September 28, 2004

Activism Through Entertainment with Bizarro comic illustrator, Dan Piraro

The first installment of our 2-part series on Activism Through Entertainment features Dan Piraro, creator of BIZARRO, one of the most popular comic strips of all time.

Dan Piraro's daily cartoon feature, BIZARRO, was first syndicated in 1985 and is published in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America and 12 collections of BIZARRO cartoons have been published to date. Piraro is an animal rights activist and won the Humane Society of the United States' Genesis Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of 2002 and 2003. BIZARRO won an unprecedented three consecutive Best Newspaper Panel awards from the National Cartoonists Society in 2000, 2001, and 2002, and was nominated for its highest award, Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 2003 and 2004. Piraro's one-man stage show, The Bizarro Baloney Show, recently played to standing room-only houses at the New York International Fringe Festival, and won the festival's Best Solo Show award. In January of 2004, St. Martin's Press published Piraro's elaborately illustrated The Three Little Pigs Buy the White House.

For examples of BIZARRO and a few other strange things, visit his Web site at www.bizarro.com. For more information about his Politicomedy-A-Go-Go, go to ComicsAgainstEvil.com.

Download mp3s of the interview: part 1 (2.6 MB) and part 2 (2.63 MB)