John Callahan (1951-2010) was an American cartoonist based in Portland, Oregon. He was adopted as a baby and grew up with 5 other siblings, all of whom were the biological children of his adoptive parents. According to some sources, he was sexually abused by a nun at this Catholic school when he was 8 and he began drinking alcohol at the age of 12. After the car accident which paralysed him from the waist down when he was only 21, Callahan in 1978 entered a 12 step program to stop drinking and, after extensive physical therapy, took up drawing cartoons. He went on to become an internationally syndicated cartoonist in magazines and newspapers, achieved an undergraduate degree in English from Portland State University and was enrolled in a Master's program in counselling at the time of his death.