Dan Parsons started out in comics self-publishing his creator-owned series, Harpy, which became part of the late 1990s indie comics “bad girl” movement. He wrote and penciled Harpy as an ongoing comic book series and with its increasing visibility, Parsons was hired to pencil and ink another popular “bad girl” series called Razor (London Night Studios). He also penciled, inked, and did cover work for the classic Battlestar Galactica comic book series (Millennium Press), all this while still working full time as a scientific researcher at Johns Hopkins Bay-View Medical Center in Baltimore, MD.

Parsons went on to release another creator-owned series, Savage Planet, which he describes as a tribute to the EC Comics of the 1950s, honoring the work of Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson. It was at SDCC 2002, promoting the release of Savage Planet, that Parsons met Jan Duursema, the ongoing penciller of Star Wars. Recognizing Parsons’ similarity of inking style with Williamson (the original classic Star Wars cartoonist), Duursema recommended Parsons to the Star Wars team at Dark Horse Comics. He was hired immediately and worked at Dark Horse as the primary inker on a wide range of Star Wars titles until the end of the Dark Horse era in 2014 (when the Disney Corporation purchased the Star Wars franchise). Parsons would win an Inkwell Award in 2010 and again in 2015 for his ink work on the Star Wars comics. Other inking credits include DC Comics’ Nightwing and other Dark Horse titles (Ghost, King Kong).

Parsons also did some work for Hollywood, including providing elaborate pencil drawings for HBO’s Game of Thrones Season One DVD/Blu-ray Box set. More recently, he illustrated an Avatar: The Last Airbender book for Nickelodeon/Insight Editions and a graphic novel adaptation of Ayn Rand’s 1937 sci-fi classic, Anthem. In addition to these projects, Parsons painted numerous trading cards for the Topps Company from 2002 to present. Parsons is currently penciling stories and doing cover artwork for American Mythology Productions’ new line of monster comic books. He is also painting covers for various Tarzan and other Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.