Drawn to Southern California, spring 1965, by the lure of a career in Comic Art,
Mike spent his first 14 years in comic books, comic strips, and TV animation.
Beginning as RUSS Manning's assistant on MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER and TARZAN comic
books (at the end of their working relationship Mike lettered and inked the
last 6 months of Russ's TARZAN syndicated Sunday strip and the first 4 months
of the daily and Sunday syndicated STAR WARS, late 1970s) and then inking and
pencilling for Western Publishing (Gold Key). Mike inked such West Coast
talents as Sparky Moore, Mike Arens, Paul Norris, and Doug Wildley.
His drawing asignments were on TARZAN, SPACE GHOST, coloring books, puzzles,
etc. for Western and doing layout on network animation series like SPIDERMAN.
At Gold Key he wrote/adapted and drew SPEED BUGGY, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE
SUNDANCE KIDS, TARZAN, MAGNUS, and designed and executed covers for
Hanna-Barbera TV ADVENTURE HEROES, etc. Mike contributed to James Warren's
CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPERELLA magazines and began drawing the comic panel
CRUSIN' record album covers (over 2 dozen to date), many of which he's
scripted.
For East coast firms, Mike inked artists Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Ramona Fraden
and others, but during this period he is best known to comic fans for his
decade as letterer/inker for legendary Jack Kirby at National and then Marvel.
From late Spring 1979, Mike spent the next 14 years on staff with the Walt
Disney Company in the creative department of their Consumer Product/Licensing
division, addressing the areas of book publishing, comic books and strips, and
all forms of themepark and licensed merchandise as a character artist/product
designer, performing as idea man, concept and final line artist, and sometime
inker.
At Disney, Mike designed and art directed the DICK TRACY and 3-D ROCKETEER
comic book Music Company read-alongs. He created the "new look" that launched
the massive WINNIE THE POOH licensing program in late 1993. Featured in a 43
minute video "How To Draw Pooh" sent to over 40 licensees, Mike takes no small
amount of pride in the fact that POOH soon (and still) outsold Mickey Mouse
worldwide.
June 1993 Mike left his staff position to spend the next 7 years full time
free lancing for The Disney Store's creative group, becoming their "Main POOH
Man" and creating 3-D products utilizing Disney characters.
Since Spring 2000 Mike has functioned as an Art service doing pencil work on a
wide variety of projects, including creating character Orthographic Turns and
environment "floor plans" for computer game animators, DIGIMON products, on
screen icons for FOX FAMILY CHANNEL and FOX KIDS NETWORK, READER RABBIT work
books, RESCUE HEROES toy packaging, etc.
Spring 2001 found Mike and Laurie, his lovely wife and concept collaborater,
returning to his birth state, Oregon, settling in Medford, and in the process
returned to his career roots. And in the last few years he's found time to ink
such luminaries as Steve Rude and Eric Larsen, to name a couple. Mike continues
to create Disney character art for limited edition collector pin sets and does
"recreations". He strongly believes that his passion, attention to detail and
accuracy, and his commitment to integrity will keep him at the board for a long
time to come.