|  | | Short version: This blog is where I post my comic book and writing work, but I take on many different jobs so I can afford the medical bills to treat my wife's stage IV breast cancer. If you're looking for the product, project, and marketing professional Matthew McLean look over here.
Long version: You know that stereotype of the Irish Catholic family with half a dozen kids? Yeah, that's my family. I'm the last of six children that somehow made it to adulthood. You know that part of the stereotype where the Dad is an abusive alcoholic and Mom is a horrible, guilt slinging shrew? Not at all. Dad was a hard working man who managed to provide for all of us (including university educations) while Mom was a loving woman who managed somehow to be a strong disciplinarian while being indulgent.
Life started in Kansas City, Missouri in where we lived in a neighborhood among families frighteningly similar to our own. I played GI JOE and Transformers with my brother Mike and life was good. Occasionally, I went outside, but tried to avoid it. Eventually, we moved to Knoxville and I learned what it was like to live amongst people who had much more money than us. It's an experience I'd recommend that everyone have at least once.
Being Catholic in the deeply religious and deeply evangelical South is also a the equivalent of being a cannibal amongst vegetarians. In high school I got used to being called a cannibal (due to the sacrament of transsubstantiation), told I was going to Hell, and that I needed to accept Jesus (insert irony). This, along with the rising pedophilic abuses amongst the Catholic clergy, pretty much turned me off from organized religion. I believe in God, I just don't trust trust anybody that works for him.
Eventually, I escaped high school to college. Growing up I, alternately, had wanted to be a priest, lawyer, and astronaut. However, I tried to major in computer sciences (#epicfail due to an inability to grasp coding as a language) and then moved to a journalism major, mostly due to romantic notions I had about the profession. After having those notions abused for three years, I could see the dawning of the new age of yellow journalism and decided my self-worth and my soul couldn't withstand being in a business that favored getting the sensationalized story first rather than getting it right. However, I was also sick of academia, so I finished out my degree so I could escape with a diploma.
Fortunately, I got back into computers with the help of two good friends who managed to explain them to me in terms I could understand, something which professors consistently failed to do. Unfortunately, the only work I could find in Knoxville was at a tech support call center, a job that looked fantastic after the company fired everyone and moved the call center to Iowa, forcing me to work as a manager at a corporation that believed that friendship is stealing. It was a dark period in my life, but during it I became acquainted with Mr. Johnny Cash, so that balances things out.
I was rescued from this drudgery by a pair of entrepreneurs out of Colorado who offered me a job with their new company. I jumped at the chance, and moved myself and my lovely wife Cheryl to Colorado where I became the fifth employee of Webroot Software. Over the next six years, we worked hard, played hard, and grew the company to several hundred employees. It was a bright period in my life, but George Bush managed to get reelected, so that balances things out.
In 2005, Webroot was purchased by a venture capital group that promptly reorganized by firing lots of people that they told the original owners they wouldn't. I was, naturally, among them. Provided with ample amounts of free time, I began writing. Since then I've contributed to BOOM! Studios, Legendary Press, Studio 407, Visionary Comics, and Comics Bulletin. This unexpected and, at first, unwelcome career change has ended up being extraordinarily cool and much fun.
Unfortunately, my wife (the lovely woman in the picture above) recently has been diagnosed with breast cancer so I'm taking on any just about any paying work in order to afford the medical bills. Fortunately, writing and consulting allows me to stay at home and take care of her. While she is responding to treatment and things are looking up, it's still one Hell of a wake up call, so we're now putting some things into priority, not the least of which are Things We Want To Do Before We Die. Traveling is high on this list, which is why I'm now writing this from Alaska. However, Colorado is our home, the place we love the most, filled with good friends who have been incredibly supportive throughout the latest troubles, so while we'll see the world, that's the place to which we'll always return.
Matthew McLean
Kicker of Asses, Chewer of Bubblegum, Mad Bastard |
|
|
