Dan, Dan, the Bizarro Man
Hang on to your coloring hats, kids …
Dover has just published a coloring book like no other. Hype? Nope. Dan Piraro, author and artist of Bizzaro!, is now a Creative Haven Artist. We caught up with him in the middle of a major household move to ask a few questions.
Dover Books: What do you hope adult coloring enthusiasts will take away from spending quality time with your drawings?
Dan Piraro: I’ve always felt that artists should produce work that is meaningful to them without trying to please anyone other than themselves, then put it out into the world and hope that others will find it meaningful, as well. One of my favorite things about art is that each viewer gets something a little different from experiencing it. In this book, I had an immense amount of fun creating a uniquely strange world on each page. I hope adults and children alike will get a kick out of visiting these worlds and that exploring them will inspire their own creativity.
DB: Are there Secret Symbols in the coloring book?
DP: Since the mid 90s, I’ve been putting a series of “secret symbols” in my daily Bizarro cartoons and my readers have enjoyed searching for them. In this book, I include a full list of the eleven official symbols and have hidden at least one of each on every page. They’re much more difficult to find in this book than in my Bizarro cartoons, however, so I suspect people will find the hunt very challenging. For an amusing explanation of the complex (and tongue-in-cheek) philosophy behind each, go here: http://bizarro.com/the-secret-symbols/.
DB: “Embiggen” seems like a perfectly correct Anglo-Saxon word to me. Did you learn it from the Simpsons? If so or if not, what else have you learned from the Simpsons?
DP: For years now, at the top of my weekly blog I’ve been telling people to click on the cartoon images to enlarge them. There was a time when I would invent a different, weird way of saying “enlarge” each week but eventually I happened upon “embiggen” and got such a positive response from readers that I ended up using it exclusively. Some time later, someone mentioned in the comments section that the word was used on The Simpsons some years ago. I love The Simpsons and have seen a lot of episodes but I’d not seen that one so until then, I thought I was the first to invent it. DOH!
DB: Could you share some of your favorite artists and also cite some influencers in addition to Dali, Wilde and Trudeau?
DP: My biggest cartoonist influence by far is B. Kliban, who did cartoons for magazines in the 60s and 70s, but is best known for his drawings of a black and white striped cat with red tennis shoes. I came across a small book of his cartoons in 1976 called “Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head and Other Stories”. I found the cartoons in that book to be so funny, creative, and unexpected that I began to think differently about the art form. While I had always been interested in single panel gag cartoons in magazines (Sam Gross, Revilo, and Gahan Wilson of National Lampoon, Mick Stevens, Jack Ziegler, Roz Chast from The New Yorker, etc.) it was that book and others by Kliban that made me want to be a cartoonist.
DB: What have you been reading lately? Any books you’d like to recommend?
DP: I’d like to invite folks to read my weekly roundup of cartoons and commentary on Bizarro.com. I typically post every Sunday and talk about the ideas behind each of my cartoons, world events, my personal life, and just about anything I think might be funny or interesting for readers. If you “like” my Facebook page, you’ll get a notification each time I post. facebook.com/bizarrocomics.
