According to legend, Jonas Kyratzes was first discovered under a cabbage leaf in Wiesbaden, Germany, where his parents were working as spies for the International Socialist Conspiracy. Alarmed by the German weather, they used a soup-powered rocket to escape to Greece, where Jonas proceeded to grow into a hairy biped of some kind.
Growing up, Jonas was primarily influenced by his psychic link to the spectre of Karl Marx, which at that time was haunting Europe. Jonas shares Karl’s appreciation for beards, literature, and the overthrow of capitalism.
A major event in the young artist’s life occured when Joe Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, travelled backwards in time and implanted a chip in Jonas’s brain. For two years, the chip caused his mind to expand considerably, ultimately allowing him to invent air (one of his most popular inventions) and giving him the ability to make Greek Orthodox priests catch on fire by looking at them. The latter ability proved particularly useful in his vicious campaign against the Archbishop of Athens.
Unfortunately, in his sixteenth year, the chip began to malfunction; due to its interference, Jonas became convinced that he was a game designer. Much to the consternation of the civilized world, he actually began developing games, releasing one every two hundred years. Scholars attribute the long gaps between games to the fact that much of his brain is dedicated to the art of eating things.
A chance encounter with a giant slug in 2003 led him to move to Germany to study. He began by studying English and “Theatre, Film and Media Studies” at the prestigious Goethe University in Frankfurt. Much to his surprise, the latter field turned out to be primarily dedicated to the works of Theodor Adorno, a 20th-century hypocrite and follower of Zuul, and to films released prior to 1908. Shocked and disgusted, he decided to concentrate on English and American studies. This field, it turned out, was dedicated to all aspects of the German language and the sexual fantasies of a Jewish-Austrian neurologist called Schlomo.
Still hoping to get something for the money he was paying for his education, he spent much of his time in the fields of postcolonial literature and American Indian studies. The focus in postcolonial studies on studiously avoiding all contact with reality ultimately made him abandon that particular endeavour, though he has some fond memories. His adventures in the world of native America came to an end when the last professor who believed in the existence of native populations retired due to not being paid. He is scheduled to be replaced by a painted watering can that says “everything is a discourse and the Indians are extinct” when peed in.
When not learning about the ways in which literature can become further removed from reality and enjoying the mud-like qualities of modern academic theory, Jonas worked to support himself. He began by sending spam for an unscrupulous cousin, and soon graduated to working in a call center. He quit both jobs on the verge of insanity and started working for a slow-witted bird with a clastic head, doing pointless tasks. He quit this job after the bird squawked at him in an unexpected way. He then spent several years in the English Department’s Writing Center, helping people who should never have become teachers unleash their evil upon helpless children. He still prays to Sky Cat for forgiveness.
He also worked for a professor at the university, but felt forced to quit that job due to the presence of a giant slime monster in the university’s flooded basement and his age-old fear of the Blob.
Pursuing his love of blathering also led Jonas to spend several years in student theatre. There he met some very lovely people, as well as several creatures that seemed to have been dreamed up by H.P. Lovecraft after a particularly bad case of diarrhea. He wrote and acted and directed, but more importantly he also met his wife-to-be and frequent collaborator, Verena.
Jonas and Verena got married on July 23rd, 2009, in the presence of their closest friends and a strange person made of bricks. They went on a honeymoon to the Dominican Republic, where Jonas communicated with blue crabs and green lizards, and was frequently mistaken for a monkey, a species which – he had to explain – is not endemic to the Dominican Republic. The explanation often earned him delicious bananas.
At some point he started selling some of his games, thinking it would be nice to spend his life creating art. The alternatives seemed insufferably boring to him. Jonas gets bored easily.
When he’s not working, Jonas rides the solar wind and plots with a small black feline. He once saw Jesus kick Ayn Rand. Jesus apologized, but Jonas isn’t sure that he meant it.