Mike Saenz (born 3 December 1959 Miller, John Jackson
"Comics Industry Birthdays"
''

Comics Buyer's Guide ''Comics Buyer's Guide'' (''CBG''; ), established in 1971, was the longest-running English-language periodical reporting on the American comic book industry. It awarded its annual Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards from 1983 to circa 2010. The publ ...

'', June 10, 2005. Accessed December 12, 2010
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) is an American comic book artist and software designer. He is the creator of '' Shatter'', as well as an early adult

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

, MacPlaymate. Saenz was also the founder of Reactor Inc., a defunct interactive game company.

Biography

Saenz was born in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, Illinois. As the founder and CEO of Reactor, Inc., he developed and published interactive entertainment on CD-ROM. Reactor produced '' Spaceship Warlock'', '' Virtual Valerie'', '' Virtual Valerie 2'', ''Virtual Valerie: The Director's Cut'', and '' Donna Matrix''. The comic book '' Shatter'' was written by

Peter Gillis Peter B. Gillis (December 19, 1952 – June 20, 2024) was an American comic book writer best known for his work at Marvel Comics and First Comics in the mid-1980s, including the series '' Strikeforce: Morituri'' and the digitally drawn comic ser ...

and illustrated on the computer by Saenz. It was initially drawn on a first-generation

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

using a mouse, and printed on a

dot-matrix A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned Array data structure, array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and pri ...

printer. It was then photographed like a piece of traditionally drawn black-and-white comic art, and the color separations were applied in the traditional manner of the period. After a brief career as a professional

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

artist for hire, he went solo and continued to innovate in the fields of comics as well as computers. He developed '' ComicWorks'', the first computer program for creating comics. He later went on to develop '' Iron Man: Crash'' (

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is a New York City–based comic book publishing, publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin G ...

, 1988). He provided black and white graphics and animations for the 1988 Macintosh game ''

Lunar Rescue is an arcade video game released by Taito in November 1979. The gameplay has some resemblance to both Taito's own 1978 hit ''Space Invaders'' and Atari, Inc.'s ''Lunar Lander'' (released several months earlier). Gameplay The player's ship ...

''. In 1993, Saenz created ''Donna Matrix'', a computer-generated graphic novel with 3-D graphics, published by Reactor Press. Saenz created the cover for Chicago punk band

Naked Raygun Naked Raygun is an American punk rock band that formed in Chicago in 1980. The band was active from 1980 to 1992, along with reunion shows in 1997, and since 2006. Naked Raygun have cited various bands as influences, including Buzzcocks, Wire, ...

's first album '' Throb Throb''.

References

;Sources
Lambiek

External links

* (archived)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saenz, Mike Living people 1959 births American comics artists American video game designers American album-cover and concert-poster artists