John Michael Barrett was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, the same environment that borne Kevin Smith's View Askew Productions (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma).

At Middletown North High School, he was a cartoonist for the school paper, The Lion's Roar, drawing a strip called Out of Lion which starred a group of furry felines called the Surf Kats, inspired by DIC's Cat's & Co.

Kelliekat was the leader, Tonykat the thinker, Eddiekat the rebel, Karenkat the fragile romantic, Jonniekat the prankster, and Lucykat the beatnik.

Tonykat and Eddiekat were inspired by friends, Jonniekat was based on a fun-loving social person that John wished he was, and Lucykat was the daughter of Jonnie and Kelliekat from a possible future, who spoke only in pictograms and had a pet frog.

Kel would evolve into Roxikat and Jonnie would become Johnnykat, the artist's personal avatar.

At Brookdale Community College, John majored in Visual Arts. He joined The Stall, drawing the adventures of his first anime-styled creation named Attila, a parody of Battle Angel Alita.

Attila had the personality of Bean Bandit from Riding Bean and the terrible sense of direction of Ryouga from Ranma 1/2. She was a 7-foot blonde bombshell (literally) trapped in mechanized armor, living at Brookdale, but spending several months getting lost looking for the Testing Center, winding up in Fiji in the first issue.

After graduating from Brookdale, John went to Rutgers College and worked on the school newspaper called The Medium.

John and friend Bill Rogers teamed up for a strip called Master of Fate, where the choices in the story were made by an internet voting system. The male protagonist had to choose between two female interests and deal with the consequences.

John's favorite issues were one called 'Master of Filler' where the strip was replaced by character paper doll cut-outs, and one issue where no one had voted, so the characters were forced to stare blankly at the reader for six panels until next issue.

Ignoring the Surgeon General's warning, he tried online roleplaying, which was destined to fry his brain and his college career.

From this was born a pink bouncy catgirl named Roxikat, that made his art popular and infamous in furry fandom.

At ANIMEast '95 he won a Tezuka award for Best Anime/Manga artist, and met Gold Digger creator (and his idol) Fred Perry for the first time.

He spent the next four years contributing to the Gold Digger Annual until he'd gotten the courage to pitch a spinoff idea with the Edge Guard heroes. With Fred's permission to have free-reign, and the help of publishers Elin Winkler and Pat Duke of Radio Comix, John got to write and draw a seven issue miniseries called Gold Digger: Edge Guard.

Edge Guard came out in a collected (and corrected) trade paperback in January 2003.

After finishing Edge Guard, John tackled a three issue miniseries from early Ninja High School writer James Hanrahan called Unusual U. Getting in touch with his traditional manga roots, John drew James's story about a young high school student named Danny Stringer and his first days at a strange new school, meeting strange new people, in a strange new town, overlooking an ominously looming giant robot named Gordy.

Currently, John is busy writing a new comic story that will not only feature Roxikat, but several of his original kitsune characters from Gold Digger: Edge Guard.

The story will take place in Prohibition-era 1928, serving as a prequel for these ancient shape-changing tricksters in the age of gangsters, molls, bootlegging, and the first-ever jazz music.