Danny Hellman
Encyclopedia
Danny Hellman is an American
freelance illustrator
and cartoonist
nicknamed Dirty Danny. Since 1989, his illustrations have appeared in publications including Time
, Fortune
, Sports Illustrated
, The Wall Street Journal
and others, and his comic book
work has appeared in DC Comics
publications.
neighborhood of Queens
, New York City
, New York
. He graduated from the High School of Art & Design, in Manhattan
, in 1982, and took figure drawing classes throughout the 1980s at the Art Students League. After teaming with Bill Mantlo
, a veteran comic book
writer, on a presentation for a comic based on the Robotron: 2084
arcade video game, and being told by editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco
that Hellman's artwork was not yet professional quality, Hellman briefly attended the School of Visual Arts
. He soon dropped out and began working as a bicycle messenger
, while drawing and distributing posters for the rock music
band Floor Kiss.
" who lived in his grandparents' attic in Queens, followed illustrator friends in getting freelance work from Kevin Hein, art director of the weekly New York City pornographic
newspaper Screw. Hellman showed Hein a portfolio of his rock posters, and a "tweaked" version of one became Hellman's first Screw cover. He continued to contribute cover art to the magazine on a regular basis, and provide occasional interior comic-strip work parody
ing the likes of Superman
, The Simpsons
, and The Cosby Show
, until Screw ceased publication in 2006.
In the early 1990s, Hellman went on to illustrate for art director Michael Gentile at New York Press
— later continuing with Gentile with the art director moved to Habitat
— and the local periodicals The Village Voice
, and Guitar World
. Hellman eventually drew for national publications including Time
, Fortune
, Sports Illustrated
, The Wall Street Journal
, and FHM
.
In comic books and related periodicals, Hellman in the early to mid-1990s self-published a handful of minicomics that included Coffee Drinkin' Man, written by East Village
painter Geoff Gilmore, and Peaceful Atom and the Mystery Mice. His earliest recorded credit is penciling and inking
writer Dennis Eichhorn
's two-page autobiographical story "Iron Denny" in Starhead Comix's Real Schmuck #4 (April 1993).
He went on to draw comics for a variety of alternative comics publishers, as well as an Aquaman
story for DC Comics
' Bizarro World, and several one-page strips for the The Big Book of
series of trade paperbacks for the DC imprint
Paradox Press
. Other comics work includes Hotwire, Mad
, Last Gasp Comics & Stories
#1-5 (1994–1997), and Fantagraphics' Spicecapades (Spring 1999).
author Art Spiegelman
by editorial cartoonist
Ted Rall
, Hellman created an email list called "Rallsballs@onelist.com" and sent two sets of emails impersonating Rall to at least 35 cartoonists and editors
, including one former employer of Rall. Rall eventually retaliated by filing a lawsuit
, claiming among other things, libel, lost employment opportunities and emotional distress, and asking damages of US$ 1.5 million. Eventually four of Rall's five claims were dismissed, leaving only libel per se. As of February 2005, the case had not gone to trial.
To defray legal costs, Hellman began in 2000 to publish a comics anthology series
, Legal Action Comics
Volumes One & Two (2000 and 2004), which features work from many alternative comics
artists including Robert Crumb
, Art Spiegelman
, and Tony Millionaire
. Hellman edited and published a new anthology in July 2008 entitled Typhon.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
freelance illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
nicknamed Dirty Danny. Since 1989, his illustrations have appeared in publications including Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
and others, and his comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
work has appeared in DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
publications.
Early life
Danny Hellman was raised in the Jackson HeightsJackson Heights, Queens
Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the Northwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York, New York, United States. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3...
neighborhood of Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He graduated from the High School of Art & Design, in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, in 1982, and took figure drawing classes throughout the 1980s at the Art Students League. After teaming with Bill Mantlo
Bill Mantlo
Bill Mantlo is an American comic-book writer, primarily at Marvel Comics, best known for his work on two licensed toy properties whose adventures occurred in the Marvel Universe: the Eagle Award-winning Micronauts and the long-running Rom. An attorney, he also worked as a public defender...
, a veteran comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
writer, on a presentation for a comic based on the Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084 is an arcade video game developed by Vid Kidz and released by Williams Electronics in 1982. It is a shooting game that features two-dimensional graphics. The game is set in the year 2084, in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans...
arcade video game, and being told by editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco
Tom DeFalco
Tom DeFalco is an American comics writer and editor, well known for his association with Marvel Comics and in particular for his work with Spider-Man.-Career:...
that Hellman's artwork was not yet professional quality, Hellman briefly attended the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
. He soon dropped out and began working as a bicycle messenger
Bicycle messenger
Bicycle messengers are people who work for courier companies carrying and delivering items by bicycle. Bicycle messengers are most often found in the central business districts of metropolitan areas...
, while drawing and distributing posters for the rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band Floor Kiss.
Career
In the summer of 1988 Hellman, then a self-described "stonerStoner
-People:* Stoner , bass guitarist* Alyson Stoner , American actress and dancer* Andrew Stoner , Australian politician, member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, and the Leader of the New South Wales National Party...
" who lived in his grandparents' attic in Queens, followed illustrator friends in getting freelance work from Kevin Hein, art director of the weekly New York City pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
newspaper Screw. Hellman showed Hein a portfolio of his rock posters, and a "tweaked" version of one became Hellman's first Screw cover. He continued to contribute cover art to the magazine on a regular basis, and provide occasional interior comic-strip work parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
ing the likes of Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
, The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, and The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...
, until Screw ceased publication in 2006.
In the early 1990s, Hellman went on to illustrate for art director Michael Gentile at New York Press
New York Press
New York Press was a free alternative weekly in New York City, that was published from 1988 to 2011. During its lifetime, it was the main competitor to the Village Voice...
— later continuing with Gentile with the art director moved to Habitat
Habitat (magazine)
Habitat is an American real estate magazine founded in 1982 and aimed at co-op boards, condominium associations, and related professionals such as attorneys and managing agents...
— and the local periodicals The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, and Guitar World
Guitar World
Guitar World is a monthly music magazine devoted to guitarists. It contains original interviews, album and gear reviews and guitar and bass tablature of approximately five songs each month. The magazine is published 13 times per year...
. Hellman eventually drew for national publications including Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, and FHM
FHM
FHM, originally published as For Him Magazine, is an international monthly men's lifestyle magazine.- History :The magazine began publication in 1985 in the United Kingdom under the name For Him and changed its title to FHM in 1994 when Emap Consumer Media bought the magazine, although the full For...
.
In comic books and related periodicals, Hellman in the early to mid-1990s self-published a handful of minicomics that included Coffee Drinkin' Man, written by East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
painter Geoff Gilmore, and Peaceful Atom and the Mystery Mice. His earliest recorded credit is penciling and inking
Inking
Inking is the process of using a liquid known as ink, which contains natural or man-made pigment.* Inking is work done by a Inker, one kind of commercial artistIn biology:...
writer Dennis Eichhorn
Dennis Eichhorn
Dennis P. Eichhorn is an award-winning American writer best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book series Real Stuff...
's two-page autobiographical story "Iron Denny" in Starhead Comix's Real Schmuck #4 (April 1993).
He went on to draw comics for a variety of alternative comics publishers, as well as an Aquaman
Aquaman
Aquaman is a fictional superhero who appears in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger, the character debuted in More Fun Comics #73 . Initially a backup feature in DC's anthology titles, Aquaman later starred in several volumes of a solo title...
story for DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' Bizarro World, and several one-page strips for the The Big Book of
The Big Book of
The Big Book Of is an Eisner Award-winning series of graphic novel anthologies published by the DC Comics imprint Paradox Press.-Publication history:The Big Books were published between 1994 and 2000...
series of trade paperbacks for the DC imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
Paradox Press
Paradox Press
Paradox Press was a division of DC Comics formed in 1993 after editor Mark Nevelow departed from Piranha Press. Under the initial editorship of Andrew Helfer and Bronwyn Carlton the imprint was renamed. It is best known for graphic novels like A History of Violence and Road to Perdition...
. Other comics work includes Hotwire, Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
, Last Gasp Comics & Stories
Last Gasp
Last Gasp is a book and underground comix publisher and distributor based in San Francisco, California.- History :Founded in 1970 by Ron Turner to publish the ecologically-themed comics magazine Slow Death Funnies, followed by the all-female anthology It Ain't Me Babe, Last Gasp soon became a major...
#1-5 (1994–1997), and Fantagraphics' Spicecapades (Spring 1999).
Ted Rall lawsuit
Hellman has been described as a "veteran prankster". Following an August 3, 1999 Village Voice cover story criticizing MausMaus
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a biography of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of...
author Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
by editorial cartoonist
Editorial cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary....
Ted Rall
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is an American columnist, syndicated editorial cartoonist, and author. His political cartoons often appear in a multi-panel comic-strip format and frequently blend comic-strip and editorial-cartoon conventions. The cartoons appear in approximately 100 newspapers around the United States...
, Hellman created an email list called "Rallsballs@onelist.com" and sent two sets of emails impersonating Rall to at least 35 cartoonists and editors
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, including one former employer of Rall. Rall eventually retaliated by filing a lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
, claiming among other things, libel, lost employment opportunities and emotional distress, and asking damages of US$ 1.5 million. Eventually four of Rall's five claims were dismissed, leaving only libel per se. As of February 2005, the case had not gone to trial.
To defray legal costs, Hellman began in 2000 to publish a comics anthology series
Comics anthology
Comics anthologies collect works in the medium of comics that are too short for standalone publication.- U.S. :- UK :British comics have a long tradition publishing comics anthologies, often weekly...
, Legal Action Comics
Legal Action Comics
Legal Action Comics is a series of comics anthologies edited by illustrator Danny Hellman which features work from many alternative comics artists.The first volume in the series was published in 2001, and the second followed in 2003...
Volumes One & Two (2000 and 2004), which features work from many alternative comics
Alternative comics
Alternative comics defines a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to "mainstream" superhero comics which in the past have dominated the US comic book industry...
artists including Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
, Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...
, and Tony Millionaire
Tony Millionaire
Tony Millionaire is an American cartoonist, illustrator and author known for his syndicated comic strip Maakies and the Sock Monkey series of comics and picture books.-Early life:...
. Hellman edited and published a new anthology in July 2008 entitled Typhon.
External links
- Hellman blog
- Lambiek Comiclopedia: Danny Hellman
- GigPosters.com (Hellman rock-poster gallery)
- "Current Status of Ted's Lawsuit Against Cyberstalker" - TedRall.com (no longer links to article)
- "AOTS Classics: Artist Danny Hellman", March 28. 2006