Mike Smith

Mike Smith was born in San Francisco in 1960. After graduating from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, Smith earned a bachelor's degree in humanities from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1982.

He knew that he wanted to be a professional cartoonist the moment he saw how much trouble his cartoons created when they appeared in his college newspaper, the Los Angeles Loyolan. After some advice from Paul Conrad at the Los Angeles Times, Smith began sending packages of his cartoons to newspapers in search of a job.