On Topic: Case of the clandenstine cartoonist

This column, intended to be about careers and identity, almost became a detective story. My search to find a missing friend ran into false leads, misdirection, a doppelgänger, hidden identities, foreign intrigue and even foul play, if you can count a tick bite as foul play.

The concept was to look at professionals who had followed the less-obvious path. One self-created person I wanted to write about was Douglas Michael, though I'd not had contact with him in, I hate to say it, maybe 15 years.

But, heck, how challenging could be to find anyone in this age of Google-as-oracle, right?

I first met Doug when we both were freelancing cartoons for a glossy entertainment magazine called “Living Single.” (Typical topics included romantic getaways, fitness and “Oh, why doesn't he call?”)

My monthly contribution to this fluffy enterprise was a one-panel cartoon that often featured a bulbous-nosed character who favored wide-collared shirts as he tried to crack “the dating scene.” (What can I say? It was the 1980s.)

But Doug's work, titled “Rupert's Travel Companion,” would run across a couple pages and depicted such bizarre travel highlights as glacial ice surfing and the first American team of female impersonators to reach the North Pole.

We hit it off, possibly because we both were poking fun at the very publication that was paying us. A few years later I coerced Doug to create cartoons for an arts quarterly I was editing.

One installment of his “My Life in Art” told how a painter couldn't sell his bricks-as-canvas art. So the man became a performance artist who'd receive money to toss his bricks at buildings, parked cars and even the people who commissioned him.

I loved Doug's work, with its seemingly simple line drawings but subtle facial expressions and body movements.

Doug eventually moved to New York City, where he wrote and drew, among other things, a series of semi-serious-instructional books about economics and law under the title “A Cartoonist's Guide.”

He also wrangled a deal with big-time Fantagraphics Books to publish his comic book series, “Tales From the Outer Boroughs.”

It was there he introduced a disconcerting old man named Mister Seebring.

Letters from New York dwindled over time, and I moved, more than once.

A few weeks ago when I began my hunt, the only online references I could locate were stores selling used copies of his “A Cartoonist's Guide” and some 1990s writers' group website with ancient email addresses.

I did uncover a Doug Michael who drew cartoons for “The Baptist News,” but he pretty quickly turned out to be a red herring.

The next day, Rollo May-like, I suddenly remembered “Tales From the Outer Boroughs.” A flurry of research revealed a

one-line reference to William Seebring, “reclusive New York playwright.”

So I searched for “William Seebring playwright,” and up popped a couple plays by him. One was “The Last Wish Baby.”

Then it all came back to me - Seebring, the character from Doug's comic books. “The Last Wish Baby” was another of Doug's absurd storylines, this one about a baby born without a heart and the media circus that followed its every napping moment.

I then unearthed a bevy of productions of “Last Wish Baby”

by Indian theater groups in the United States and Bangalore -

an adaptation by an Indian-American student. “The Original Last Wish Baby,” credited to William Seebring, was staged all over the place.

One production was put on at Cornell College in Mount Vernon during its 1999-2000 season.

Had the cartoonist been swallowed up by his fictional creation, who in turn had evolved into a published playwright?

At a dead end, I turned back to that old email address and sent a message.

Within an hour, to my shock, came a reply. And the good news is it was from Doug, not a cartoon character.

As it transpires, Doug had remade himself, but not into a facsimile of his own imagination.

A few years ago, he'd contracted Lyme disease after being bitten by a tick. As part of his recovery, he discovered the doctrine of Weston Price, the influential nutritionist.

A big part of that system includes sprouted bread. So, in 2008 in a small town in Pennsylvania, Doug began baking.

He started selling his loaves at a farmers market. His business, Columbia County Bread and Granola, received mention in More Magazine, he started blogging about it, and today it's “morphed from a manageable sideline into a huge, demanding business,” he told me.

Trader Joe's requested samples a couple weeks ago.

“I desperately need to find some new ovens, and I've suddenly got three employees,” he said.

Doug still does cartoons on occasion for Salon.com and once a week for his former hometown newspaper, the Bedford (New York) Record Review.

The cartoonist is now a happy, full-time baker. And, on occasion, he's still lobbing bricks.