Dan Piraro: Tales of Bizarro's World
By JASON COLLINGTON, 5/24/2006
Bizarro creator Dan Piraro is a Tulsa native. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World
Tulsa native shows cartooning isn't only talent
Cartoonist may be his title, but don't throw Dan Piraro in with the likes of Calvin and Hobbes' Bill Watterson or Garfield's Jim Davis.
Piraro showed Monday night during his last "Bizarro Baloney Show" tour that he can sing, entertain and give his fans an experience that makes his daily cartoon more of a joke between friends than a cheap laugh.
Just as Bizarro is not the typical comic in newspapers throughout the country, its creator is not someone on stage willing to stay within the borders of the panels he works in.
At the start of the show, he asked everyone to join him in prayer. He asked God, on behalf of the audience, to not hit the Nightingale Theater with lightning because of what he was about to say.
"It's all in fun, Mom," Piraro said after the audience said "Amen." He had his parents move from their typical front-row seat to the back of the room, because he wanted to give audiences the adult version of his show.
Because Tulsa is home, Piraro usually cleans the act up a bit. But after some consideration, he said he wanted to give his fans and his parents' friends from church the show in its purest form.
"I moved my mom over there so I wouldn't see her giving me 'the look,' " he told the audience of more than 100, while pointing to the back of the room.
Piraro was joined on stage by his daughter, Killian, who played violin and joined him in some of the sketches.
During the almost two-hour show, Piraro did characters, including Humpty Dumpty and the unibrowed Frida Kahlo, who sang a song about her infamous marriage to artist Diego Rivera titled "It's Not Easy Being In Love With A Big, Fat, Ugly Man."
He also shared photos of himself and his family, including an early one that he said explains the origin of his rebellious streak.
"My parents dressed me as a kid like Tucker Carlson," he said, referring to the conservative, bow-tied TV analyst.
Then he took a member of the audience, a woman named Julia, and performed what he called a blindfolded cartoon. But he wasn't the one being blindfolded -- she was. He then drew her blindfolded. As a pirate. On the shoulder of a parrot.
His jokes and the cartoons he showed poked fun at everyone from Republicans to people who eat meat.
Piraro, a vegan, discussed his metamorphosis into someone who doesn't eat meat or any other animal products before showing an animated cartoon -- narrated by a pig -- outlining why humans are not made to be carnivores.
Although it didn't get a lot of laughs, the video supported the cartoonist's efforts to not back away in his art from what he believes.
In his latest book, "Bizarro and Other Strange Manifestations of the Art of Dan Piraro," the cartoonist looked back at his 21 years of Bizarro and his Bible Belt roots. His is a story of a college dropout who started the cartoon because he was a sad, frustrated family man struggling in the advertising world. What started out as something to amuse himself is now something entertaining millions of readers in more than 200 newspapers today.
This weekend, Piraro is up for the Reuben Award, the National Cartoonist Society's top accolade.
It's the proper place for one of Tulsa's true originals, someone who showed Monday night that cartoons are just part of his gallery of talent.