I’m Mike Russell, a writer and cartoonist in Portland, Oregon.
• Since 2014 I've been a member at Helioscope, where I'm working on some long-form comics projects.
• From 2004-14, I reviewed movies for The Oregonian's A&E section. Also reviewed a few books and conducted some interviews.
• (Fun fact: I am NOT Michael Russell, the full-time Oregonian staffer who -- in a not-at-all-confusing coincidence -- covers the restaurant beat for A&E. This is him. This is me. We used to joke about doing a charity event called "Dinner & A Movie With Mike Russell.”)
• My work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Willamette Week, The Portland Mercury, In Focus Magazine, The DVD Journal, Ain't It Cool News, The Daily Standard, Bookslut, some beer labels, an album cover, a comics-convention identity system, and a few comic books.
• From 2004-12, I wrote and drew two comic strips for The Oregonian's A&E section -- the evil instructional comic "Mr. Do & Mr. Don't" and the nonfiction comic "CulturePulp," in which I rendered PDX cultural events (and myself) in cartoon form. (NOTE: These are currently offline thanks to the shuttering of WebcomicsNation.com, which I used to host the strips. I'll re-upload them at some point.)
• In 2011, I started a webcomic called "The Sabertooth Vampire." I’ve collected the strips in two minicomics. In 2012, Dark Horse published a few "Sabertooth Vampire" strips in ”Dark Horse Presents." In one of them he fights Hellboy.
• From 2006-12, I appeared most Fridays on the "Cort & Fatboy" podcast, talking about movies. I’ve also appeared on “Live Wire! Radio,” “Ham-Fisted Radio,” "The Karl Show! Starring Jason," "Welcome To That Whole Thing" and “The Boy Howdy Podcast.”
• From 2009-12, the Portland Opera invited me and a bunch of other cartoonists to dress rehearsals and let us draw whatever we wanted. I usually drew a "live comics adaptation" of each show, speed-sketched during the rehearsal. These were collected in the comic "Opera, Drawn Quickly," which you can download free of charge right here.
• I once wrote an essay about being adopted called "The Bastard Spawn Speaks." I also had some thoughts on creativity once.
• I’ve scripted several educational comics. This includes co-writing (with economists Joe Cortright and Lotte Langkilde) a comic-book primer on cluster economic theory called "Clusters and Your Economy: An Illustrated Introduction," illustrated by Adrian Wallace.
• I’ve also worked on some fan comics: as writer of “Jaxxon’s 11” -- a spoof of Marvel’s 1970s “Star Wars” comics -- and as founder of and contributor to “Serenity Tales,” a site featuring “Firefly” fan-comics from several creators. The latter led to a couple of short “Serenity” comics for Dark Horse: “Take My Love,” created with Mark Bourne and Bill Mudron, and “Augie, The Littlest Reaver.”
• Prior to 2004, I was editor-in-chief of the Clackamas Review and Oregon City News and managing editor of the long-defunct Portland Living magazine. I also helped develop a never-filmed sitcom about the Huckleberry Inn in Government Camp, OR and played a shepherd in a 1998 production of “As You Like It,” which is sort of the Shakespearean equivalent of playing a shrub in the school play.
• You can also find me on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.
