Pretentious Wizard Sox

Well, I'm off to Wizard World Chicago today. In the past, I've set up in the artist alley to sell the minis, but it's never been too successful an endeavor, as you can imagine. Wizard World is a big super hero show, so the audience isn't exactly what I'm after, however, it's so close and since there isn't a small press show here, I do it for the sake of it. Well, I decided to save my money and skip it this year, but I will attend to say hi to some people and maybe hand out some comics. So, I do finally have the new issues of Burning Building Comix #3 and #4 finally available! They aren't up on the website yet, but they are printed and ready to go.

So, even though I'm not making super hero comics, and I'm supposed to hate fan boy cons, I do enjoy taking in a big show. Mostly I like looking around at all the new stuff, the toys, and comics, and I love seeing little kids dressed up as superheroes. And speaking of which, Van has some superman PJ's and he thinks he looks pretty darn snazzy when he's all dressed up.

Back to the Ipod three song random shuffle.

Cup of Coffee by Garbage
Lakini's Juice by Live
Fire starter by The Prodigy

I don't know what happened to Live. To me, they were so good for three or four albums, but then just fell off completely. One of those weird things, I guess, but then there's the idea that it's a band from my youth, and maybe I just outgrew the music. I think they just got too pretentious. Still, I love the cool guitar sound on Lakini's Juice and even if they were pretentious by this point in their career, I can always appreciate just the right amount of pretension.

I used Firestarter as a song on one of my video pieces for Burning Building Comix. I think The Prodigy is still around and kicking, and I'll have to get around to checking it out at some point to see if they still have the sound.

And Garbage again. Anyone that's ever read this blog before knows my love for that band. Cup of Coffee is a nice slow, sad, song, and for whatever reason, sometimes those make me feel best.

By the way, the Cubs - Sox series is killing me! These games are too intense, and I'd rather go without them. Even though the Sox go for the sweep tonight, with the potential to tie up the season series.

Ducky Garbage Day!

Well, I missed a post last week...what do you expect from the worst blog ever? I'm writing this on Saturday May 3, or as it's known in all of geekdom, FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! So, I packed up the wife and kid and headed out to The Comix Revolution. They've got a brand new store open, and they did a great job! The new location is bigger than the old joint, visible from the street, and has parking! I got a couple of pictures of the fancy new digs.

In addition to a smattering of the free alternative type comics available, I finally got the new Jeffrey Brown book, Little Things. I haven't read it yet, but I think it's a comic adaptation of that BUSH song. Jeff's a great guy, draws great comics, and has been cool enough to give me some much needed advice from time to time. I also picked up The Klassic Komix Klub by Johnny Ryan, published by the fine folks at Buenaventura press. This book contains Johnny's sick take on classic literature. Finally, I picked up The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, by Don Rosa. I've never actually gotten into the duck comics, and am only familiar with Scrooge McDuck through the cartoon Duck Tales. I do consider Duck Tales to be one of the finest children's cartoon shows produced, and I still love it to this day, so I hope the comics can provide just as much entertainment. Some day, when I have more money, I'll get to the Carl Barks stuff. After I make my millions from selling my own comics, of course, (sigh). So, thanks to Rudy, Mason, and the rest of the CR crew. As you can tell from the picture below, Van was just as excited as I was for the trip to Mt. Prospect.


OK! Time for a little whoring! I just recently got some stuff back into print. All of the Black Stars are available again, including the long out-of-print, issue #1. The cover for issue #4 is different, cause the stock I got for the first printing was kind of a pain in the ass to get, and I wanted to try something else. You can see pictures of it on the main page. Also, Burning Building #1 has been out-of-print, but I'm expecting to finish up my third printing any time now, so it's pretty much available, along with issue #2. Issue #3 is finished, but not printed yet - more about that next week - and I just finished up all the inking on issue #4 earlier this week. The story for issue #5 is written out (the first draft, at least) and I'm gonna try and get that started ASAP! Issue #5 is the last issue and the last story for the building, so I'm super excited to get it done and out there for people to be able to read the building as a whole. Here's a peek at the character sketches for #5.


As I'm writing this, the episode of Sound Stage on Chicago public TV is playing the Garbage performance. This is notable, not only because I love the band Garbage and they've only played this episode once before as far as I know, but also because my lovely wife and I were in attendance at the taping of the show. If you watch really closely when Shirley jumps down to walk through the crowd during Stupid Girl, she very quickly passes me, and you can see me excitedly ogle her. Creepy! (You can see me all the way on the right of the screen at 3:36 of the youtube clip.)

And finally the ipod three song shuffle.

Emily was sick of me making fun of her songs, so we purged most of hers from itunes and moved 'em to her computer. This might prove to be less interesting, and more embarrassing.

Denise by Fountains of Wayne
I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness
Street Spirit (Fade Out) by Radiohead.

Good mix this time! Denise by FOW is one of my favorite songs by them. It's really quick and distorted, and the lyrics, as always by those guys, are awesome! (ding) Some might consider I Believe in a Thing Called Love, a one hit wonder, movie soundtrack hit, which I guess is true, but it's so right on, feel good, Queen-style anthem rock, that I think it will hold up for years. I'm glad Radiohead came up in the shuffle, cause the storyboard for the music video we made for that aniboom contest is done. http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=210852 The drawings are all mine, but the versatile Jay Gish put it together in Flash and made it move. You can also see my brother, Adam's entry which is a sweet, multi-layered cliff hanger. http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=211870 No word yet that we lost the contest. Back to Street Spirit though, cause that is one of my favorite Radiohead songs of all time, if not one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's got one of the best videos ever! Watch it, and note that the switching from slow motion to quick motion in those liquidy transitions, was done years before the film 300. If you watch that video, or listen to that song, and aren't moved by it, YOU HAVE NO HEART!

Your Pal, Jeff

Devil Worshiping Hats

I only wish I could have titled this Devil Worshiping Pants, but alas it's inaccurate, though it would have been a hell of a lot funnier. I spent way too much time (a whole night's worth of drawing) coming up with the design for a hat that a character in Burning Building #4 will be wearing.
I was going for a goofy looking hat that will get a laugh merely by the character donning the silly thing. This was tougher than I thought it would be and took hours. Everything I liked looked too damn smurfy (That's an even better blog title!) including the one above, but different enough for me to settle on it.

Anyone that looked at the video or pictures from SPACE that I posted previously might have seen the displays I have for my respective mini-comics, BlackStar, and Burning Building Comix. I made a couple of quick videos that show the construction process of the displays I'd like to share . They're on my youtube page and only about 30 seconds long each. The idea with the displays was simply, to make something eye catching to get people to stop and look at the comics. The Burning Building display in particular also helps to convey the idea behind the whole series. They were actually a lot of fun to come up with and put together. They're made just from cardboard and paint, and had to be able to break down for easy travel, which made it trickier. But I like to pride myself as a sort of retarded low class engineer, as anyone who's seen the door I created to keep the cats from jumping off our porch, can attest. Here's a couple of sketches I made for the displays construction.

I wasn't sure if I should post stuff of this nature, thinking I'm the only person who will find it interesting. See, I love process, in almost any creative endeavor. Seeing the process someone takes to create something, is fascinating for me. Especially "making of" documentaries on DVDs like The Lord of the Rings. Best yet when it involves miniatures! Anyway, since I find it interesting, I'll just hope other people do as well. You can also see other videos on my youtube page with more process stuff, like me drawing and inking. I'll probably do more of these even if no one shows any interest.

Here are the three songs from my ipod shuffle.

"Manna" by Tanya Donnelly

"Rio" by Duran Duran

"Milk" by Garbage

Manna is a beautiful song by beautiful song writer Tanya Donnelly, of Belly, Throwing Muses, and Breeders fame. My favorite songs of hers are pretty and powerfully poppy, but her work of late hasn't been my thing. Manna is from her first solo album, and that whole record is pretty damn good.

Now Duran Duran is a "guilty pleasure" I guess, even though I hate that term, but a couple of their songs still hold up pretty well for me, with Rio being my favorite.

And another repeat band already, Milk, by Garbage. Milk is such a slow and silky beautiful sexy song with lyrics like, "I am red hot kitchen" I don't know what that means, but it's sexy and strange.

And here's a picture of Van.

He's reading from the collected Schizo, which like, Angry Youth Comics, is filled with horrible horrible stuff not befitting an impressionable young mind. Schizo is by alternative comics legend Ivan Brunetti. I owe some due to Mr.Brunetti, having taken his style as a jumping off point (shameless rip off to some) when I designed the characters in Burning Building. And I'm pretty sure that one of his comics, was part of the inspiration for the series.

He's a genius and his art gets better all the time, check him out if you haven't already. Interestingly, the original art from the above page is owned by my former boss, owner and proprietor of fantastic comic shoppe, the Comix Revolution.

3 Things!

Well, I kinda figured the most interesting way for me to update the blog, with any regularity is with a theme. So I'm gonna try and update once a week, with three different items. Firstly, because he's the cutest damn thing in the world, a picture of my son. Van is nearly 2 and I'll try to include only funny pictures, as I realize that other people's kids are only interesting to a point. Nextly, and because this is a blog for my comics, I'll post a piece of art from something I'm currently working on, or is something of interest. And lastly, I'll go to the old ipod mini and list three songs that come up on shuffle, as a means of getting to know me a little better, and what better way than ipod shuffle selection? It's the new, "What's your sign?" of our era. So here they are.

and here are the songs without editing for embarrassment.

"Special" by Garbage, from Version 2.0 I believe.

" '92 Subaru" by Fountains of Wayne, from Traffic and Weather

"Take on Me" by Ah-ha. No idea about an album.

So there you have it, Van loves to pick up books and pretend to read them. So this picture isn't posed in that sense, however, I believe I gave him the Angry Youth Comix, Comic after he picked up something else, for the sake of the picture. For those not in the know, Angry Youth Comix, is the deviant rantings of Johnny Ryan, and his comics are absolutely filthy, and completely inappropriate for a child under the age of 18. That's what makes the picture so humorous :) You can see Johnny's comics and all of his other cool shit here. http://www.johnnyr.com/

The art is a preview from Issue #3 of Burning Building Comix. It's in color cause it's going to appear on Topshelfcomix.com in their online comics section. They did this for Issue #1 already and you can see that here. http://www.topshelfcomix.com/comix.php?comic=burning&page=1 Top Shelf has published some of my favorite comics, including Blankets, Box Office Poison, Jeff Brown, James Kochalka, and I could go on and on.

And finally those are the songs. I LOVE Garbage, and am "rock star in love" with Shirley Manson, and the way she sings. Last I heard they might still be putting out a new record, after Shirley does a solo project. Maybe someday I'll do a mini-comic about my love for this band. Then there's Fountains of Wayne, who I also adore. They have a extremely catchy pop sound, that Van happens to be a huge fan of as well. Then there's, to me, the best 80's song of all time, Take on me, with perhaps the best music video of all time as well. No apologies for this song, I still love it, and haven't even been F'd out on it yet. http://youtube.com/watch?v=CUod3jGQt0U

Well, that will do it for now. I am working on some video from SPACE, but I have to get it transferred over still. Okay, thanks for reading.

Your Pal, Jeff