Mike's Bio

I'm the person that's providing the back end for this blog. I have my own over at mike.whybark.com, which I've been writing since early 2002. Both blogs use Movable Type, and run on an ancient computer secured in a secret facility somewhere near my living room.

I will be sitting the 2005 SIFF out, except for the vicarious participation of keeping an eye on this little experiment. I am currently the operations manager of an online retail startup. I am also the News Editor of Now Playing, a forward-looking pop-culture magazine. To date I have had the pleasure of covering mashups, genre fan film, machinima, and profiling Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics comics artist and the creator of ).

I've been a contributor to Tablet since last May 2003, coming aboard during last year's SIFF. I have not been an active contributor since the format change, as other commitments have intervened.

Previously, I was a Contributing Editor at Cinescape. Both my blog and Cinescape reawakened my interest in writing, something I had stopped doing after college. Instead, I worked as a designer and web developer for most of the nineties.

Since picking up the pen once more, I have also written for The Stranger as well as The Comics Journal.

In each case, I'd love to do more for them, but as noted above, I am pretty well booked.