Action Pulp!

February 1, 2026

By Adam Messer

Michael Neno is an eclectic artist and writer whose genre works include time-travel,mystery, absurd non-sequiturs, musicals, spy intrigue, political satire, trippy psychedelic dreams, a journey into EDM (electronic dance music), and more.

Please introduce yourself.
My name is Michael Neno. I’ve been writing, drawing and publishing comic books, coloring books, zines and minicomics for nearly forty years. I’ve freelanced for Cracked Magazine, Nix Comics, Dark Horse, Caliber, Cretin Comix and many more. In 1996 I received a Xeric Grant from Peter Laird (co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) for the publication of my comic book Reactionary Tales. The book featured an introduction written and drawn by cartoonist Paul Pope (Batman Year 100).

Along with creating graphic designs for concert posters, album covers, illustrating magazines, children’s books and freelance lettering, penciling, inking and coloring for various publishers, I also regularly write reviews for the website Film Review Central. I’ve collaborated for print with Marvel legends Sal Buscema and Joe Sinnott, with the fantastic cartoonist and writer Sterling Clark. I won the Governor’s Award of Excellence in 1980 for painting and a 2022 SPACE (Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo) Lifetime Achievement Award.

I’ve created graphics, including album covers, posters and merchandise for the bands The Cretins, Tod and the Bad Ideas, Atomic Zombies, The Judex, The Wholly Saints and The Lowlies, as well as concert calendar posters for Natalie’s Pizza and signs and posters for Elizabeth’s Records, both Columbus, OH based.

What genres do you create art and why?

When I’m creating comics, I love all genres. For example, since the pandemic began, I’ve been writing, lettering and publishing a series of public domain mashup microcomics, mashing together various images from old public domain comics to create my own stories (and crediting the original artists, when known). I’m on my 15th book. (The first ten will be published in a collection called “You’ve Watched Enough Love Island!”). Anyway, the series of books has encompassed a lot of genres, from time-travel mystery to absurd non-sequiturs, musicals, spy intrigue, political satire, trippy psychedelic dreams, a journey into EDM (electronic dance music), and a sad rumination on memory loss. In short, I enjoy all kinds of comics and stories! Westerns, romance, drama, science fiction, horror, etc. 

What is your earliest memory of reading?

There’s a children’s book I read at a very young age that I’ve been unable to determine (I’ve described details of it to children’s book groups online and no one has recognized it). The first comic books I read were Carl Barks’ Donald Duck stories (though his name wasn’t common knowledge at the time), a Tintin graphic novel that my Dad gave me, Ballantine’s paperback collections of horror and science fiction EC comics and early Mad, and a reprint of The Fantastic Four No. 7 – all of which had a huge impact on me as a creator and reader, and still do.

When did you know you wanted to create art? How did it happen?

It happened when I read the works mentioned above. I immediately started writing and drawing my own horror comics, superhero comics, funny animal comics. I’ve never stopped (I was penciling a horror comic for Nix Comics this afternoon!). 

What makes a good character? A bad one?

There are so many different kinds of good and bad characters. One good kind that appeals to me is a character that has a relatable, empathetic goal difficult to attain, but also has degrees of hidden, possibly contradictory motives. I think it helps for a protagonist to be a bit of a mystery – even a mystery to themselves. They can surprise the reader and surprise themselves. A bad character has no depth, no mystery – a character could also be considered bad, I think, if their goal has no interest for the reader. 

What moves the story for you?

The ability of the author to conceal and surprise, to reveal only what’s necessary to compel you to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. Sometimes a character can be unpredictable, confounding even to its author who wants to steer the protagonist along a path they’re refusing to go down. This creates a tension that propels the narrative.

What is your favorite book and why?

That’s very difficult to narrow down. Can I make it a tie? 

1) James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a mind-blowing detailing of his time spent living with dirt poor tenant farmers in the ’30s. It’s both deeply intimate and almost cosmically expansive, created and lived with a dedication composed of empathy, ferocious rage and fearless honesty. 

2) Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady (the original version, NOT the later rewritten New York Edition) is a great example of a character, Isabel Archer, who’s a confounding mystery but yet full of vibrant life, as are all the characters around her, both benevolent and evil. In one highly influential chapter, nothing “happens” but Archer’s isolated thought processes, a radical experiment for 1880 that presaged all of the 20th century’s fictional deep dives into subjective experience (Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, etc.). James also jumps ahead in time, leaving the readers scrambling to determine what happened in between and dares to have a maddeningly ambiguous ending – all of which invite rereading and reconsidering. 
What do you want to say to your audience?

Make your own way in life, think for yourself, obtain information from many sources to make up your own mind, decide what you want to do and pursue it with zeal. Life goes by fast!

What advice do you have for new artists?

Practice every day. Challenge yourself. Learn to draw from life, not comic books. Spend much time alone creating work that pleases you, but then get it seen by as many people as possible. 

Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for asking these interesting questions, Adam! I’d like to mention I’ve been creating a graphic novel of Homer’s The Odyssey written and drawn in the style of early ’90s Image comics. I’m having a great time creating it and am hoping to have a floppy of my work so far out this year. 

Website: www.nenoworld.com

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