Mike Okamoto

Mike Okamoto (born Detroit, Michigan, United States) is an American comic book artist and commercial illustrator best known for co-creating Marvel Comics' Atomic Age; as a "good girl art" cartoonist; and as the five-time International Network of Golf Illustrator of the Year.

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Mike Okamoto attended the Parsons School of Design, in New York City, on a full scholarship from 1971–1975. He was influenced by the work of such fine artists and comics artists as N.C. Wyeth, Carl Barks, Mort Drucker, Frank Frazetta, and Al Williamson. In 1990, Okamoto met graphic designer and writer-editor Diana Light. He moved to West Virginia, where they wed the following year. There he became an illustrator for golfing magazines.

By then he had broken into comic books, illustrating writer Mike Barr's The Maze Agency #15 (Aug. 1990) and Hero Alliance #11–12 (Nov.-Dec. 1990) for Innovation Comics, where he later did painted covers for the licensed series Lost in Space and the painted series Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality: On a Pale Horse.

For Marvel's Epic Comics imprint in 1990, he and writer Frank Lovece created the four-issue miniseries Atomic Age, a 1950s-style science fiction story reimagined from a contemporary perspective. The journal Nuclear Texts & Contexts said of the "series dealing with alien invaders set during the Sputnik era" that "[a]lthough no nuclear war is featured, there is plenty of wry satire on Cold War paranoia, and on racism".Inker Al Williamson, one of Okamoto's role models, won the 1991 Eisner Award for Best Inker for his work here and elsewhere the preceding year.

...
Wikipedia