Homeless, a young man in tattered clothes and ratty hair steps through the trash and muck of a garbage dump. He "lives" there. Finding an old tire and a discarded sheet of transparent plastic, he fashions a makeshift drawing table and practices inking a comicbook page with whatever tools and supplies he can scrounge.

A married illustrator in a small foreign city works long hours as a newspaper paste-up artist to house and feed his wife -- weeks away from giving birth to their daughter -- on less than five dollars a day.

An unemployed commercial artist survives a tragic public bus crash where others lost their lives, only to be turned away from his hard-won job interview after arriving disheveled and bloody.

A student, poor and uncommonly thin, struggles to learn to draw comicbook pages before a congenital heart defect ends his dream and his life. His family cannot afford to have the necessary surgery performed.

Sad stories with more in common than undiscovered talent and a love for the comicbook medium, they share a happy ending called Glass House Graphics -- a company well known by editors and publishers but something of a secret to comicbook fans.

Happy Endings Are Only The Beginning

* The homeless inker became Jeffrey Huet, star Marvel embellisher on The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, New Avengers Annual, and other titles. He has bought a home for himself and his family.

* The undiscovered paste-up artist was Mike Deodato, Jr., the Marvel superstar on Spider-Man, The Avengers, Hulk, Thunderbolts, and more.

* The rejected crash survivor was Will Conrad, soon a prized inker who later became a top Dark Horse penciller on Conan, Serenity, and the upcoming Kull.

* The artist needing open-heart surgery was Wilson Tortosa, now healthy and noted for his work on Battle of the Planets, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and the upcoming Wolverine: The Manga.

All were discovered and trained by, with careers carefully molded and developed by, Glass House Graphics. But they're just the tips of the comicbook iceberg.

Celebrating its 15th Anniversary this month, Glass House Graphics is a professional service firm and agency that is home to those and 118 other artists, writers, designers, painters, and colorists hailing from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Australia, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.