Michael Fry Books in Order

If you want funny superhero chaos: How to Be a Supervillain → Born to Be Good → Bad Guys Finish First
If you like middle school underdogs: Bully Bait → Zero Tolerance → King Karl
If you want holiday fantasy and weirdness: The Naughty List → Bobbie Mendoza Saves the World
If you prefer a spooky standalone: Ghosted
If you want the classic comic strip: Over The Hedge → Over The Hedge II → Knights of the Picnic Table → Stuffed Animals

Michael Fry was born in Minneapolis and later made his way to Texas for college, studying at Baylor University and then the University of Texas at Austin. He drew editorial cartoons for student newspapers at both schools, which tells you a lot about where his real interests were headed.

Cartooning came first.

His first professional cartoon appeared in Playboy, and before long he was working at the Houston Post, where he created the local daily strips Scotty and Cheeverwood. Those early newsroom years gave him a fast, practical education in deadlines, gag writing, and how to land a joke in just a few panels.

From there he moved into syndicated comics, including When I Was Short and Committed. Committed, a family strip about married life and kids, ran for more than a decade and later became an animated television series. Fry also co-founded RingTales, a company built around animating newspaper comics for digital audiences, so he was thinking about how cartoons could move off the page long before that became normal.

The work many readers know best is Over the Hedge, which he co-created with T. Lewis. The strip debuted in 1995 and follows woodland animals dealing with suburbia, junk food, technology, and the strange habits of the humans next door. Fry's humor there is sly but easygoing. He likes big laughs, but he also likes watching characters talk themselves into trouble.

That strip grew into a much bigger pop-culture footprint when it inspired the 2006 animated film Over the Hedge. Around the same period, Fry kept branching out. His work has appeared in magazines, his online animation work earned award attention, and he gradually shifted more of his energy toward illustrated books for younger readers.

That move makes a lot of sense when you read his fiction. In The Odd Squad, he turns middle school into a full-scale social disaster zone for Nick, Molly, and Karl. In How to Be a Supervillain, he flips superhero logic inside out through Victor Spoil, a kid born into a villain family who is much too decent for the job. The Naughty List and Ghosted keep the same mix of cartoons, chaos, and real kid feelings.

He clearly has a soft spot for misfits.

Across his comics and novels, Fry returns again and again to outsiders, suburban absurdity, awkward friendships, and the question of how to be yourself when the group has already decided who you are. These books move fast, but they are rarely just gag machines. There is usually a kid, or raccoon, or turtle in the middle of the mess trying to figure out how the world works.

He now lives on a small ranch near Austin, Texas, with his wife Kim, their dog Loki, and several unnamed cows. It sounds like a pretty good setup for someone who still writes and draws stories about animals, weird neighbors, and the everyday nonsense of life.