Mercury, rising

The Oregonian pays a visit to Portland's Mercury Studios, and chats with members David Hahn, Drew Johnson, Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker:

It's a colorful, riotous place that seems a bit like a comic book universe itself, where shelves groan beneath art reference books and model cars and stuffed piranhas, the stereo blares "Eaten by the Monster of Love," and on a recent afternoon, one member was scanning photographs of his own face being ground into a carpet, so that he would have a photo reference for the latest fight scene he needed to draw.

And yet, this quirky little studio occupies an important place in the multimillion-dollar comics industry: One editor once joked that if all Mercury's members were to fall sick, at least one major comic-book company would be forced to shut down.