Born in 1954, Mark Wheatley has made a career of creating clever and innovative comic books. He is probably  best known for his 1984 First Comics series Mars, the 1994 Vertigo mini-series Breathtaker, and his Insight Studios series Radical Dreamer and Frankenstein Mobster, but his list of titles extends far beyond that impressive handful.

Wheatley founded Insight in 1978 as an illustration and photography source, but in 1980 Marc Hempel joined him and they expanded the studio to include comic books and comic book production work.

Wheatley has won numerous awards, including the Inkpot, the Speakeasy, the Gem, and the Mucker. In 2008 he was a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress. Wheatley currently runs Insight and writes and illustrates the series EZ Street for ComicMix.

Over at LA Weekly’s geek culture blog, Topless Robot, they’ve put together a list of the worst album covers designed by artists from the comics industry.

Among the examples on their list is Canadian hip-hop group Swollen Members’ 2003 album Heavy, featuring a cover by Todd McFarlane.

McFarlane has at least one respectable album-cover credit: the five-times platinum Follow the Leader by Korn. (Oh, c’mon, don’t act like you didn’t own it, or at least headbang to “Freak on a Leash.”) That was in 1998, and five years later the Spawn creator/lawsuit magnet/frivolous spender agreed to pencil a cover for a—wait for it—Canadian hip-hop group that dubbed themselves the Swollen Members. From what we REAL North Americans can tell, these guys’ only notoriety comes from this album cover and an appearance in National Lampoon’s Going the Distance, whatever the hell that is. Heavy just reinforces what a great idea it was for McFarlane to quit drawing.

According to Spawn.com, McFarlane also directed one of the group’s videos, too. I feel obligated to mention, however, that the Swollen Members’ Wikipedia page actually makes them seem like a decent band… as far as Canadian music goes.

Head over to Topless Robot for the full list.

(Oh, and just kidding about the "as far as Canadian music" thing, folks… I promise.)

Born in Canada in 1951, George Freeman didn’t start out in comic books. He was actually designing tombstones in 1975 when he encountered the first issue of a new Canadian comic book, Captain Canuck. Intrigued, Freeman went to see series artist and co-creator Richard Comely in Winnipeg.

Comely was impressed by Freeman’s art samples and hired him on—Freeman colored the second issue, inked the third issue, and penciled and inked the fourth issue. When Comely moved to Cardston, Alberta in fall 1976 to run the local weekly newspaper, Freeman and colorist/inker/French translator Jean-Claude St. Aubin moved with him and got jobs on the paper while continuing the comic.

A few months later, they left Cardston for Calgary, which was less to Freeman’s liking—he returned to Winnipeg instead. He rejoined the Captain Canuck team in early 1979.

Captain Canuck ended with issue #14 in 1981 and Freeman moved on to other comic book work. He drew Green Lantern, Aquaman, Jack of Hearts, and The Avengers, drew a story in Batman Annual #11, and was one of the artists on the horror comic anthology Wasteland.

He also worked on the Elric series for First Comics, the Black Orchid series for Vertigo, and more recently, the Albion series for Wildstorm, among others. In 1996 Freeman was nominated for an Eisner for Best Colorist on The X-Files.