He was born in 1959 in Liverpool (England). He has a degree in English, and worked as a teacher for 15 years before his career as a comics writer. The first comics he wrote were both rock -orientated, a biographical comic about Ozzy Osborne and fantasy comic about Pantera.

His work on the Hellblazer series is critically acclaimed. His run on the title is the third longest after Peter Milligan and Garth Ennis.

Mike's writer & creator credits continue to grow, especially on the Vertigo imprint. He wrote the Eisner Award-nominated Lucifer. Carey's recent original series, Crossing Midnight, combines elements of Japanese mythology with the modern-day themes of organized crime. This is a brilliant and very original title.

His original six part mini-series, Faker, with art by Jock, is another great title.

He has written titles for DC´s MINX imprint, the second one is co-authored by his daughter, Louise Carey.

He helped to relaunch the Red Sonja series for Dynamite Entertainment.

Carey used to be one of the X-Men writers. He started to write the team with the X-Men series in 2006, which at #208 was re-named X-Men: Legacy.

Mike Carey is the writer of The Stranded, a comic series by Virgin Comics and the Sci-Fi Channel who have collaborated on the title.

His ongoing series, The Unwritten, premiered in 2009 and has been a critical success. It tell´s the story of Tom Taylor, a young man who has been the inspiration for his dissapeared fathers very successful children´s fantasy books about boy wizard named Tommy Taylor. It has been assumed that Harry Potter -series inspired Carey to write this series, but in fact he has stated, that his reference point for it was Christopher Milne, the Christopher Robin of Winnie the Pooh books who felt that his father had stolen his childhood by writing him in the books.

Carey has also written five Felix Castor novels.