Bagley was born in Salt Lake City and raised in Oceanside, California, where his father was mayor[1] and his mother was a school teacher.
"[5] In 1977,[4] during a finance class at BYU, Bagley doodled a political cartoon, which he submitted to the student newspaper, The Daily Universe.
[7] After graduation, Bagley briefly worked as a caricaturist in the nearby Orem Mall,[2] before being hired as the editorial cartoonist at The Salt Lake Tribune,[3] where he still produces a daily cartoon.
[4] His cartoons have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times.
Bagley defended himself, saying that "I went to some pains to show that not all police are racist....white supremacists make a point of infiltrating law enforcement.
"[11] In April 2021, The Salt Lake Tribune published another Bagley cartoon that likened Utah congressman Burgess Owens (an African American) to a Ku Klux Klan member.
Owens, who grew up in the segregated South, called the cartoon “pathetic.” Utah Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney and Representatives Chris Stewart, John Curtis and Blake Moore issued a joint statement calling the cartoon "repugnant" while enjoining the Tribune to retract it and issue an apology.