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Michael Borkowski, a Syracuse native, felt overjoyed when he realized his favorite comic book artist, Bart Sears, lived in Syracuse.

“My art teacher urged me to contact him, so I did, and he brought me under his wing,” Borkowski said.

Now, Borkowski’s comics have appeared on major platforms, like CBS, MLB and Syracuse University Athletics.

These are just a few gigs in the Syracuse native’s art career. He’s mostly served as a freelance comic artist, working with the popular CBS reality show “Big Brother” and also producing sports art and superhero drawings. This fall, he started creating animated sequences for MLB’s “No Easy Outs.”

“You can really see that he understands storytelling with the beautiful storyboards he does,” Sears said. “I’ve always thought storytelling can be transcended if you understand it naturally. And I think he’s one of those guys that does.”

Borkowski’s career started at a young age. His best friend Michael Atiyah remembers he was always drawing growing up. They began hanging out after school to draw together in fourth grade.

Their canvas was a blank slab of drywall in Atiyah’s basement. The two would often draw Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Venom, mimicking the original artists’ styles.

Eventually, Borkowski’s passion grew into a high school job when Sears brought him on.

“When Bart hired him, that’s when I really knew (Borkowski) could do anything,” Atiyah said. “I knew he was gonna definitely achieve his dreams.”

Under Sears, Borkowski mostly worked in toy design, but he also started working on mastering comics. Sears said he first tested him on figure drawing and proportion before leveling up to human anatomy. Because figure drawing is one of the hardest things to master, Sears’ partner, Andy Smith, said that it’s the perfect place to begin.

In his senior year of high school, Borkowski said he spent nearly half of every day in the studio. Smith said Sears was tough on Borkowski. Sears would photocopy Borkowski’s work and cover it in comments using a red marker.

But Borkowski always responded well to the criticism. Sears said he called him “Rock” due to his rock-solid dedication.

“He impressed me with not only his talent and natural ability but more with his determination,” Sears said. “And one thing you definitely need in comics is a desire to sit here 10, 12, 15 hours, day in, day out, year in, year out.”

But as graduation approached, Borkowski had to make a tough decision.

Originally, he wanted to attend the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey. Sears and Smith talked him out of it. They figured he could save thousands of dollars and improve his comic art by staying with Sears. With little hesitation, Borkowski chose Sears, deviating from artists’ typical post-grad routes.

“I can literally count on one hand, if I even need that, guys that didn’t go to art school, especially in this day and age,” Smith said.

Michael Borkowski’s love of drawing started with trying to replicate the style of his favorite superhero cartoons. That love propelled him to a job as a professional illustrator. Tara Deluca | Staff Photographer

But Borkowski didn’t spend much time in the studio after high school. Sears said three years after Borkowski graduated in 1994, the studio dissolved. Through a connection Smith had in Los Angeles, Borkowski moved to the West Coast as a storyboard cleanup artist. He still keeps DVDs of films he worked on like “Ice Age,” which also earned a massive poster displayed in his office.

Borkowski always intended to return to Syracuse. He did so in 2000 and has since built a career as a freelancer. One of his longest-standing jobs was with “Big Brother.”

Beginning in Big Brother 16 in 2014, the show introduced a now-trademark competition called “BB Comics,” which involves houseguests distinguishing the difference between two nearly identical comics of their peers.

“Big Brother” needed artists. That’s when WWE wrestler Shane “The Hurricane” Helms, who Borkowski had worked with in the past, referred him to a producer.

Despite never watching the show, Borkowski thought the job sounded cool and accepted. That’s not uncommon for Borkowski, who said his jobs often come out of the blue.

“A lot of times I never know where people find me,” Borkowski said. “They find me online, sometimes it’s from a friend, sometimes it’s just a random email that I’ll get.”

His decision led to eight years of designing comics for “Big Brother,” capturing the houseguests’ personalities and hobbies alongside a catchy tagline the show’s producers provide.

He created comics for the show until Big Brother 23.

Producers usually reached out to Borkowski three weeks before the competition ran. They’d give him photos of certain contestants and their ideas for the comic. Borkowski sent them rough sketches to approve before finishing with full color ink.

Borkowski said the comics took anywhere from six hours to a few days, depending on the producers’ vision. Sometimes, he had to draw multiple characters or a cityscape, other times it was much simpler. He said the process usually felt rushed, but he got it done every time.

“That just taught me to not be a perfectionist,” Borkowski said. “You have to do your best work within the time that’s given.”

Borkowski’s online portfolio highlights some of his work. In BB20, he portrayed runner-up Tyler Crispen as a muscle-laden lifeguard — mirroring his real-life job — featuring the headline “The Life Guardian.” A season later, he drew Kemi Fakunle as “The Keminator,” wearing a superhero suit with the letter K emblazoned on her chest.

In Big Brother 22: All-Stars, he penned winner Cody Calafiore with the bottom half of his body replaced by a red tornado alongside the tagline “Don’t mess with this twisted mister.”

Atiyah said Borkowski “nailed” every contestant and thought it was a great way to promote his brand on national TV. They even attracted houseguests’ attention, including Big Brother 21 and 22’s Nicole Anthony, who hired Borkowski to draw cover art for her podcast after the show.

“Talk about a big multimedia splash,” Sears said. “He’s really good at capturing the likeness without it being weirdly photorealistic.”

Since Borkowski left “Big Brother” in 2021, he’s continued as a freelancer, specializing in superhero and sports art.

Living in Syracuse nearly his whole life, Borkowski and his dad attended SU men’s basketball games from when he was a child until he moved to California at 21. After posting some sports art on Twitter and Facebook, SU reached out, leading to numerous projects across the last decade.

Hand-drawn posters of SU sports teams, including men’s and women’s basketball and women’s lacrosse, are spread throughout Borkowski’s office. A signed drawing of Syracuse men’s basketball legend Lawrence Moten sits next to a piece of the 2018 Boeheim’s Army squad in the right corner. On the right wall is a framed special-edition Defenders of the Diamond Syracuse Mets jersey, which Borkowski helped design.

Along with sports art and shelves of Marvel and Star Wars collectibles in his office, Borkowski also displays his superhero art.

Underneath a replica Captain America shield are three Marvel Kids storybooks Atiyah and Borkowski worked on from 2013 to 2017. Hanging behind his desk are also three fully-packaged Iron Man figurines, for which Borkowski created box art.

Atiyah said he appreciates his friend’s versatility. It shows Borkowski isn’t the eager high schooler working in Sears’ studio, fantasizing about becoming a professional anymore.

“(I’ve worked) in so many different areas — I’ve done children’s books, I’ve done sports art and animation, I’ve done all kinds of different things,” Borkowski said. “I can offer a lot of different things to people.”

Published on November 12, 2025 at 11:48 pm
Contact Noah: njnussba@syr.edu | @Noahnuss99