Author: phinmagic

Phineus : Magician for Hire is the brainchild of creator Barry Linck. Phineus was created in 1987, of then a high school senior after reading too much of Matt Wagner's "Mage", too much Dungeon's and Dragon's and watching too much of John Carpenter's "Big trouble in LittleChina". Over the interviening years Phineus changed from angellic savior, to reluctant hero, to art student who finds he is a mage, until, in 1991, for a comic class at Edinboro University, he became part of a Husband and Wife paranormal investigations team, with Phineus' sidekick and wife Sara. Barry produced and self published from 1993 to the present 33 comics with our erstwhile heroes, garnering a small but rabid fan following.

Barcrawl of the Damned 13

The new page of Barcrawl of the Damned…behold!!!

I’m having a lot of fun drawing, again!

New Stuff is On the Way

I’ve been working on new pages and fleshing out story ideas. A lot of my time, recently has been spent working on a commission story. This has been financially helpful, as well as a good kick in my creativity! I haven’t felt this good about art and art making since before the car accident that ruined my drawing thumb. I’m so excited!

The plan is to work on the commission AND my comic at the same time. Now that I’ve unstuck myself, should be doable!

I have been working out some kinks in the two current stories, buy sketching them out in my sketchbook. God, I missed sketchbooking. So, more of sketchbooking to come, as well. Helps me think out loud.

I should have a new page of “Barcrawl” out this week. Above are what I’ve been drawing in the last few days!

Early Phin and Sara Sketchbooking

Phineus sketch circa 1990ish
1990ish Phineus

Here are some old sketches from my college sketchbooks for Phin and Sara. This was all prepping for what would eventually be “Dismember Me When You’re Gone”, the official first Phineus comic.

There was a lot of playing with looks and poses. As well as a lot of sloppy texture. It’s a fun look back at where I was way back in 1990-1991.

Contessa

The Contessa is (barring Howie from Teen Wizard) my oldest existing character. I’ve been drawing her ever since I saw Tobe Hooper’s “Lifeforce”.

The Contessa was ported into my comic as a major villain, however, aside from a cameo in “Wake the Dead” she didn’t show up until 2012’s, “Have a Drink on Me”.

I am missing the first picture I made of her, which was confiscated in Middle school, due to nudity. In the class where I fleshed out Phineus, a pre-college art class at CMU, using an early Photoshop like program called Pandavision, I traced a pencil drawing into the program to digitally draw and color it (you can see it below). Keep in mind this was in 1987.

There’s lot’s of boobs involved with her.

Phineus Animatic test

Did this a while back. Still want to animate a Phineus trailer at some point and actually use the animation part of my B.S. Degree.

Phineus through the years

I updated the strip I had of this from 2015 to include the newest stuff.

Phin and Sara 1988

A very early pic of Phin and Sara from a high school sketchbook. Phin was still the extra-dimentional hero, Sara the damsel in distress. Way too Highlander meets Mage, at this point.

This picture is SO 80’s I can smell hairspray. It was the start of piecing the characters I’d doodled into a fleshed out story. It was still a ways off til I found our Phineus, though.

I kept starting different stories until in 1991 during a comic drawing class, I forced myself to take, just so I could get this book started.

Draw or Die Draw Together

So, on Tuesday I attended the second monthly Draw Together event put on my D.J.Coffman and his wife Ally for Draw or Die Club in downtown Pittsburgh at the Federal Gallery

It was super fun, and I got to hang out with some old friends and met a bunch of new artists to sit, eat, talk and DRAW together. It’s a really fun thing to do, to draw around other people and socialize. As an artist, I usually sit and draw by myself. It’s so much more fun, with company

Draw or Die Club is a club that promotes drawing, every day. For fun, for profit, for mental well-being. It’s awesome. https://drawordie.co/

DJ had a list of prompts to go from and you could roll a dice and see what to draw. I ended up doing one of each and an extra doodle, too.

I’ll probably do this next month, too. And if you’re in Pittsburgh come on down and hang out!

BL

The Evolution of Cole Beam

The idea of “Magician for Hire” started long , long ago as “Phineus 2036”.

I had the idea as far back as 2005. Cole has evolved many times, in look, name and character since then. As has the story.

I really like the curly haired version, and she may be a future, older version of Cole.

Phineus and the Black Knight

Possibly the very first Phineus story from 1989.

I remember drawing this while working overnight in a dorm at Edinboro University. Still not my Phineus, yet. Also, way too many panels per page.

Available to Patreons.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/86468830?utm_campaign=postshare_creator

Anniversary

Its a major anniversay! Now, I do celebrate two, there’s the one of the creation of my first issue (1991- we’re at 32 for that), but this is for the start of it all and the creation of Phineus and Sara, themselves. And the creation of my studio, Piffle Productions, my own personal studio moniker.

The characters were created my senior year of high school. Little did i know that these two would still be kicking around 36 years later. Ill be posting more sketches from my old sketchbooks and posting the original first takes on the characters in story form on my Patreon page.

I meant to be doing all this much earlier this year, but better late than never.

BL

Phineus sketch circa 1990ish

New Digs

So, you’re on the new and improved Phineus site.

The old site was run on clunky Comic Easel software that hasn’t been updated for a while and from a host who had the site down far too often.

The new site is much more stable, fast, and ,as you can see , a blog. All new pages and will post in the blog. All comics are backed up to Comic Archives (listed above), which are read in super quick galleries that fill the screen on websites and mobile.

I hope you all enjoy the new place, I love it. Wander around and take a look. If you see anything out of place, let me know so I can fix it.

Boy Wizards 5

How about that? A new page of my own stuff?! Borrowing a page out of my own book, i was just stuck on Barcrawl, so i figured I`d just work on something else and get art done. Thanks for your patience.

Barcrawl of the Damned 12

Warhammering

Whilst trying to break out of the depressive mood I am fighting, I’ve tried to stay creative, by working on my Imperial Agents list. I’ve played and collected Warhammer 40k for 30 years, since 2nd edition. I’ve always wanted a complete list of Imperial agents from the old Black Codex. I’m getting closer to having that. It’s keeping me moving, until I can draw, again.

I’m having fun, but missing my comics, so I’m hoping it’ll be back, soon.

Jim Hanson Phineus

This one is from an old online friend Jim Hanson….

Jim Hanson

“A million years ago I had a comic idea where one of the main characters from my comics was adrift in the webcomics multiverse, and had obtained a “Cameo Driver”, which was clearly just a riff on the Kamen Rider Decade Decadriver, that let him transform into other webcomic characters briefly during his adventures. All this got horribly sidelined by life, and so almost none of the ideas actually happened… but I found the folder with some of my early concepts today, including Arthur cosplaying as Phineus from Barry Linck’s similarly-named webcomic.”

Phineus playing cards by David Davis

 

 

Phineus made an appearance in Dave Davis’ excellent RGBots comic. Check all Dave’s stuff at https://www.cosmicdash.com/ .

Mel and Laurel showering

So this is both new and old. I pencelled it, and my old friend Tim Etchison inked it, many moons ago, but I’ve never had it on any of my sites until this years Valentine’s Day challenge.

These are two characters from the original version of Brian Babyok’s Weirdlings (MK1). These characters (at least the way I drew them) morphed into Emily and Mercy from GD7 from the pages of Phineus.

Enjoy!!

VDSD2023 PARTICIPANTS!!

MonicaNG – MoonSlayer Julie Devin – Monster Soup Amy Letts – Epic Fail Team Lady Valiant – Lady Valiant Midnight – Danger Zone One Centcomm – Datachasers Lou Graziani – Cy-Boar Darksh1ne – Monstroniverse Adventures The Letter M – The Restless Dead Blue Dragon – Dark Horse Lightfoot – Pulse Stilldown – Ariane Eldar’s Personal Place Stilldown – Theater Of The Bloody Tongue Sheryl Schopfer – Sharpclaw Sheryl Schopfer – Deer Me Arne Cooper – The Androssian Prophecy The Exiern Team – Exiern Extras The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Zen The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Chaos The Exiern Team – Exiern: Dark Reflections The Exiern Team – Exiern The Exiern Team – Exiern v1.0 Barry Linck – Phineus+ Magician for Hire MiraKirall – The Ace of The Spades sidaragasum – Locked in Imagination Spelledeg – Now Hiring Zaten – Club Pegasus Jim and Alli Perry – Out of My Element Momoru – Mildreth of the Night Momoru – Alvery Nerveaux’s Secret Case Files Microraptor – Cryptida rulerbrain – Selling Smiles Mark Egan – Bata Neart Mark Egan – Back Office Zach Vanzile – West Tree Academy of Heroes Ben Bourbon – Devilbear: The Grimoires of Bearalzebub SpaceGoblin – By The Book Gojiramon – CKarrus Nick Greaves – The Great Isle of Prentil Marshall Reeves – Yesterday Bound Sean Harrington – Spying With Lana John Harrington – Super Rivals Lirvilas – Grinder$ J.E. Draft – The Challenges of Zona Jaycee Knight – Bloomin’ Faeries yellowgerbil – Zoe the Vampire yellowgerbil – AquariYUM Stef Marcinkowski – Sarah Zero

Barcrawl of the Damned 11

Ben Billings interview pic

Heres a promotional image of Fr. Ben Billings being interviewed for a story Comicadia ad posted on Comicadia Worlds. The Comicadia sites aren’t up anymore, but enjoy Novasiri’s (Aether Eternius) awesome Ben art.

Cosmic Hellcats guest art

Here’s an old one from 2012, Star Wars meets Cosmic Hellcats. Hellcats was a webcomic by local Pittsburgh creators Chris Mav and Max. Fun stuff.

Old Sketches

These were some old sketches. The first was in preparation for Phineus:2013, which was later renamed The Kali Saga. The second is designs for GD7 (from 2007 & 1940) for the Brian Babyok scripted, The Great Jaguar Paw. We’ve seen the modern GD7 many times in Phineus, and the 1940 incarnation in the bonus story” How We Won the War”, available to Patreon subscribers.

I gotta dig out more of my old sketchbooks and share the hidden treasures and turds living there.

Sweeping Phineus review

There’s a really nice review of a good chunk of my books, by Gargantuan-Media over at Deviant Art: https://www.deviantart.com/indiegraphicnovels/blog/

I remember filling the order he placed, but just stumbled on the review he left on his DA blog. Pretty Cool. Give it a read!

This year marks 36 years of Phineus and Sara

1988. Well, late 1987 to 1988. I created these two characters in a computer graphics class I took in high school at Carnegie Mellon University on Saturdays. Yes. I CHOSE to go to school 6 days a week.

The original story was way too much Highlander meets Matt Wagner’s Mage, at this point. Phineus was some sort of extra-dimensional being sent to Earth for fight demons. Sara was the stereotypical damsel in distress. I clearly moved to a different path. I had a few different incarnations through out college, until I settled on the paranormal investigators we all know and love.

I’ve known these characters a good, long time. I’ll see if I can dig up any more old drawings of them.

Barry

Holidaze

Work and the holidays have overwhelmed me, sorry for the lack of art. Been too busy to art! I hate that. Happy holidays and I’ll see you soon with new stuff! #100daysofcomics #drawordieclub