"Bad Atom" began life in early 1994. I say early 1994 because I'm not exactly sure of the specific date. I was only 12 at the time and I wasn't exactly big on keeping detailed records. In fact, I was downright slovenly. My desk at school was always a mess (I used to call it "The Pit of Horrors") and I could never find anything in it, especially my homework. This always irritated my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Strayer. She was a mean old witch who didn't like me or my drawings. Of course, when I grew up, I later found this to be untrue.

One day, she was teaching a science lesson, and I was introduced to the concept of atoms. At the time, I thought they were just the coolest things. I mean, something so small that you couldn't see? Needless to say it fueled my imagination. So I started drawing some little atomic characters. First came Adam Atom and Amy Atom, who are either identical twins or lovers. In some pictures they can be seen holding hands. Hmm...

Then followed the evil Andrew Atom (see how they all had names starting with A? How clever) who had some distinctive spinning eyes and razor-sharp spikes. I began to draw these characters on every homework assignment and test that I could. Mrs. Strayer was not amused. Oddly enough she didn't mind Adam or Amy. She just didn't like Andrew Atom because he looked "bad". And that's when Bad Atom was born.

In the beginning, Bad Atom looked and acted nothing like the character he is now. He was basically a bad guy. It's analogous to Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie", except Mickey carried a machine gun and started shooting every teacher in sight. This was the beginning of the controversy regarding my cartoons. But as I continued to draw Bad Atom, he slowly became the good kid he is today. He lost the spinning eyes (which went to the evil Good Atom), the slanted eyebrows and the long, scary spikes. He looked pretty close to the way he does now, albeit more crudely drawn. But now that Bad was good, he needed a nemesis.

My other 6th grade teacher was Mr. Haas. I never liked him, he always creeped me out. (And he still does too.) I had him for only one class, Social Studies. I never wanted to be in that class, but looking back I guess it was worthwhile - Mr. Haas was the inspiration for Bad Atom's new enemy, a character named Warthair H. Blob. Not that Mr. Haas was covered in hairy warts or anything, that was just my imagination at work. My friend at the time, Josh Dorfmeyer, was the one who suggested changing the name of the character from Warthair to Warthairy. At the time, I didn't like the change, but now I couldn't imagine it any other way. As for the H, it stands for Hormonius. It doesn't have any real meaning, I just thought it was funny back then.

Now that Bad Atom had a nemesis, he needed an ally. In the 6th grade, girls were still the enemy. And there was no girl that I loathed more than Michelle St. Johns. My friends and I would pick on her mercilessly, although she would get us back from time to time. One day, she came in sporting the world's worst perm. I mean, it was bad. She looked like Little Orphan Annie. I took to calling her "Swirly Top". The nickname stuck, inspiration struck, and Swirly Top was born. Swirly Top was a smart and sarcastic 12-year-old girl (later 13 as the real Michelle grew up, then back to 12 as I refined the concept). She was also Bad Atom's occasional girlfriend, depending on the story. This aspect of the character was eventually dropped. Aside from that, Swirly Top has actually stayed pretty much the same over the years.

Next came the shadowy character of Mister Mystery, who was actually created by another friend, Matt Belsole. At first, there was a little bit of competition with our drawings, but eventually he just let me use Mister Mystery as I saw fit. And since I changed the design to a certain degree and included the character in my copyright registration, he's all mine now.

Now that I had this varied cast of characters, I started drawing comics and cartoons all over the place - including my desk. On many occasions I was known to doodle a picture of Bad Atom on my desk with a pencil and use my own spit to wipe it off. Unfortunately many of my earliest comics were either thrown away by my two teachers or forever lost in the Pit of Horrors. I even began work on a book of comics, but I lost the book, and the comic I started was lost as well. All I can remember from it is that Bad Atom was in his house and Warthairy H. Blob knocked on the door. Before Bad Atom could open the door, Warthairy slammed it into his face!

As I continued to draw my comics, I continued creating more characters. First came the Gargantuans, giant muscular guards with bullet-shaped heads that served as Good Atom and Warthairy H. Blob's army. Next came the Jellos, miniature versions of Warthairy with yellow eyes. They were followed by the She-Devil, sort of a cross between the Devil and the Tasmanian Devil. She was part devil-woman and part tornado. She also had her own miniaturized minions, the Li'l Devils. Obviously these characters all became Bad Atom's enemies, and eventually all but the Jellos faded into oblivion.

Meanwhile, my comics were becoming popular as I showed them to more of my classmates. The teachers hated the subversive humor and threw them away. By the time the 7th grade rolled around, the idea behind my "Bad Atom" comics became very simple: Use Bad Atom to make fun of everything and everyone. This was mostly aimed at teachers as well as the occasional student. (For example, I knew a kid named Matt Naugle, who looked like a chipmunk. In the comic "Bad Atom Meets Matt Naugle", Bad Atom offered Matt some nuts. The comic was quickly confiscated.)

Eventually I started taking measures to protect my comics. I kept them on my person at all times in case my locker got raided by the teachers again. This happened several times because I was fond of leaving food in there until it turned green. I left a bagel sandwich in there for 8 months. I became very good at hiding the fact that I was drawing, and kept them in an unmarked folder. I only showed them to select individuals, and only before or after class. By the time I got to the 8th grade, I loosened up on my restrictions, and many more people got to see "Bad Atom". Even the teachers started to appreciate my creativity to an extent. And thanks to the measures I took in the 7th grade and the increased freedom in the 8th grade, I was able to save a great deal of my comic pages from this era.

Speaking of pages, by that time I had expanded my comics to full pages. This allowed me to keep them all together, as well as save paper. Some of them would just be collections of one-panel gags; others would be full stories. And of course, the controversy continued with such comics as "Unnecessary Violence" which featured scenes of torture, as well as crediting Bad Atom for the Oklahoma City bombing. (That particular comic was later given the George Lucas treatment.) There were even two controversial characters created at this time.

In the 6th and 7th grades, J.R. Strzelecki was both my friend and my enemy. We would talk and do school projects together, but at the same time, my other friends and I would make constant jokes about his weight. You see, by age 12 he weighed 250 pounds. He was an easy target. He was also very easy to draw, and I turned him into a "Bad Atom" character. All the "Jelly Roll" character ever tried to do was try to eat or sit on poor Bad Atom. Looking back, I can understand why he took offense. Like most of the other characters of that period, "Jelly Roll" disappeared. This made the real J.R. very happy, and we became very good friends. We even became roommates after we graduated high school.

In 1996 and 1997, I got tired of drawing all those short one-panel gags, and decided to make some longer ones. The first one was called "Who Shot Bad Atom?", a parody of The Simpsons' "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", which was a parody of Dallas' "Who Shot J.R.?" Oddly enough, my own J.R. character didn't appear in this story. But the other controversial character did appear - the insane Kinky Atom. She was purple, with a big afro and drag queen makeup. Of course, adults weren't too fond of the character's name. I had to explain that the word "kinky" also means a mental defect. I was really just being clever. And just so everyone knows...she was the one who shot Bad Atom, and she is now being held at the Kooky People Institute.

"Who Shot Bad Atom?" was followed by several other short comic books, each shorter than the last. One of the more notable ones was called "Bad Atom in Color" which my first full-length color comic. I had drawn the characters in color before, but this was something different. From that point on I tried to use color as much as possible.

1997 rolled around, and I began drawing a series of regular four- and eight-panel comic strips, just like in the newspaper. At this point I was still drawing everything in pencil though. I couldn't draw with a pen because I'm left-handed and my drawings would be nothing but smears and fingerprints. It wasn't until later that I discovered my special $1.50 drawing pens. Also at this point, I had finally set the premise of "Bad Atom" in stone. Or so I thought.

As originally conceived, "Bad Atom" was very different than it is now. First of all, it was called "The Adventures of Bad Atom". The microscopic world of atoms was simply called "Atomland". It was basically the town that Bad Atom lived in. He had his own house. Warthairy H. Blob and Good Atom were in Atomland too, and lived in an abandoned warehouse. Bad Atom's parents and little brother Buzz appeared (although they looked different) and had their own house. The atom characters made frequent trips to the human world using a portal in the center of town. The tone of the cartoon was still pretty wacky and juvenile.

That series of comics was well-received, and includes some of my favorite jokes to this day: the "sunglasses" bit; Warthairy's catchphrase, "Prepare to die for no good reason!"; the "chicken sandwich on the rocks" joke and many more. Some of the controversial elements remained - in one comic strip Bad Atom sees Swirly Top holding a baby. He then complains that it doesn't look anything like him. I don't even want to think of the implications of that line.

On April 25, 1997 I submitted "The Adventures of Bad Atom" to the United States Copyright Office. On May 6th, 1998 I got my copyright, and started putting the copyright symbol on every comic strip, drawing and napkin doodle that I made. Of course as time went by, the concept changed again. Gone were the Gargantuans, the She-Devil, the Li'l Devils, Adam and Amy Atom, J.R. and Kinky Atom. Some notable comics included my very first attempt at a full-color comic book detailing the story of how "Bad Atom" all began. I made it to page 4 before giving up. That didn't bother me though, I had a new project going - I was going to get "Bad Atom" into the newspaper.

Throughout the following weeks and months, I drew a series of new comic strips (using my special new art pens) for use as samples to send to various newspaper syndicates. People would always ask me why I didn't try to send "Bad Atom" in to the newspapers. And I would always have to clarify that you don't simply send your work into the local paper, you have to send it to the national newspaper syndicates that distribute comics strips across the country. That's why some comic strips appear in certain areas of the country but not others.

I sent in the best of my comic strips to the syndicates and waited. Over the course of the next 4 to 6 weeks, I received their rejection letters one by one. Even though it could be considered a setback, it actually motivated me to do even better. Failure has a way of making me do that.
I continued drawing that series of comic strips through March 2000, simply because I enjoyed drawing them and others enjoyed reading them. I was even interviewed by a local newspaper on the subject of my comics. I wanted to show the article to other people, but it was full of inaccuracies (Bad Atom is 12 inches tall? My second-floor apartment has a basement? Warthairy H. Blob is a criminal mastermind who is too stupid for his own good?) and the writing was sloppy too - 'copyright' was spelled wrong! It's sort of embarrassing now.

Anyway, I was also hard at work expanding the concept and putting more thought into the characters and the storyline. Let's go back to 1997, while I was still drawing my comics in pencil and Bad Atom was being harassed by the evil Jelly Roll. At that time I wrote a crude sort of script for the first television episode of "The Adventures of Bad Atom". The first script was appropriately titled "The First Adventure". The story wasn't even close to my final draft circa 2004, but some elements survived, including the way Bad Atom meets Swirly Top and falls down the basement stairs.

That "script" was followed by three more episodes, "Bad Atom Comes Home" (later deemed unusable because the concept had changed), "Bad Atom and the T.V." (rewritten and used as an official script), and "Willie Winkle and the Candy Factory" (now in outline form). I enjoyed being able to tell the story of "Bad Atom" in this manner. Returning to 2000, I now had six years of material behind me, as well as a newfound enthusiasm for writing. I made the decision to get "Bad Atom" on TV.

The first thing I had to do was change the title. "The Adventures of Bad Atom" became simply "Bad Atom". I outlined the first few stories so I knew what I wanted to do with the plot and characters. I even created some new minor characters: Swirly Top's Mom, her little brother Wendell, and Magnet the dog. Over the period of the next three years, I refined the concept to the point that it was suitable for presentation to TV executives. I wrote the first ten scripts for the series (unprecedented for a series that isn't even in production yet). I also completed a Writer's Bible, a more detailed Writers'/Directors' Guide, Character Design Information for 2-D and 3-D character models, set designs, concept art, and much more.

At the same time, I created my website, www.badatom.com. The site went up in July of 2000 and has been around ever since. I now update it weekly with brand-new "Bad Atom" comic strips, as well as comics from my other cartoon series. I have made a great deal of material available, including the pilot script, the theme song, pictures, games and other multimedia. Slowly but surely, people are starting to take notice of "Bad Atom" and I even have some loyal supporters. It's my way of trying to get some attention. I have other ways of getting attention as well. I sell "Bad Atom" merchandise from my online shop, and I am more than happy to wear my "Bad Atom" T-shirt in public. I even have a "Bad Atom" bumper sticker that covers my car's entire bumper. Sometimes I forget that it's on there, and I wonder why the people driving behind me are staring at the back of my car.

I have also made contact with several people in the animation industry. Although I have not secured a $10 million production deal or anything like that, I have learned a lot about the process and talked to a number of industry professionals. Many of them have thought very highly of the idea. Now it's only a matter of time before I meet the right person and make my dream come true.