Mike Carlin started out in the business at DC Comics as a summer intern in 1974. He was hired by Marvel Comics as a writer and artist on Crazy magazine. He later became an assistant editor under Mark Gruenwald, and also wrote a short run of stories in Captain America as well as the Assistant Editors Month issue of Marvel Team-Up (Aunt May and Franklin Richards vs. Galactus). Carlin moved to DC in 1986, where he became Superman group editor. He is currently an executive editor at DC Comics.

The Batman Adventures -- the first DC Comics spinoff of The Animated Series -- features a screwball trio of incompetent super-villains: the Mastermind (a caricature of Mike Carlin), The Perfessor (a caricature of Dennis O'Neil), and Mr. Nice (a caricature of Archie Goodwin), a super-strong but childishly-innocent super-villain.