Hello!

I bet you're wondering, who the heck I am. Well if you're not, I'm gonna tell you anyway. My name is Marko Fithian, but people online know me as Okram (or in some cases, Okram2k, or Oa'kron). I live in Phoenix Arizona, I'm 21 years old, and I am a CPhT. What is a CPhT? It's a fancy way of saying a Certafied Pharmacy Technician, or the guy who fills all your pills at the pharmacy.

I've loved internet comics as long as I've loved the internet. I am basically a child of the information age, growing up on a computer, and the internet. Ever since I stumbled across my first comic (PVP Online) I have been hooked to internet comics. Every day I perform my ritual of checking all my comics to see their latest strip, and over time my selection of comics has expanded and expanded to include quite a few different comics. I've always wanted to make my own, but I've never felt my artistic skills where nearly good enough to produce a decent comic. I finally got into photoshop, and slowly developed my skills to what they are today.

I came up with this comic back in the summer of 2004, it was a pretty normal Phoenix summer, hot, dry, and me trying to make ends meet by working long hours at my job. At the time I was a student sys admin for a community college, and to pass time during my work week, I started doodling in photoshop and came up with the idea for Roomies. If you think my drawing is bad now, you shoulda seen what it was like then. I drew the first 9 comics and posted them on a couple web forums I visit. TA Universe and LanCamp. The people who I posted the comic to really liked it, and while my drawing skills aren't nearly as good as most online comics, my humor was definatly up to par.

Unfortanetly, I put off further pursuit of the comic at the time, and didn't do anything with it until about a year later the urge came back to me. I decided I would pickup the project again, clean up the old comics a bit, and try to put together a web comic that I can keep going. This time with a renewed interest, I have managed to keep the comic going for 18 months and counting.

First I came up with the characters of Jim and Mike. They are based off of me and my best friend I grew up with, Jared. I pretty much lived more at his house then my own (even called his mom my second mom!) I am Jim, and he is Mike. At the time, I had some pretty crappy roomates, so I decided, what would it be like if you ended up getting partnered up with a bunch of crazy weird roomates that would make my current roomates. I then came up with Chitake, who is based off of a character I made up in a table top RPG. I wanted a fun interesting character that worked for a giant corporation, so I made a ninja janitor named Chitake Tinaka. As for Mortoff, I figured the only way it could have a more interesting concept if I threw a robot into the mix, and I made him a bit of a push over like I am, with a couple brothers who take advantage of him (like my brother did to me when I was growing up.)

Me personally? Well I'm not married, no kids, no nothing, really. I work for Walgreen's in their Mail Order department. I'm a big time computer gamer, I used to spend a lot of time playing MMORPG's, however lately I've been trying to not be such a computer addict, and have been trying to spend more of my time getting out and doing things in the world. I'm a big basketball fan, and have season tickets to the Phoenix Suns.

Well I hope I haven't put you to sleep, and I hope you stick around and enjoy the comic!