bizarro

dan piraro, clinton hill, chocolate

November, 2005. profile.

Last week was San Francisco, next is Los Angeles, but today, Sunday, syndicated cartoonist Dan Piraro is at home in Brooklyn, and that means football: the Dallas Cowboys versus the New York Giants.
"I'm watching this in hopes that the Dallas Cowboys lose," he says with a wry smile. "I always root against any Texas team for any reason."
Dan's deadline is Monday, so he spends Sunday watching the game while drawing all of the week's Bizarro cartoons, sitting on the couch with his stocking feet on the wood coffee table, gaze alternating between the television and the cardboard and cartoon balanced on a pillow in his lap. He has short, dark hair, with sideburns that flare out below his earlobes and tiny silver hoop earrings. Black Clark Kent glasses balance on a large nose. A tiny burst of facial hair about an inch long sprouts out from under his bottom lip, and he twirls it and narrows his eyes when he's anxious or concentrating or both.
"I get done a lot faster if I just listen to music and don't watch TV. But…" he looks back at the television. When he misses a good play, there's a minor battle with the remote control before he finagles the TiVo into replaying the segment. The TiVo console stands on its side next to the television and the hundreds of compact discs set in tall, precarious towers. The living room is bright and overwhelming, with lime green walls and chairs carved from hunks of wood, throw pillows shaped like pigeons and gorillas, and nearly every useable surface occupied by a mess of papers, a little sculpture or a stack of hardcover comic books.
"How cool would it be to send all those rednecks home angry." It's not a question. Dan's bitterness toward Texas is born from a combination of liberal politics and personal experience: he lived in Dallas for 22 years, pining for a move but feeling obligated to stay and support his family, until he discovered that his wife was cheating on him. After they divorced, he moved to New York, a city he'd often fantasized about since childhood.
When he's drawing, Dan keeps the sound down on the TV to avoid the commentators. He mimics their accents and mocks the players' names, often laughing at these imitations, a high-pitched giggle that makes him seem much younger than 47. He pencils each panel on letter-sized paper, then inks over the lines, finishing the bulk of the week's work in a few hours, mostly while watching football. Drawing has always been Dan's favorite thing to do, but he credits his sense of humor for getting him out of commercial illustration and into cartooning. "I was always class clown. Occasionally I would get in trouble for it, but I usually knew when to stop, where to draw the line."
Nearly twenty years after it first appeared in print, Bizarro is syndicated by King Features and is printed in over 250 newspapers, and Dan has published ten different collections of the cartoon. Despite his success, or perhaps because of it, he is acutely aware of how he measures up to other cartoonists, many of whom outsource some work to save time. Dan, however, likes to maintain complete creative control. "Reason #423 of why I am not rich and probably never will be. Reason #422 is I'm a lousy businessman and I hate marketing. #421, I can't keep my mouth shut about the things I believe." Dan, an animal-rights activist and vegan, started criticizing animal cruelty in Bizarro only a few years ago, but most of his more partisan political commentaries didn't appear until before the election last fall. Those cartoons are often the targets of fiery hate mail, some of which he uses in his stand-up comedy routines. He reads them aloud in an impassioned performance for me and the television. The first letter rambles about Dan's liberal leanings and atheist tendencies before a warning: when Jesus returns for the last judgment, "you will be sorry." Dan's response: "When Santa Claus returns and feeds conservatives to his magic reindeer, you'll be sorry." Another letter tells him that Bizarro is not his political pulpit.
"There's always the people who say I am not Doonesbury,'" he says, and launches into a sneering imitation of his critics. "'Does the first amendment give you the right to desecrate other people's beliefs? Yes, yes it does. That's exactly what it means!" He sighs. "This country's so screwed up."
Dan muses about finishing his Bizarro run and devoting more time to “other projects,” presumably more cross-country jaunts and oil painting. "I've always planned to retire and produce paintings and drawings and have gallery representation and sell some work," he says. "I think I'll be remembered as one of the better gag cartoonists of the late 20th century." He giggles, then spins around and opens a drawer on a brushed metal cabinet, takes out a dark chocolate candy bar and breaks off a small chunk. "I eat tiny amounts all day. It's good for you." He pops the piece in his mouth. I mention the mood-enhancing qualities of chocolate and he laughs. "I need all the mood-enhancing I can get."