Michael M. Wartella is an American underground cartoonist, animator, writer and director based in New York City, generally publishing under the name M. Wartella or just Wartella. He is best known for his work in The Village Voice and on Cartoon Network's MAD.
He is the founder of Brooklyn's Dream Factory Animation, a boutique studio specializing in the production of animated shorts for corporate and indie clients.
According to his 2013 autobiography, Strip Show: 25 Years of Comix, Controversy & Copyright Infringement, Wartella began his professional career at age ten producing a weekly comic strip called Clubhouse Kids for a local newspaper, which ran for two years during 1986–1987.
Later, while a student at The University of Virginia, Wartella created the absurdist art comic Ackxhpæz (1994–1996) which he then expanded and nationally self-syndicated to alternative weekly newspapers (as "Nuts") from 1998–2000. The humor in many of the cartoons was controversial as exemplified in a 1999 comic about the Columbine High School massacre which prompted an outcry when it was published in Denver.
I'm so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave
Your presence still lingers here and it won't leave me alone
These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
You used to captivate me by your resonating light
Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me
These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me, I've been alone all along
When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me, me, me