Periscope: Portland's storyboard and comics studio.

Paul Guinan just contributed this paintographied portrait of Gore Vidal and friends to Steven Gettis' legendary collection of sketches of literary figures.

Labels: Paul Guinan

Portland animator/cartoonist Carolyn Main became a year older and celebrated the occasion at her home on Mount Tabor. Paul Guinan, Periscope's own Jimmy Olsen,
took snaps and posted them on his site. He shot Colleen's wedding, now a birthday. I'm sure there's a bar mitzvah coming soon.

Sara Ryan and I are going to be guests at the Mid-Ohio Con this coming weekend, November 24-25th. This was the very first con I attended as a pro, and I've probably done it more often than any other. It's extremely well run, and always a pleasure to visit. Stop by my table and as time permits, I'll doodle out a free quickie sketch.

Labels: Paul Guinan, Steve Lieber

As Paul works on his coffee table tome Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel, he maintains an elusive political stance. Is Boilerplate right-wing military history, or left-wing social history? Getting clues from his personal life can be equally confusing. He was involved with peace movements before America went into Iraq, but a few weeks ago it looked like he was training for a contractor position over there. He's posted pictures of an adventure in the woods with his dog--and guns with telescopic sights! Donations are being accepted to help with Paul's bipolar disorder...

In other news, reviewers and fans are still going nuts for Jeff Parker's work. Dem's good reading, Comixfan , Comic Book Resources , Comic Pants.

And here's a terrific interview with Portland's own Kevin Moore, author/artist of the great all-ages comic WANDERLOST (formerly known as "Sheldon.")

Labels: Jeff Parker, Kevin Moore, Paul Guinan

CBG: For those not in the know, please explain the basic concept of Sea Freak.

JC: Sea Freak is the story of an atomic sea mutant in the 1960's whose poet soul is at odds with his need to eat teeny boppers. And that's not his only worry. He also has a chorus of three little crabs living on his body, and they want nothing to do with a change of diet. Still, he's adopted a human sense of justice from reading old Shakespeare plays, bottled and tossed into the sea by an unknown party. He decides to follow the bottles' trail, hoping to find a kindred spirit at the other end, and to at last be free of his monstery ways... It's only when he finds the trail's end that he realizes how far he has to go.

Jonathan Case interviewed at the Comic Book Gazette.

Sara Ryan and Ron Chan's Flytrap, Sara and Dylan Meconis' Click and Short Notice by Susan Tardif, reviewed at The Wright Opinion. Also, Paul Guinan's Boilerplate got a shout-out in Publisher's Weekly's Stumptown coverage.

Labels: Dylan Meconis, Jonathan Case, Paul Guinan, ron chan, Sara Ryan, Susan Tardif

As Paul Guinan works at full steam finishing the Boilerplate coffee-table book, his robot continues its blog tour of the world wide web. The latest review of the Boilerplate site comes from this Japanese blog. The latest images produced for the book can be seen on the Boilerplate News page which is updated every couple weeks. The book is being published by Collectors Press, and is due for a fall 2007 release.

Several members of Mercury Studio are contributing pieces to the book, stay tuned for previews of their work.

"After hearing the initial pitch it was pretty obvious to me that this story would be heavy on crowded wide shots. We've got the Amazonian army versus the US military and then throw in just about every character in the DCU. Yeah, lots of detail intensive work- but very fun!"

Pete Woods interviewed at Newsarama And some bigger reproductions of the art in the interview.

Labels: Boilerplate, Paul Guinan, Pete Woods

I've got a lot of stuff to get done before I'm off, so this'll have to do until I get back on Monday. Here's hoping this doesn't kill the great momentum we've been enjoying.

Paul Guinan has some updates on the growing fame of his Boilerplate site. If you haven't heard of Boilerplate before, start here to learn more. Paul has done us all a great service with his thorough and extensive research into the shamefully neglected history of Victorian robotics.

It's self-serving time. Laura Gjovaag has reviewed WHITEOUT and MELT on her blog. Always glad to see these books find new readers. If you're curious about WHITEOUT, go here , and read the entire first issue for free.

We were very glad to hear about this:
"Marvel Comics and artist Dave Cockrum have reached an agreement on a contract that will allow Marvel to continue to fully own the many characters Cockrum created for the company, while compensating Cockrum for his years of service and the seminal characters he created."Read the rest here.

The Cockrums still have a long way to go, with a lot of bills to pay. We encourage our readers to pick up the tribute book and watch for the benefit auction. You can see my piece for the book by clicking on the thumbnail above. David Hahn gave the auction a beautiful original page from an issue of Vertigo's Lucifer that he illustrated, and studio buddy Jeff Parker contributed an original Batgirl page and a copy of his graphic novel The Interman with a cool sketch on the title page.

Speaking of Parker, I'll be sitting next to the filthy wretch at Wizard World L.A. Stop by, mention that you saw this, and as time permits, I'll do a free quick sketch for you.

Labels: Boilerplate, Dave Cockrum, Jeff Parker, Paul Guinan, personal tragedy, whiteout