A little about me …

I found my first comic book in the third grade and have been absolutely hooked ever since. Spider-Man, Superman, you name it- I couldn’t get enough. Which proved difficult spending the majority of my childhood in a small town at the mercy of the haphazard comics selection of the local grocery store. All too often the next issue of a favorite series would fail to arrive the next month and I’d be left wondering what happened. Taking matters into my own hands, I’d often write and draw the next chapters myself. Thus began my cartooning career.

Over time, trying to draw richly illustrated superhero’s taxed my patience and my interests shifted to the deceptive simplicity of newspaper comics. At 12, Charles Schulz’s work looks attainable, whereas Steve Rude’s looks like a blessed mystery. Blissfully unaware of the actual prospects of attaining such a job, I made the decision to be a newspaper cartoonist.

With no specific degree geared towards being a newspaper cartoonist existing anywhere, I chose a college with the next best thing- a comic book store across the street from campus. Luckily, Iowa State University also had the finest student newspaper in the nation, the Iowa State Daily. Producing comics every day for the Daily proved every bit as informative as the degree I was pursuing.

A little bit more informed about the impossible odds of creating a successful comic strip, but no less determined, I graduated and began the long cycle of sending samples to newspaper syndicates and waiting. As fate would have it, a friendship with local Iowa cartooning legend Phil Hester opened the door to work on superhero comics, which, much to the chagrin of my younger self, somehow turned out to be much easier.

With many ups and downs navigating both comic books and comic strips, I stumbled onto middle grade graphic novels, which seemed like the perfect fit for the action, adventure, and drama I loved about comic books, and the humor and whimsy of comic strips. In the fall of 2019, my agents and I sold the SORT OF SUPER series to the Aladdin imprint of Simon and Schuster. Book one was released in March 22, 2022, with the second coming out July 18, 2023.