About the Artist of Agent 0040oz, Mark Bussler

Who is the scholar and philosopher behind the Internet's most exciting, educational and malt liquor endorsing comic book, Agent 0040oz?  Why Mark Bussler of course.  A 25 year old Pittsburgh native, he learned to draw from reading lots and lots of Garfield and GI Joe comics as a kid.  Near the end of the 80's he began reading Bloom County by Berkely Breathed religiously and acquired all the books featuring some of his all time favorite characters such as Bill the Cat, Opus and that great moose with a missile strapped to his head.  All this time he continued drawing because he had no life and they took Robotech off the air, which he's still pissed about.  

Around 8th grade he stared reading stuff like the X-Men, Spiderman and Punisher and got very into learning to draw comic books.  Two books of extreme interest were Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's Hard Boiled, one of the best comics ever made.  And Masamune Shirow's Appleseed, his all time favorite comic artist and creator of the legendary Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed and Orion.  The art of Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and of course Berkely Breathed also intrigued him greatly.  At some point early on in high school he tried his first attempt at syndication with a strip called TV Land, which sucked, but he was 15, what do you want?  

After many other assorted comics he created Bolfar: Hero of the 9th Moon, which evolved into many forms such as another syndicate attempt in 1995, a college strip in 1994 and 1996. 

Mark attended Bucknell University where he excelled in pissing off everyone with the lavishly lude, crude and ignorant Captain Bucknell which is where Agent 0040oz made his first appearance.  Captain Bucknell featured such great hits as the talking and dancing kegs from planet X-40, Mortal Pongbat, The Fantastic 40 lethal army of kung-fu women, 2040 a Drunken Odyssey, ID-40, drunk squirrels and Agent 0040oz.  Captain Bucknell ran his sophomore  and junior year and in a shorter format his senior year.  

His senior year Mark made a final attempt at selling out with the strip Mass Media which was picked up for a brief instant by a national syndicate, but Mark wasn't very good at family humor for some odd reason so it died. It wasn't his best work anyway.  After somehow graduating with a degree in business mark went to work in advertising and attended film school. 

He is now the production manager and art director for Inecom. New 0040 books are currently in the works.