There’s a big ol’ interview with Colleen up in the Comics section at Newsarama, in which she talks mostly about her work at Marvel with her husband Paul Tobin and Periscope studio-mate Jeff Parker:
Of course working with Paul is as natural to me as breathing air. He was my first writer and he’s either written or helped me write pretty much every comic I’ve done up until the beginning of my time working for Marvel. He knows what I like to draw, but he never lets me get lazy by staying in my comfort zone! Sometimes he’ll write a challenging scene for me to force me to push myself. My whole style has developed with his writing, and when I read his scripts I can see what the comic should look like in my head.
Parker writes like an artist because, you know, he is one; he’ll give me minimalist panel descriptions and let me intuit what he’s after. I think he writes a little more loosely for me than he would for an artist who doesn’t sit three feet away from him every day—our desks in Periscope Studio, where we each do most of our work, are separated by Parker’s orange metal bookcase full of Essential trades and Prince Valiant volumes. If I ever get stuck on a panel design I can swivel my chair and ask him what he wants, and usually he’ll just grab a piece of paper and sketch it out for me.
We’re all really fortunate in that we have set up a whole culture of collaboration for ourselves here in Portland. Not only do I work closely with Paul and Parker, they’ve also worked with each other—co-writing for What If? and the Free Comic Book Day Marvel Adventures Iron Man, and now they’re writing side-by-side stories in the upcoming Age of the Sentry mini. They both work regularly with other Periscope members, too: Paul does Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four with David Hahn, Parker has an issue of X-Men: First Class drawn by Karl Kesel coming up, his run on Virgin Comic’s Gamekeeper series was drawn by Ron Randall and Ron Chan, and he’s writing a spelunking thriller for Steve Lieber. It feels like we’re keeping it all in the family, which helps us all stay motivated and happy!
