An Interview with Jeef

So Burning Building Comix #5 is finally printed and done! Anybody anxious to order it before I get a chance to put it on the website can drop me a line. I tell ya it feels pretty damn good to finally have it done. Finally all the stories can be completed to build a full building. But now what? Well, as you can imagine I've been thinking about that a lot. In fact I've been thinking about it for a long time, cause I like to have my ducks in a row. I think I'm going to plan a series of special blog posts to explore this idea. The inspiration for this idea goes back to the Gallery show I took part in for the Diane Tanios Gallery. On my Bio area in the Gallery, my wife pointed out to me that my name was actually spelled wrong! Funny enough, it wasn't Zwirek that was misspelled, but Jeff. Yeah, so it was transcribed as Jeef Zwirek. During the opening reception for the show, my friends and I were talking about it, and we decided that when I become a hugely famous comic artist and move to Europe I should publish under the simple moniker of Jeef.

SO, for years now I've always been absorbing stories about how people became successful in their lives. Whether I was looking for inspiration or just good ideas, any time I heard an interview where it got into how a person got started, and when they got their big break, my ears would perk up. Now comics people have these stories as well, but I've never been to satisfied with the details that they divulge.

In that spirit, I'm going to start a series of blog posts called "Becoming Jeef" or "The Road to Jeef" I haven't decided yet. The idea here is to document the process of taking my comic and hopefully getting it published, and then out into stores and all that that entails. Along the way I'm sure, I'll have words of advice for other people trying to do the same thing. (I know I'm not accomplished enough to give advice, but I like too, and really it's gonna be mind set type stuff anyway) Basically it will be the important points in making my career, till one day when I'm rich, pretentious, and living in France.

So look for those to start soon.

In other news, I recorded another interview with good guy, Elliott Serrano today. Elliot invited me to record with him on his video podcast over in Schamburg at Dreamland Comics. We recorded two segments and they're gonna be posted in two different places. The first will be on Comics Waiting Room, that should be up for Monday. The other went long and is gonna have to be broken up into segments for Elliott's other video podcast Comic Culture Warrior. I had a great time talking with Elliott, and we seemed to hit on all sorts of topics. I apologize for going on too long. I'm kind of a quiet guy until you get me started.

In addition to dying a little bit every day with each White Sox loss, I've been in the process of coloring Issue #4 of Burning Building for Top Shelf's Website.

I'm also almost done reading Moby Dick. Recently saw this beautifully done piece of Moby Dick done by Tom Neely, of "The Blot" fame. Had I the ducets, t'would be mine. Plus I thought, I'd share another segment from the book that I thought was quite well written. It's at the end of Chapter 58 and I won't bother for context.

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all of the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou can'st never return!"

"One Insular Tahiti" is a wonderful turn of phrase I might have to steal for a title some day.

Oh! I've finally sunk to joining a social network, so anybody else out there on facebook should go make me their friend, cause it seems that the point to that thing is to accumulate as many ancillary friendships as possible!

Swedish Cyborg

So I had a great time at the panel in Columbia Missouri this past weekend. I only wish I had more time to hang out and talk to people, as everyone was so nice.

Hey did anyone watch Terminator the Sarah Conner Chronicles, or as I call it, that show with Shirley Manson! Well Shirley was in the first episode, and she was pretty wooden. She looked good enough, but the acting seemed a little stiff, unless it was on purpose! Spoiler. Shirley is a robot, so I'm not sure if she was acting that way on purpose. But I do love the idea of another Terminator robot with an inappropriately thick foreign accent.

In other exciting news, Burning Building #5 is done! I have to merely print it up, but it's all assembled hacked together. I'll post here when the new issue is available to order.

So, I finally got some pictures of the prints from the gallery show over on my flickr page. Van here is posing with the facade to give you an idea of scale. Email me if your interested in purchasing a page, I'll let you know which ones are left and give you a price.

Beijing Blitz

Okay so a reminder that I'll be In Missouri next weekend for the Alley Oop panel event, looking forward to that. Also I have a new comic finished that I teased last week. It's another in the Cast Of... mini's that I've done, the Cast of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I don't have this up on my website quite yet, but anybody interested can email me and order it. It's 16 pages long and has a full color hand cut cover for $2.00. This is kind of a new style of drawing for me, It's the same profile type drawing that I've used for a while in BlackStar and Burning Building, but to get the likeness' down better I'm also doing more of a caricature. In this comic, you get 16 of them, along with stats and a list of the events they won medals with, a must have for any Olympics fan!

I also wanted to mention that a few weeks back Burning Building Comix #3 was reviewed by Whitey over at Optical Sloth. You can check it, and all of Kevin's Mini-Comic reviews here. Thanks Kevin!

Oooo! I almost forgot to mention that every Shirley Manson fans should watch the season premier of Terminator the Sarah Conner chronicles! Keep posted here for reports on her charismatic sexuality.

Ooplyimpics!

First off I want to direct everybody back to the web section of the Top Shelf Comics Website, as Issue #2 of Burning Building is up and in full color! TopShelfComix



So Sept 14th is the date of the panel I'll be a part of for the Exhibit above. I'll be on the panel with other comic artists, Matt Kindt of Super Spy fame, Ted May of Injury comics, and Mardou the artist of Stiro. I'm really looking forward to this and it should be a good time, so anybody in Missouri mid September should check it out. All the specific details are here.

Also, I just got back my work from the Gallery exhibit at the Diane Tanios Gallery. The show was great, and I'm so thankful to Diane for all the great exposure that the show afforded me. We even did a photo shoot for Lake Magazine last week that made me feel like some sort of important person! It was very strange. Not sure when that article is supposed to appear.

There are still some prints left, and I think I'm going to make some available on the website at some point in the future. Anybody interested feel free to write.

I've also been working hard on finishing up another "Cast Of" mini, dedicated to one of my favorite things, The Olympics! I love the Olympics, both summer, and winter, and there are so many great faces involved in the game that I couldn't resist putting together a cast of the Olympics 2008 Beijing mini. I'm nearly done, and gonna try to get it up and available quick before everyone loses all interest completely. Here's a sneak peek at Mr. Gold himself.