Mike Roden's unique comic creations have appeared in over 200 comix, fanzines and magazines, about half of which he published and distributed himself. While many of his friends and fans have enjoyed his comics for decades, I didn't discover Thru Black Holes Comix until 2006 when I chanced upon his eBay store. After getting a few of his minicomics, I became a huge fan and started buying everything I could. Mike noticed my purchasing volume and began throwing freebies in with my orders. Soon we began exchanging emails and from the start, Mike was always exceedingly kind and generous.

In early 2007, I asked Mike for an interview for my yet-to-launch website and he graciously agreed. Not long after that, I learned he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Mike never got rich from his career in comics and I wanted to help, so I devised the first Michael Roden Benefit to help him with his medical expenses. Though Mike did have health insurance, the co-payments on all his treatments would be quite a burden. Many of his fans and friends rallied around the benefit, selling comics and donating the proceeds to Mike and his wife, Linda. I'm sure the benefit didn't raise a ton of money, but I hope it eased their financial stress.

Despite the wearying effects of his illness, Mike still wanted to forge ahead with the interview I had asked him for. Over the course of a few weeks, we exchanged emails in which I asked questions and he provided answers. Although I could have kept that up for months, I felt like I had pestered him enough and wrapped up the interview on March 26.

Mike passed away on June 14, 2007. While I never met him in person, when I read one of his comics now I feel a certain affinity with the wizard behind the curtain.



You grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Did you have a classic midwestern childhood, like something out of Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best?

Yes, it was really a Leave it to Beaver-type of time. I think I was lucky to grow up in the ‘50s. In those days kids could run around and ride their bikes everywhere without even a thought about being abducted. I had a lot of fun buying comic books, going to the soda fountain—really! We lived near Coney Island Amusement Park on the Ohio River and my mom and dad took me there quite often after I went to live with my grandparents.

So you bought comic books as a boy?

As many as I could get my grandma to buy! When we used to go to the soda shop to buy comic books, I would never buy superhero comics. It’s not that I disliked them, but my interests were more in the fantasy-type comics. Like Super Goof, Casper.... Later I bought Plop! magazine because my very favorite artist was, and still is, Basil Wolverton. I also bought all of the Ugly Stickers cards with gum inside. I remember at first the cards would smell like the gum.

And of course I bought Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine. As you might have guessed, I was never any good in school. I was just too preoccupied with playing and drawing to pay attention to reading, writing and 'rithmetic. In those days my grandma and I would do a lot of shopping. I was so spoiled I used to get all of the good toys. I guess that’s how I got started collecting toys. I still have cabinets full of vintage toys.

Your grandmother really did spoil you. But didn’t you say you went to live with your grandparents, but your mom and dad took you to Coney Island? What am I missing?

Well, yes, I didn’t explain that completely, did I? You see, my parents were like the characters out of the movie, Grease, except my mom wasn’t as innocent as Sandy. To be honest, my mom was a bar room slut. My dad liked to drink and party, too, but he was a good, hard-working carpenter man. They got along about half of the time. Once they woke me up when they were fighting in the middle of the night, standing up in the middle of their bed. My dad spent that night in jail. They went out drinking all night twice a week. Friday and Saturday night. This expanded to include Tuesday nights later. But let me tell you, my dad never let me go to school without my lunch money and would always get up to go to work. My mom now, she would sleep all day most of the time.

Anyway my dad had a Harley motorcycle and used to take my mom and me out for rides. Now remember I was just a baby! So my seat was a cardboard box strapped on the back. Jeesh, laws were much more lax then! After I was born my mom used to carry me around from bar to bar in another cardboard box. She really wasn’t ready to be a proper mother, and I think she realized that. In my first year she gave me away to her mother. My grandmother was a wonderful woman and taught me all of the right values and how to be nice.

So how did your mom and dad come back into your life and take you to Coney Island?

When I was five years old both my mom and dad moved in with me and my grandparents. They were mostly trying to sponge off my grandparents for food and a place to live. It was a weird time, but I was just a little kid and kind of shy at that, so I was a “good boy.” Plus, I really thought we were a Leave it to Beaver-type family. So I tried to be nice to everybody. Would the “Beav” talk back and misbehave? Besides my grandmother spoiled me rotten. I got every new toy. Lots of home cooking. It was great. But my parents didn’t like to be in the house much. Sometimes I would be out in the front yard playing and mom and dad would pull up in their car and say, “We’re going to Coney Island!”

Man, I loved that place. It had several big roller coasters, a laugh-in-the-dark ride called The Spook, a ride called The Lost River which was a boat ride inside dark tunnels with a big climb and then a water flume splash down. We went there a lot because they did miss me even though they had given me away. And coming in the house would have been too uncomfortable. So Coney was the perfect place to go. It would just be me that went with them. My grandparents never went.

It sounds like your parents and grandparents didn’t always get along. With all of you living in one house, was there ever friction between them?

Well, yes there was friction. My grandma never gave anybody any trouble, but there was friction between my dad and my grandpa. No big fights though. Just hard feelings. Grandpa thought my dad was a bum. He wanted better for his daughter, even though he thought she was no good.

What was your home life like after you became a teenager?

Mostly I was pretty happy. Those were the genuine hippie days of the '60s. Even though I was a little young, I still boycotted grapes, distributed The Independent Eye hippie newspaper, wore hippie clothes, grew long hair.

Did your parents voice any objections to your evolution as a hippie?

I think it kind of wore on them after a time, especially with my mom. One night I was in my room with my girlfriend, Linda Carter, playing Pink Floyd. My mom opened the door and said it was too loud. I said okay and turned it down. Apparently it wasn’t enough. She came back in drunk and locked her fingers in my long hair and tried to tear hunks of it out. I had to hit on her arm to get her to let go. I moved out that night.

That was rather sudden. Where did you go?

I ended up moving to an apartment building where Linda’s family lived. My dad was really sorry about that. He wanted me to come back home so bad. But I just couldn’t. I had had a taste of freedom. Unfortunately, Linda had to move to another apartment miles away so I could live with her brothers.

Wow, that was quite a sacrifice she made for you. How did you get so lucky to meet her?

I met Linda in my senior year at Withrow High School. I used to see her walking in the halls from class to class. We were never in the same class but we would both end up bringing our lunches to the auditorium. Sometimes I wouldn’t have any and she would share her's with me. Then we’d end up just leaving school in the middle of the day and spend the rest of the day at the Art Museum or Natural History Museum. That was our senior year.

Obviously, Linda’s parents supported the idea of you moving into their building?

They were unbelievably supportive. Essentially the Carter family took me in. Linda and I had been together for a while at that point. Her parents knew my parents were drunks and they had kind hearts. Plus they had raised four kids of their own who were still hanging around, so I guess they thought, “What’s one more?” The night I left home I went and crawled in Linda’s bedroom window—she still lived in the “kid’s apartment”—crawled into bed with her and we’ve been together ever since. Her parents had a separate apartment down the hall.

How did you support yourself after moving out?

Through my family and friends. Truth be told, I never graduated from high school. The hippie days and my lack of authority at home made it too easy to skip out on classes. I was playing hooky for all but thirty days out of a half year before I quit my senior year. But at the same time, I was working at my dad’s piano rebuilding shop. Then after a few years, when I was twenty, I started moving pianos for Allen Ross Piano & Organ Company with Linda’s older brother, Paul. This was around the time that Linda, Paul and I moved out to the country, into a Cincinnati street car with a room built off of the front, in a permanent set up.

You lived in a street car?

Yeah, it was really cool at the time. The street car was situated in the middle of the woods, twenty-five miles from Cincinnati. We rented it for fifty bucks a month! For a year or so we only had an outhouse for a toilet, and that was pretty cold in the winter. The rent went up when the government made the landlord put in a sewer line. But boy were we happy about that.

And you lived there with Linda’s older brother, Paul? I guess he was not overly protective of his little sister?

No, Paul wasn’t like that at all. He was a funny, easy going guy. We are still friends. He lives in Iowa now. We had so much fun together. We went on all kinds of vacations to different beaches, caves, amusement parks. And had some wonderful pets. Which my grandma would watch while we went away.

So you found domestic bliss living in the country in a Cincinnati street car with your future wife and her older brother?

I'll tell you those were some of the best days of our lives. Although the fact is it's lucky that we didn't come out damaged because those were LSD days. Point being those were the days that shaped me art and music-wise.

So LSD was a big part of your life back then?

Let me tell you, the hallucinations that I had back then with Linda and my friends would shape me forever both art and music-wise. It’s nearly shameful the amount of trips that we all took. It was so much fun, even though we’d be burnt out for days following a big party. We had a group of close friends that would join us, pretty much like a private commune. Music and psychedelic lights would flow out of that place like some kind of hippie heaven. We went tripping on many vacations to the beach, Mammoth Cave and the Smoky Mountains. Luckily none of us were ever busted.

How did music influence your creative process?

My first love was the Stones Their Satanic Majesties Request. Then I liked Lothar & the Hand People, King Crimson, The Mothers.... But it wasn’t until Linda started working at Kidds Book Store in the ‘70s that we really started to collect import records. Like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul 2, Gong. Nowadays I write psychedelic music for the Thru Black Holes Band and then later turn it into artwork and comix.

How did you get into the comic book business and what led you to publish your fanzines, Thru Black Holes and Nemesis?

I met several guys like Mike Banks and Arthur Metzger, who had two different fanzines, Co-Ax and Laughing Osiris. I thought, I can do that. When I first learned what a fanzine was I thought it sounded fun. So I made up Thru Black Holes Magazine and Nemesis Horror Art-zine. Thru Black Holes Magazine #1 was in 1978. Nemesis Horror Art-zine started in 1979. To promote them I placed an ad for Thru Black Holes Magazine in the Starlog magazine classified section. And a classified for Nemesis Horror Art-zine in Fangoria magazine. Amazingly people wrote back. Even Ray Bradbury!

Ray Bradbury sent you a fan letter?

After I sent him an issue of TBH Magazine, Ray Bradbury sent me a post card that said "keep up the good work Mike." Later he sent me a Christmas card. A lot of great people used to write to me—Brian Lumley, Charles de Lint, Robert Bloch, Ron Nance. This was mostly because I was in the Esoteric Order of Dagon APA.

I perceive your creative style as a weird mix of John Thompson and Rory Hayes, with a touch of Basil Wolverton craziness. What comic artists were most influential on your creative style?

Funny you should mention them, because I used to collect every psychedelic underground comix that I could find. Those particular artists are my heroes. John Thompson’s Sphinx Comics and Eternal Comics were my number one inspirations in UG comix. And Rory Hayes Bogeyman comix were right in there, too. But even before any of those guys came Basil Wolverton. He’s the king to me and I think we all owe a great hats off to him.

After what you experienced in the 1970s, were the ‘80s a critical point of your career as a comic artist?

The ‘80s were an amazing time for me art-wise. It was my love of underground comix and John Thompson in particular that inspired me to try it on my own. I wrote to John Thompson once and told him that I owed a lot of my art style to him. He wrote back and said that I had taken it so much farther than he had, and that it was great. I also wrote to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and told him how much of an inspiration he had been to me. Both John Thompson and "Big Daddy" joined in with the Thru Black Holes Comix artist crowd.

Your collaborations with Roth were memorable high points in your comix. What intrigued you about his career?

Well, it started when I was very young. During grade school in the ‘60s I used to build Rat Fink and “Big Daddy” Hot Rod models. In the ‘80s when my comix were meeting with some success I decided to write to “Big Daddy” and send him some Crazy Men Comix. He was very impressed and sent me a whole stack of Rat Finks and other characters to build into my drawings.

You’ve collaborated with many terrific artists over the years. What is it about the collaborative process that keeps your interest?

I just like to try a lot of different things, and I’ve always loved collage. Sometimes I like to see my own characters in my backgrounds, and sometimes I like to see ancient etching type characters in my backgrounds. Then when other artists started to like the Thru Black Holes world backgrounds, they wanted in. What could’ve been better? Fun guests that wanted to have their characters in there. Nowadays I even draw or photograph my own collage material and cut it out and add it in.

You were featured in Weirdo Magazine in 1985, when Peter Bagge was the editor. How did that come about?

Peter asked me. I was thrilled to do both an 11 x 17 center spread and color back cover. In those days color work was done by hand color separations using rubylith on clear acetate. I did all of that myself for my back cover.

Why did you stop creating comix back in the late 1980s?

Well, my mom passed away at 48 and my dad at 52. When my dad passed away in 1988, I pretty much took over the piano and furniture shop he had started. I rebuilt and refinished pianos and furniture for the next fifteen years. It took up so much of my time, I quit doing comics.

So for fifteen years, your only creative outlet was rebuilding pianos and furniture?

Not exactly. In 1989, shortly after I took over the piano/furniture business, my buddies convinced me to start up a band to cheer me up. At the time, Linda and I had just moved to our house on Big Indian Road, where we have a big room with a vaulted ceiling. I thought it was a good idea. I needed something to cheer me up. And so the Thru Black Holes Band was born. It’s made up of me, Jerry Rieger on rhythm guitar and Bolt—Bill Rolson—on lead guitar. I do the vocals, which is as much storytelling lyrics as singing, plus I play the synthesizers, electric drums and guitar. I also write most of the songs. I like to call us a psychedelic garage band. For the next twenty years we would play music approximately every two weeks on Saturday all day. Linda would fix us up a great supper each time, to perk us up.

It sounds like you were a multi-talented musician. Did you have previous experience playing music?

Well, I played guitar in high school. I was in several bands that would play at school dances. Bands like the Delirium Love. We played Ventures-type tunes like Wipe Out, Apache, Telestar, Gloria. Back then I also helped produce psychedelic light shows. I was big part of a great light show called The Chameleon Chemical. We actually had a hearse to lug all of our light show equipment around in. We had everything you needed; the overhead projectors with colored oils in water, home-made movies, super 8 cartoons, black light projectors and colored-floor spotlights. We put on slide shows as part of the show, too, and I made all the slides. It was great.

What kind of music did the Thru Black Holes Band make?

We did a lot of different styles of music over twenty years. We made what I like to call science fiction/psychedelic space rock, plus lots of blues, reggae and pure electronic music. Jerry Kranitz, our official Thru Black Holes Band webmaster, has transferred all of our music from the cassettes to CDs. The website is under construction now. When it's finished all 24 of the Thru Black Holes Band CDs will be available for free downloads. I’m going to redo the cover art and liner notes for every jewel case.

What inspired you to get back into creating mini-comics after so many years away?

After 2003, when I retired from the piano business. Back then my only comix friend was Dale Lee Coovert. I had lost touch with all of my other comix buddies. But it just felt like the right time to get back into it. After all, I had nothing but time on my hands. The first one I did was Halloween #5. It was really fun to do a new comic book and to appear in some scenes as myself in photos. Now I’m planning to appear as a character and narrator named Filthy Pete the Castle Grounds Keeper in The Haunted Castle. And as Captain Mike the Pirate in Pirate Adventure.

Did all your drawing skills come back right away?

It all seemed to come right back to me. I had been drawing cassette covers the whole time. Only now I had the computer as a tool. I never abuse the abilities of the computer. I use it to reduce or enlarge images for collage, or to help me create collage images from photos. But I always print it out and then cut the images out and put them together by hand. I guess some people would call me backwards for not using Photoshop a lot more. But someone commented about this... once an artist always an artist. That person was my family doctor who is also a personal friend because I was his very first patient. I mention that because he was the one who gave me my computer. Before that I had never touched one. That was 2004. It was because of the computer that I was able to find nearly all of my old comix artist buddies and reunite to bring Thru Black Holes Comix back to life. A lot of the comics I do now are actually song lyrics from Thru Black Holes Band. Songs like The Skull House, The Tiny Man, Quaking at the Shining Coats of Silver Snakes, and others.

How do you think your skills have changed over the years, from the late ‘70s to now?

I don’t see that they have changed all that much really. Nowadays I get to use Micron Pens instead of Rapid-o-graphs, which were so hard to maintain and very expensive. I think my computer skills have really helped bring me up to date.

How have your ideas changed over the years?

To begin with my art used to be all psychedelic. Later I turned to more cartoony characters like the Crazy Men. In the beginning I used to feel that I had some sort of cosmic message to share. But as time went on I tired of that and turned to having more fun type characters and stories. Lately I seem to be doing a little of both.

What are some of your personal favorites among the books you have created?

There are so many it’s hard to keep track of all of them. For sure, two of my favorites are Ho-Daddy's Big Adventure and Halloween #7. But I love the three-color cover, digest-size Crazy Men Comix, too. I think Plain Loon Comix has a very special story; one of my better ones. And Queen of Hairy Flies is certainly famous. Of the collage zines, Ghoul-Land is very special.

Are there other comic book creators that you find interesting?

I love all of my comix buddies especially my fellow artists that contribute to my comix. But I think I’m pretty out of touch with today’s artist scene. I spend all of my time drawing. I never blog. I guess I’m just an old dude. It’s lucky that I even have a computer that my doctor friend gave me. I make use of it though, keeping in touch with all of these cool artists.

Tell us more about your latest comic book projects.

The current project that I’m working on is The Gallery, which Jim Main is producing. It’s almost finished. I’m also working on Pirate Adventure comix. It’s a digest-size comic, with twenty-four pages and color covers. All my great artists buddies contribute characters or whole pages to the project. This time I appear in the comix as the narrator, Captain Mike the Pirate.

Another project that my fans and friends are excited about is The Haunted Castle story. I built a two-foot-tall, very intricate haunted castle that I will use in the comic, plus several sets that will also be used in photographic collages. The castle is from a kit, but it is very intricate and I’m haunting it up a lot. I play a character named Filthy Pete in the story, one of many characters that haunt the castle. I took photos of myself that I will add into scenes with other characters drawn by my artist buddies. The story will take place in captions under the photos, but I have to keep the plot a secret for now. Also, some of the characters are really toy action figures. I wish I could have made the characters myself, but that’s kind of out of my league. So I’m having fun and doing the whole thing like I was a little kid, which I really am at heart.

You’ve done a lot of collages that combine photography and graphics. Are the haunted castle collages different from your previous work?

They are quite a bit different from my traditional drawings and collages. The photos that I’m taking of individual scenes are very realistic looking. They look like stills from an animated movie. And the way that I’m putting it together looks really great. It’ll be fun. I have a lot of money invested in what will amount to 4 or 5 pages. This is unusual too. Usually it just takes some different-sized pens and some paper.

You’ve developed such a close relationship with your many fans. What makes the relationships between you and your fans so special?

Well I just try to be a nice guy. I care a lot about people’s feelings. One of the chief reasons that I even do comix is for the friendship. So being snobby or uncaring just couldn’t be a part of TBHComix. A lot of people say that they’re always happy to see that they have an email from Mike Roden is because it’s always so full of energy.

You were recently diagnosed with cancer and have been undergoing some long-term treatment. How has your illness changed your perspective on life?

Well to start with I’m afraid that some of my buddies feel uncomfortable hearing from me these days. Because of my health problems. But it doesn’t have to become the focal point of my correspondence. I’ll get through this. And I only mention it lately if they ask. I’d much rather be talking about my latest comic release. Or Pirate Adventure because artists are still sending me artwork for that one at this point. My perspective on life... well to tell you the truth my health has always been so bad that each comic that I come out with feels like a blessing. That was one of the big reasons for my big publishing frenzy the past couple of years. I always feel lucky to still be around.