Creators
Mark Shainblum was born in Montreal in 1963 and was educated at Concordia University (B.A., 1985) and McGill University (Diploma in Education, 1993). From 1981 to 1982 he published two issues of Orion, an ambitious Canadian science-fiction and comics magazine. In 1984 he launched a comics publishing company, Matrix Graphic Series. The main Matrix title was the comic book New Triumph Featuring Northguard, which showcased Northguard, national superhero co-created with artist Gabriel Morrissette. Five issues of New Triumph appeared before Matrix ceased publishing in 1988; however, Northguard was resurrected a few years later in the pages of the comic book mini-series Northguard: The ManDes Conclusion, published by Caliber Press.
In 1995 Northguard's associate, the heroine Fleur de Lys, appeared on a Canadian postage stamp. During the 1990s, Mark worked as a freelance writer, contributing to Quill and Quire, the Montreal weekly Hour and other publications. In 1998 he co-edited Arrowdreams, a Canadian alternate-history anthology that won the 1999 Aurora Award. Mark has also continued to contribute to the comics field. In 1995 he co-created the satirical superhero Angloman with Gabriel Morrissette. That same year, Shainblum wrote scripts for the short-lived "Captain Canuck" newspaper strip. Moreover, in 1999, he and the artist Sandy Carruthers collaborated on a Captain Canuck comic book project, which remains largely unpublished, and later co-created they co-created the ongoing webcomic series, Canadiana: The New Spirit of Canada. Mark served for a year as president of SF Canada, Canada's national association of science fiction authors, and currently works as a communications officer for Montreal's McGill University.
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Gabriel Morrissette was born in Val-d'Or, Quebec, in 1959. In the late 1970s he moved to Montreal, where he attended Concordia University and launched his career as a graphic artist. In 1984, he co-created Northguard with Mark Shainblum. During the 1980s and 1990s he contributed to a wide range of publications, including the Quebec humour magazines Croc, Safarir and Anormal, and U.S. comic books such as Doc Savage, New Titans and Spiderman 2099.
During this period he also worked in the animation field, contributing to Bob Morane, Arthur and many other series. In 1995, the same year that Gabriel's work was featured in Canada Post's Superheroes/Superhéros stamp issue, he and Mark Shainblum co-created Angloman, a comics narrative that utilized superheroes to satirize the politics of Quebec and Canada. Angloman's adventures appeared in two books, Angloman: Making the World Safe for Apostrophes (1995) and Angloman 2: Money, Ethnics, Superheroes (1996), and, for a time, in a weekly strip that ran in the Montreal Gazette. Currently, Gabriel is active as a book illustrator for such publishers as Jackfruit Press, and also draws the "Daisy Dreamer" comic strip for Chickadee magazine. He is a long-standing member of Comicopia, an APA of the comic book field.
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