Rick Mountfort works under the name Spine. He started doing artwork, primarily illustrations with a horrific feel and some comics, in 1979 for local music newspapers, magazines and record jackets in Washington, DC.

Some of the rags were the now-defunct Unicorn Times, the DC Period, The Boogins and later zines around the country like Euthanasia, Earwax, Black Market, Labotomy, Purple Monkey, OX PX, and many more.

During that period he worked as a freelance sign and mural artist with local shops, and as a mural artist for about four years with Byron Peck.

In 1996 he 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 one color cover for the 1996 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 and Eerie and the original Vampirella magazines (See Warren Pub. Vampire #1 et al). Glut has authored comics (Dr. Spektor) and many books including the novelization of George Lucas' The Empire Strikes Back. He also scripted several movies including Countess Dracula and The Mummy's Kiss.

Spine's record jackets and music art include Act Your Rage, the first LP for 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 did four covers for mega punk producers of monster mayhem Electric Frankenstein (who have produced over sixty-five records). He also did five covers for Boston's Hardcore Hellions Psycho, not to mention artwork for the Fist Full of Rock 'n' Roll series, which featured new material by many new bands, notably Captain Sensible (front The Damned) plus Ron and Scott Ashton from The Stooges and Destroy All Monsters.

Additional work can be found in "Frankenstein Chronicles" written by Don Glut from McFarland Press 2002 and in "The Electric Frankenstein Poster Art Book" from Dark Horse Press 2004.