Matt Janz has been drawing cartoons since childhood. He had his first "collection" of cartoons published by his local library when he was only twelve years old. Janz is an art director for an advertising agency in Chicago, Illinois. He was awarded the Washington Post Writers Group's Fine Toon Fellowship/2000 for his comic strip, 'Out of the Gene Pool', and became the first cartoonist syndicated after completing the FTF program.