| Michael Saenz | |
| Birth Date: | 3 December 1959 |
| Birth Place: | Chicago, Illinois |
| Nationality: | American |
| Art: | y |
| Notable Works: | Shatter Donna Matrix Virtual Valerie MacPlaymate Lunar Rescue |
Mike Saenz (born 3 December 1959[1]) is an American comic book artist and software designer. He is the creator of Shatter, as well as an early adult video game, MacPlaymate. Saenz was also the founder of Reactor Inc., a defunct interactive game company.
Saenz was born in Chicago, Illinois. As the founder and CEO of Reactor, Inc., he developed and published interactive entertainment on CD-ROM. Reactor produced Spaceship Warlock, Virtual Valerie, Virtual Valerie 2, Virtual Valerie: The Director's Cut, and Donna Matrix.
The comic book Shatter was written by Peter Gillis and illustrated on the computer by Saenz. It was initially drawn on a first-generation Macintosh using a mouse, and printed on a dot-matrix printer. It was then photographed like a piece of traditionally drawn black-and-white comic art, and the color separations were applied in the traditional manner of the period.
After a brief career as a professional comic book artist for hire, he went solo and continued to innovate in the fields of comics as well as computers. He developed ComicWorks, the first computer program for creating comics. He later went on to develop (Marvel Comics, 1988). He provided black and white graphics and animations for the 1988 Macintosh game Lunar Rescue.[2] In 1993, Saenz created Donna Matrix, a computer-generated graphic novel with 3-D graphics, published by Reactor Press.
Saenz created the cover for Chicago punk band Naked Raygun's first album Throb Throb.