Danny Hellman is an American freelance illustrator and cartoonist.
Education
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.
Career
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 District of Columbia Comics publications. Danny Hellman was raised in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York City, New New York He soon dropped out and began working as a bicycle messenger, while drawing and distributing posters for the rock music band Floor Kiss.
Danny Hellman"s career began in 1988.
Hellman showed Hein a portfolio of his rock posters, and a modified 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 parodying 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. Hellman"s earliest recorded cr 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 District of Columbia Comics" Bizarro World, and several one-page strips for the The Big Book of series of trade paperbacks for the District of Columbia imprint Paradox Press.
Other comics work includes Hotwire, Mad, Last Gasp Comics & Stories #1-5 (1994–1997), and Fantagraphics" Spicecapades (Spring 1999). Hellman has been described as a "veteran prankster". Following an August 3, 1999 Village Voice cover story criticizing Maus author Art Spiegelman by editorial cartoonist Ted Rall, Hellman created an email list called "Rallsballsonelist.com" and sent a satirically self-agrandizing letter entitled "Ted Rall"s Balls", 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 United States$ 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 published two charity anthologies designed to raise funds. What was to be a third issue became the summer anthology Typhon.