Mike Shea, a displaced Massachusetts native now living in the Washington DC area, has been a professional writer/editor since 1999. During and after graduating from the University of Richmond, he has worked on an array of different publications, from newspapers to public relations releases, textbooks to magazines. “Pandora’s Box” is his first stab at writing a comicbook. When not busy driving Brett crazy with too much dialog in too many small panels, Mike spends his free time feeding his insatiable movie addiction or prowling used bookstores. When asked where the idea for “Pandora’s Box” came from, Mike says that he loved the now classic attempts to bring the superhero into the real world that were so prominent in comicbooks of the late 1980s. But with many creators moving away from that idea, he saw an opportunity to put his own unique spin on that old idea. “However, this book was nothing but an idea until Brett came on. He shaped the characters and the world they live in. I don’t think this book would be anywhere as good as it is without him.”


Brett Thompson, born in Rifle, Colorado, drew his way into the University of Northern Colorado. Graduating from Colorado State University, he and a friend left immediately for New York City in his friend’s VW Bug. Living in NYC for six years, he drew, painted, showed art - selling a few pieces, met and worked with some cool artists, started doing a lot of printmaking, and sketched in some of the frightening parts of NYC. “I remember hanging with a bunch of homeless guys on Christmas morning drawing them as they tried to make a fire in a trash can.” By luck he received a grant from the government of Japan to study traditional Japanese woodblock printing under a master, considered by his own country as a national treasure. While in Japan, Brett got turned on to Japanese comic books (manga). “I was slow to learn the language, so manga images were my best, clearest form of entertainment.” He also clearly remembers sketching people on the streets of Japan - girls putting on their make-up on a street corner, a couple of Japanese kids kissing with pigeons all around them. “I slowly started to get petty good at peoples characters.” Moving back to Rifle, he met and married a great patient woman, kept drawing the people of this area and “destiny led me to Mike Shea and LiveWire.”


Special Thanks: Mike thanks Christian Dawson for his script assistance, and Chad Vaughan and Carleton Jillson for sharing their web knowledge. Brett thanks Paula Thompson, his wife, for understanding the time invovled with this project, Jeff Hamms and Jill Calvert, comic guides and Fumiko Goto, for his bio picture.