Rick Mountfort works under the name Spine. He started doing artwork in 1979, primarily illustrations of a horrific nature and some comics, for local music newspapers, magazines, and record jackets in Washington, DC. Some of the rags were the now-defunct Unicorn Times, the DC Period, and later, various other zines around the world like Purple Monkey, Euthanasia, Earwax, Lobotomy, OX PX, and many more. During that period he worked as a freelance sign artist and as a mural artist for about four years, with Byron Peck. In 1996 Spine started working as a regular contributor to Scary Monsters Magazine, The New Castle of Frankenstein, The New Journal of Frankenstein, and World of Fandom Magazine, doing black and white interior illustrations and a color cover for the 1996 Scary Monsters Annual. Since that time he has done over two hundred monster portraits, depicting Hollywood's creepiest stars. The work he did for those magazines led to his being chosen to illustrate the New Adventures of Frankenstein series of books, doing an average of twenty black and white illustrations for each, as well as wrap-around color covers for all eleven books. They were all written by Don Glut, who wrote for Creepy, Eerie, and the original Vampirella magazines. (see Warren Pub. Vampirella #1, et al.) Glut has authored comics (Dr. Spektor) and many books including the authorized novelization of George Lucas' The Empire Strikes Back. Spine's record jacket art include: Act Your Rage, the first LP from former Misfits guitarist Bobby Steele's Undead, also Mike Hudson's solo CD Unmedicated. Hudson was the driving force behind punk icons The Pagans. Spine has done four covers for mega producers of monster mayhem, Electric Frankenstein, four covers for Boston's hardcore hellions Psycho, three covers for noise merchants Gonkulator, two covers for Washington DC weirdos United Mutation, three covers for The Strap-On's, and two for Alien Blood Transfusion. Included in this list are the X-Rays, G G Allin, Uruku, the Pimps, Lord Zillablaster, Deviant, and the band known as Sick Bags. His portfolio also includes artwork for the Fistful of Rock 'n' Roll series, volume #6, which features new material from many new bands, notably, Turbonegro, and Sonny Vincent with Captain Sensible (front The Damned) plus Ron and Scott Ashton from The Stooges and Destroy All Monsters. Additionally, he is credited with artwork for A Fistful More of Rock & Roll, volume # 13, which features new material from new bands around the world including Sonny Vincent with Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) and Rat Scabies (The Damned). Additional work by Spine can be found in The Frankenstein Archive (Don Glut, McFarland Press 2002), The Electric Frankenstein Poster Book (Dark Horse 2002), The Son of Electric Frankenstein poster book (BGT ENT 2014), The Electric Frankenstein: Illustrated Lyrics book (Yoe Books and Clover Press 2022) and Fright Monsters (Druktenis Pub. 2020). Newly released in 2022, "25 Years of Spine Tingling Art, the Magazine and Pulp Artwork of Rick 'Spine' Mountfort" Scrapple Bath Publishing, available on Amazon!
