Danny Shanahan was born on July 11, 1956, in Brooklyn. Shanahan was largely self-taught; he took one or two courses at Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut. He worked as a bartender while selling cartoons to small magazines and TV Guide. He started his art career in the ’80s, as the unofficial cartoonist for the United States Tennis Association. By 1988, Shanahan and his wife got married and sought a less expensive place to start a family, moving from New York to New Mexico. Soon afterward, he sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker. Shanahan published about 1,000 cartoons in the magazine. In addition to The New Yorker, his work appeared in Time, Esquire, Playboy, Fortune, Newsweek and The New York Times.