Mike Allred, born Michael Dalton Allred, is a really rad comic book writer artist. He has his own comic book called
Madman Comics published by
Dark Horse Comics, and another called
Bluntman & Chronic - which you may remember from the film
Chasing Amy (in which Allred made a cameo appearence).
Laura Allred, his wife, helps him by doing the coloring on Madman.
Allred is known for his smooth clean lines, quasi simplistic layouts and his surreal heros.
Allred currently (December 2001) is also doing the art chores on Marvel's revamped X-Force
Allred hopes that Madman will run for 102 issues - to pay tribute to the run that Jack Kirby did on Fantastic Four for Marvel Comics (this didn´t happen). Of course only putting out 6 comics a year, this feat will take him 17 years to accomplish.
Allred and his family live in Eugene, Oregon.
this is Mignolia's self written explanation of his involvement in comics.
____________________________________________________
I Came into comics late. My career was broadcasting and I was a TV reporter in Europe. I got reaquainted with comics. I was an aspiring screenwriter, and I just started drawing my own movies when I saw what comics were doing. It wasn't until I realized that I wasn't really doing anything that my kids could enjoy that I thought of doing a costumed character. So I did Madman for Tundra, and it just did really well. Then Tundra was absorbed by Kitchen Sink, and I wanted to kind of give him a new birth.
Dark Horse and I had developed a really good, strong, trusting relationship, and so I went with them for the continuing series. Madman had previously existed in two trilogies called Madman and Madman Adventures. So now I'm at Dark Horse. Doing Madman. Madman Comics! One hundred and two issues!
I'm a pop culture fiend. I just absorb everything. I love all kinds of comics, everything from the golden age, the early, naive-nostalgia kind of books, the great, poppy, short stories from EC Comics, the wonderful clean-line artists of Europe, like Daniel Torres and, of course, Moebius. I like some underground comics and alternative comics, depending on what you want to call them, like Eightball, Love and Rockets, Palookaville.
I just like to keep my brain and eyes fed all the time. So I'm just constantly absorbing things and fueling my batteries. I really love my kids, and my wife, and so I'm pretty much a Ward Cleaver of '90s. But people look at us and we're kind of weird, they expect us to be a little more radical, I guess, than we are. We're pretty reclusive. We just really enjoy doing the picnic, Cleaver family kind of thing.