The news came out towards the end of the month that Boston cartoonist, illustrator and children's author Dan Moynihan passed away on Dec. 21 due to a medical emergency. He was 52. His friend Dave Kiersch sent us the following remembrance in the wake of his passing. For those who wish to contribute, a GoFundMe has been created to provide some financial assistance to Moynihan's wife and young son — The Editors
Dan’s cartoons spoke to me the minute I saw them. This was around 2002 when he was self-publishing a zine called Microblast. His lo-fi but jam-packed comics magazines were whimsical, inventive and playful while still speaking to a DIY aesthetic. There were skateboarding cats and hot tub time machines (long before that was a movie concept). Whoever made these comics was full-hearted, the real deal, and I had to meet him.
It wasn’t long before I’d contacted Dan and we started hanging out. I was visiting another cartoonist friend, Craig Bostick, in Boston. We met up with Dan at a used bookstore in the city. Immediately, I knew we’d be friends. Our tastes aligned in many ways because the independent spirit that Dan communicated through his drawings didn’t just come from a cartooning tradition. We were both fans of bands like The Pastels and Beat Happening because of their off-kilter jangly aesthetic. It was music that could be both dark and romantic while feeling homemade and accessible. He also had an affection for small press/homemade comics like King-Cat by John Porcellino, Pocket by Missy Kulik, or anything by Souther Salazar. At the same time, we could talk about vintage children’s books in the same breath. Dan loved artists like Roger Duvoisim, Quentin Blake, Thatcher Hurd, Ed Emberley and countless others. He was always ready to draw and had a notebook and pen handy. After the bookstore, we headed to a cafe to do some jam drawings.
Even in those early zines, I knew Dan to be an innovator. For example, a Microblast cover in two colors was a lo-fi experiment, run through a copy machine twice with two different inks! The first issue I saw of that series was already up to #14. He was always trying something new with his cartoons and experimented with a variety of formats. Who else could think of characters called “The Origami Pets” and then engineer a way that these characters could fold in on themselves like minimalist Transformers!
Movies and TV from his youth were another part of the mix that guided his writing. Dan was a fan of Pee Wee Herman, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Princess Bride, Star Wars (and Spaceballs), as well as early Saturday Night Live, The Kids in the Hall, Mork and Mindy and Bosom Buddies. Many of these influences, including classic children’s fiction, would influence the writing of his
longest graphic novels The Lint Fairy and Mark & Zark.
Dan would also be the first person I knew to experiment with early Flash animation and anything computer-related as it applied to design. The miracle is that even though he was tech-savvy, Dan always maintained a playful, handmade approach to his work — the opposite of most (if not all) computer-based art. He was expressive because he truly found joy in drawing as an escape to the sadness that life can sometimes bring.
To quote a correspondence he had with cartoonist Todd Webb, this is what Dan had to say about his drawing process. “It’s surprising and exciting to me to see what emerges. I can tend to be a depressive person, yet my drawings are always happy. It feels like it does not come from me, like I am receiving a message from God: ‘Hey, don’t be depressed! Look at the wonder all around you, and feel the joy of being alive!'."
If you read Dan’s comics, you’ll notice that his characters always have friends or buddies. And Dan made things mostly because he wanted to share something positive with others and to be your pal. Connecting to other artists and kids, along with self-expression, was a priority. He cared about making a connection through his work. Dan made many friends through his art and connecting with other zine makers like Leslie Kleinberg, Jack Turnbull and Heath Row, just to name a few, was very meaningful to him. His zine Sidewalk Bump included contributions by many of these pals that he made along the way. It also was a great display of his love for skateboarding, which he returned to in vigor in his forties.
Dan attended many small press comics festivals, including MICE in Boston, where he would table with artist Bob Flynn. Over the years he connected with such fellow cartoonists as Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Greg Cook, Jef Czecaj, Craig Bostick, Raul Gonzalez III, Alec Longstreth ... the list goes on. I once asked Dan to draw the most evil thing he could think of and he drew a loopy cartoon snake with a cowboy hat. It still looked friendly! He was such a good-natured person.
I trusted Dan because he was both talented and smart. As an undergrad he had studied at Brown University, where he had also experimented with animation. Later he went back to school many times, for teaching, design and eventually receiving an MFA in illustration from Hartford Art School. He was constantly trying to improve his skills and I’m not sure where he even found the time. I mean, he even played guitar! He was doing all this while working full time as a graphic designer for Candlewick Press, designing their catalogs, website and store displays.
Dan was constantly giving back to the community through teaching at a number of schools around the Boston area. I lost count because he did this so often, but some of the places he taught at included Brookline Adult & Community Education, Arlington Community Education, Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Bunker Hill Community College and more. He even exhibited his artwork and did a workshop at the branch of the Boston Public Library that I worked in. Plus, he designed exhibits for the Boston Children’s Museum. More recently, he painted an electric box in tribute to his neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, as he enjoyed running on the path around Jamaica Pond.
Some of Dan’s work found a wider audience through the comics section of Nickelodeon Magazine, where he worked as a regular freelancer for editor Chris Duffy. He would later collect this work in a self-published magazine he titled Day of the Ducks. In 2015, Holiday House published his children’s book Hiding Dinosaurs. To promote the book, Dan created an animated book trailer and also made three-dimensional sculptures of the dinosaurs that appeared in the story.
He was very patient and the best listener in the world. I felt I could tell him anything without judgement. Our conversations were often long and personal. But somewhere in the mix, we’d always talk about picture books. He was interested in other artists and enjoyed sharing new children’s books he discovered while browsing at the Brookline Public Library. We also both delighted in meeting Damon Burnard, a cartoonist who made many, ahead of their time children’s comics for prominent publishers in the U.K. in the 1990s. Dan and I were fans and they became friends.
When I met Dan’s wife Cathy I knew she was a kindred soul to him — always learning new things and trying out new careers. She is also a maker, a ceramics sculptor and a creative spirit that deeply cared about people and loved giving back. I always recognized her in Dan’s drawings. It seems like she was always there, even before they met. His love for her was always clear and apparent.
Their son Ben was a blessing. His birth gave Dan a new purpose in life. I could feel the difference in our conversations. He loved being a father and had never been happier. His sketchbook turned into a journal about Ben.
Dan was very nonjudgemental. He loved animals, especially cats, and nature. Faith was important to him but he was never didactic about his beliefs and I always felt heard when I had an opinion that differed. I’ll always remember going out to restaurants with him and Cathy and we would hold hands, or say a short or silent prayer. It was really special to me, even though I’m not particularly religious.
Whimsical, upbeat and playful. This is the world that Dan wanted to live in. It was not always easy for him to find an audience for his work. So much time was spent trying to reach out to editors and agents. He was never discouraged though — Dan self-published and even sold his comics directly to kids and families at numerous festivals or through Kickstarter and Etsy. Those who knew his work, knew it was earnest, made with the great skill, humor and professionalism. One of the many books that Dan completed, but was never published, is The Lint Fairy. It was an all-ages full color graphic novel before that was commonplace. It went through many revisions and several years of hard work.
Mark & Zarc, his final graphic novel that he serialized online and in comic books, is his masterpiece. With this book Dan was drawing directly on an iPad, which gave him even more creative freedom. It should be more well-known as a children’s classic. I’d need to write a whole other article to detail its virtues. Can we please let it take the place it rightly deserves in bookstores and libraries across the country?
Every year since I met him, Dan would always send me an original hand-painted watercolor card for my birthday. He also always sent me Christmas cards. We exhibited at MOCA festival and SPX together in the early years of these festivals. In later years, I attended the Brooklyn Comics Arts Festival with him. I almost felt aged-out of these festivals at that point, not recognizing the exhibitors anymore. But being with Dan made me feel less anxious. He was my go-to person to talk to whenever I had a problem. Whatever the situation, he was calm and had something positive to say. I’m sorry he had to listen to me complain so much because Dan was not a complainer. I loved and felt inspired by his new projects. He always surprised me with his work.
Getting outdoors and exercising were a priority to Dan, whether it was biking or running. This is why it is such a sad and unexpected thing that he died suddenly when going out for a run near his home in December. Dan was a special person with a positive outlook. To quote from an early issue of his zine, Dan demanded “Don’t be a TV robot! Make a mess. Make a ruckus. Make Your Own Story!” He put out so much love into this world. He could look at a rock on the ground and in his mind it would transform into a dancing dinosaur. I hope you can discover his work and celebrate his life. I will miss him forever.
The post Remembering Dan Moynihan, 1973-2025 appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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