ULTRAIST STUDIOS

Ultraist Studios was founded at the turn of the millennium by Mike Kitchen for the sole purpose of publishing his funny book series SPY GUY.

His Clark Kent day job is as an animator for Feature Film, Television, and Video Game projects, but he’d really rather be in his basement making comics.

Mike Kitchen is the creator of SPY GUY and the founder of Ultraist Studios. He has also animated for the feature film industry on such movies as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Hellboy, Constantine and 9 as well as for videogames on Halo3 and Halo ODST cinematics.

Mike Kitchen was born in Albany, New York, USA, but spent the majority of his life in Ontario, Canada, where the Kitchen family has lived for over 6 generations, and where he currently resides himself. Mike has dual citizenship between the USA and Canada.

Mike Kitchen’s SPY GUY is a black & white independent series that uses the tag line “The Hard-Boiled Funny Pages”. Some of his artistic influences are Dave Sim, Reg Smythe, Ed Benedict, Chuck Jones and Katsuhiro Otomo. The initial series of one-shot comics consist of SPY GUY: BOOTLEG, SPY GUY: MINIS and SPUD & HARRY #1. SPY GUY #1 (of the Unlimited Series) was released in the summer of 2009.

In the mainstream media, SPY GUY appeared in the 2008 feature film SUPERHERO MOVIE directed by Craig Mazin and produced by David Zucker and Robert K. Weiss in the comic convention climatic battle sequence. Also recently SPY GUY had a spotlight feature in the nationally broadcast television series THE ELECTRIC PLAYGROUND in episode 259 containing an interview with creator Mike Kitchen, which aired on September 20th of 2009.

Mike Kitchen’s brother Blair Kitchen also creates a comic called The POSSUM.