Mike Baldwin

Most of us feel trapped, baffled, put-upon – cornered, if you will – by life's little travails. It's our reactions to these difficulties of just being that Mike Baldwin is trying to capture in CORNERED.

Born in Ontario in 1954, Mike landed his first job at 16. It was at a meatpacking plant. It lasted four hours. The experience made him realize what he really wanted to do – work somewhere else.

Mike launched his artistic career a few years later in The Burlington (Ont.) Gazette with a weekly cartoon called "Peepal." A panel called "Aunt Alas" soon followed. Eventually, he became the newspaper's editorial cartoonist.

Over the next several years, Mike worked at various newspapers as a cartoonist, advertising artist and art director. Before devoting his full attention to Cornered in 1998, Mike served as editorial art director at The Hamilton (Ont.) Spectator.

These experiences gave Mike a firsthand look at the new wave of technology entering the newsroom. Mike realized the value of color and decided to create CORNEREDin color every day. Advances in pagination made it practical. Other cartoons are sometime 'colorized' by a third party, but CORNERED was one of the first daily syndicated cartoons to be colored by the cartoonist. Mike also put CORNERED online and creates mini-animations twice a week for online visitors. "It's a lot of fun to see the work come to life," he says.

CORNERED was launched on April 1, 1996 and joined Universal Press Syndicate a year later.

Mike lives in Burlington, Ontario, with his wife, Lynda, and Benny the cat.