Dan Piraro

Daniel Charles Piraro (born 1958) is a painter, illustrator, and cartoonist best known for his award-winning syndicated cartoon panel Bizarro. Piraro's cartoons have been reprinted in 16 book collections (as of 2012). He has also written three books of prose.

Piraro was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and his family moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma when he was 4 years old. When he was in junior high school his family moved to Tulsa, where he graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1976.

He dropped out of Washington University in St. Louis. He lived in Dallas and New York City for many years and then moved to Los Angeles, after separating from his wife, Ashley Lou Smith. On 30 October 2016 he announced that he and his partner 'Olive Oyl' (or "O2") had purchased a house in Mexico and would be residing there beginning December 2016. Syndicated since 1985,Bizarro was appearing in 250 papers by 2006.

In 2013, Piraro coined the idiom "New Artists" to represent those cartoonists who distribute their work directly onto the Internet, without the use of a syndicate or a business intermediary.

In 2014, he hosted the Fox reality television show Utopia.

Piraro describes himself as "liberal and progressive politically". His cartoons have occasionally drawn complaints about his politics, as in 2005, when a cartoon he drew in support of gay marriage was sent to all papers publishing the color version without an alternative caption he had intended to supply to papers wishing to avoid the issue.

In 2002, Piraro became a vegan. His activism is visible in Bizarro, often incorporating vegan and animal cruelty themes into his cartoons. In an interview, he stated, "If you look at my strip over the years, I’ve always had a form of animal sympathy and animal rights." Piraro has also incorporated an entire section devoted to veganism on his website, detailing his reasons for becoming a vegan and other vegan-related information.

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