," he says. "You don't have to feel consistent about the whole thing because it's really just drawing one panel. When you're drawing interiors, my mindset is like, 'I've got to keep things consistent and make sure that the face looks the same in each panel.' There's this anxiety of putting together this jigsaw puzzle right on the page."

Beyond his work for Marvel, Del Mundo is part of a group of comic creators — along with writer Jonathan Hickman and fellow artist Mike Huddleston — who are creating a new comic book universe called "3 Worlds 3 Moons." While almost all comic artists experiment with creating their own characters, creating a broad, multi-title universe is a next-level creative endeavour.

"Jonathan just had this beautiful idea of, like, kind of a band of people to just create, almost like a mixtape," he says. "It's kind of a freestyle way of making things. Like, 'Hey, let's bounce ideas off each other. Let's fly off each other's ideas and see where it goes.'"

He says that the unprecedented level of creative control is exhilarating.

"That's really cool — the freedom of having something for yourself. I never tried that, because I've been working at Marvel for a decade-plus … It feels different than working, you know, on characters that are better established. You have all these new characters and all these ideas that you can kind of change as you go … It's like the freedom of being able to play God."