Whilce Portacio started drawing seriously when he began getting paid for it, and his first professional work was the ‘Longshot’ mini-series. He is probably best known for his creation of the series ‘Wetworks’ and his work on ‘Uncanny X-Men’, ‘The Punisher’ and ‘X-Factor’.
In 1992, Portacio joined together with Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Lee to form Image Comics. His latest work includes a comic book series from Avalon Studios. The comics feature creatures of Philippine mythology. Portacio is the foremost Filipino comic book illustrator and author in the business.
In August 2000, Portacio fell into a diabetic coma as a result of a failing pancreas. He woke up a week later, thirty pounds lighter, and unable to walk, stand or even draw. Only six months later was he able to pick up a pencil and draw. According to his blog, “My mind could see what I wanted to draw but my hand couldn’t accomplish it.”
Portacio worked his way out of his disability eventually. In 2006, Portacio returned to his artistic duties at Wildstorm on Wetworks vol. 2, which was being written by Mike Carey. Portacio left the book with issue #6. He also began art duties on the monthly DC Comics series Batman Confidential.
On June 9, 2008, it was announced that Portacio would be the new artist on Spawn starting in October 2008 with issue #185, providing pencils with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane returning as co-writer with Brian Holguin as the new creative team.
Following his run on Spawn, he has done more work with Marvel. He contributed pencils to Hulk #18 in 2008 and had a run on The Uncanny X-Men.
