Cornered by Mike Baldwin

Most of us feel trapped, baffled, put-upon -- cornered, if you will -- by life's little travails.

And it's our reactions to the difficulties of just being that Mike Baldwin is trying to capture in Cornered.

Born in Ontario in 1954, it took almost 16 years for Mike' to land his first Job. It was at a meat packing plant. It lasted four hours. The experience made him realize what he really wanted to do - work somewhere else.

Mike's career as an artist was launched a few years later in The Burlington Gazette. He began a weekly cartoon called "Peepal." A panel called "Aunt Alas" soon followed. And, 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 was editorial art director at The Hamilton Spectator.

This gave him a first hand look at the new wave of technology entering the news room. Mike realized the value of color and decided to create Cornered in 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."

On April 1, 1996, Cornered was launched and a year later Cornered joined Universal Uclick.

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