Click here to view my resume. Keep on reading if you're interested in self-indulgent autobiography.

In February of 1963, a red-faced, puking bundle of joy was born in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. They named him Michael D. Fraley and sent him home to play in toilets and bang pots and pans for the next several years.

Then, there was a moment of destiny. When he was six years old, he was taken to meet a sculptor who was working on a bust in his studio. The sculptor handed little Mikey a piece of the clay he was working with, and Mikey looked at the shapeless thing in his hand and then at the bust the sculptor was working on, and a light went on in his little tiny head.

From that time on, Mikey began to draw non-stop, and he also began reading comics shortly after that. The strange worlds of Jack Kirby, Neal Adams and others filled his skull, and before long he began telling his own stories in words and pictures.

In high school Mike began studying the work of classic illustrators and cartoonists from earlier in the century. Edwin Austin Abbey and Howard Pyle, as well as Winsor McCay and Hal Foster were his inspirations at that point, and Mike was happy to be able to correspond with Foster just a few years prior to his death.

In 1986, Michael did work as a sports illustrator for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, and enjoyed attending high school sporting events and then drawing them as full colour comic-strips for the next day's newspaper. Book illustration assignments and a comic-book series for Caliber Comics followed that. In 1997, Michael began working as a graphic designer for the Kendallville Publishing Company family of newspapers in northeastern Indiana. Since that time he has also become the company's web designer, editorial cartoonist and tech columnist.

Michael currently lives in Auburn, Indiana, and he never ceases to dream. He is a Sunday school teacher and secretary for the local Wesleyan church. He loves people, history, and all kinds of literature (including creaky old science fiction magazines from the 1930's). The best is yet to come.

Contact info:

Michael D. Fraley
P.O. Box 835
Auburn, IN 46706
PH: (219) 920-1939
e-mail: dalriada@skyenet.net