Paul Gilligan

Paul Gilligan's affair with art began in 1970, in kindergarten, when he figured out that he stunk at sports and that art was his only other option for impressing chicks. Weaned on Mad magazine, super-hero comics and Bloom County, Paul attended Toronto's Sheridan College for animation and illustration and took comedy writing at the Film Institute in Ottawa.

He tested out other jobs over the years such as gas jockey, carnie, night watchman and florist, before joining the Ottawa Citizen newspaper as its on-staff illustrator, where he won awards in both illustration and design. He also found work in advertising, editorial cartooning, storyboarding, comic books and animation, and finally set up shop in downtown Toronto as a freelancer, where his roster of illustration clients grew to include the likes of Entertainment Weekly, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Disney, Wired and Pine-Sol. During this time he created a number of strips, the culmination of which was Pooch Cafe.

Poncho became an instant hit with readers, one of whom collected a petition of over 300 fans when her paper in Albuquerque stopped running it, another who made his first order of business putting Pooch Cafe on the comics page when he became managing editor of The Ann Arbor News. Hogan's Alley declared Pooch Cafe one of the best undiscovered strips of last year.

Paul does not currently own a dog, but he skulks around dog parks doing research, and is an avid viewer of Dogs With Jobs and Scooby Doo reruns.