How to make a Mini-Comic!

I just finished doing a new printing of Burning Building #1, so I took a bunch of photos of the process and have it posted over on Flickr for anyone to see. So instead of the usual post, I'm just gonna give a quick update on the Top Shelf web comics, and then send you over the the Flickr set.

I've been talking to the guys at Top Shelf, and we're gonna post all the issues of Burning Building on the new section of their web comics page, Top Shelf 2.0. Right now, Issue #1 is up, and I'm working on finishing up the coloring of Issue #2. Once they're all done, you'll be able to view them all online stacked on top of each other! I'll post here when the new issues are gonna be posted, or just keep checking Top Shelf, cause they're posting new comics every weekday! Holy Crap!

Okay, so here's where you can find the pictures on Flickr, and I'm trying to figure out how to have a slide show of that set of photos run on the side of the page here on the blog, but I'm not sure if that's gonna work.

Have I done a hutch yet?

In case anybody went over to the Top Shelf Comix website looking for my comics that were to debut, and thought I was a dirty liar cause they couldn't find them - fear not. The color version of Burning Building 3 is set to be on the website, just not quite yet. Apparently, they're looking at putting Issue 1 back up first and then issue 3 some time after that. They're putting up new comix every weekday, so it shouldn't be long. Issue 1, once again in full color, is supposed to be up this Thursday.

Lately, I've been working on a bunch of in-between things, mostly the inside covers for Burning Building 3, which I delayed doing due to a convention, and for Burning Building 4. I usually like to do these right after I'm done with the guts of the book, put doing a pair of them back to back was a bit rough. The inside covers are just backgrounds, with the character's furniture and knick knacks lying around to give people a sense of what the character is like. Well, it's pretty damn boring to just draw backgrounds (don't know how Gerhard did it), and even more boring when it's a bunch of furniture that has to be different from the six other apartments I've already done. I spend way too much time thinking up ottomans and lamps! Here's a peek at one of the covers. I scanned it as a color photo so you can see the blue line pencils underneath the black ink.

Here's a picture of Van in a box. It illustrates well his obsession with cars, and anything with freakin' wheels.

And now the three song ipod shuffle.

South Side by Moby (with Gwen Stefani)
Turning Japanese by Liz Phair
Slide Away by Oasis

I love Liz Phair, a Chicago gal, and Turning Japanese is a good cover. It's true to the original, but it has enough of her own sound to be different and fresh. Moby I'm pretty luke warm on, but I do like South Side, especially being a White Sox fan. I got pretty F'd out on a lot of Oasis, cause I used to work with a guy at the Comix Revolution who would play them non-stop. I am a bit a of brit pop fanatic though, although Oasis got way too bloated and way too high on cocaine!

I'm Gonna Be Drifting Off

I'm gonna try and keep it short this week. Last time, I mentioned how I would talk more about Burning Building Comix #3 later, and that time is now. You see, I've actually had Issue 3 done for quite some time, but the fine folks at Top Shelf Comics, are going to include it in their online comics section! They've been cool enough to do this before for Issue 1, but I guess they're re-designing the online comix section, and it's going to be up and running in a week or so. You can check it out here, and it's the only place to see Burning Building Comix in FULL COLOR! The print version of Issue 3 will be available after the online edition's exclusivity has worn its welcome, and Issue 4 will be ready about the same time. Stay tuned.

So if you search for "kid falling asleep" on you tube, you get like 600 matches, and my pride and joy baby boy is among them. Here's Van during a late dinner with a White Sox game on in the background. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2nUfqtcWg

Okay, so here's the ipod three song shuffle.

I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), The Proclaimers
Bittersweet Me, R.E.M.
Hooligans, Rancid

Hmmm, well, "I'm Gonna Be" is one of those songs I really liked when I was 12, and thought I would still like it now, so I downloaded it, and I think I skip it every time it comes up. Somebody ought to coin a term for that. ipod remorse. And the Proclaimers were the guys who sang with those really think accents, and I usually do love to hear an accent in a singer's voice, especially a Celtic type sound.
Bittersweet Me is a great R.E.M. Monster song, that came close to being completely F'd out. You know, it's strange, cause I didn't really get into R.E.M until Monster, and then I got their older stuff later, but it was one of those albums that I listened to, to death in the crucial years of my youth when objectivity is lost. As a result, I can't critically talk about it, but I think I've heard that Monster isn't regarded very well for R.E.M. and I just can't see that. I suppose it's possible that it's just me, and I'm unable to judge it outside of the emotional place it dwells inside of me next to the memories and feelings of those years.
Hooligans by Rancid is a fun song by a fun band, and for me Rancid is at it's best when they're doing more of the Ska/Reggae influence type thing. Plus, on a personal note, Rancid was my first official concert with my wife. Lots of making out.

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

Is this bigger than yours?

So, in keeping with my love of process, I've included here a quick breakdown of 2 panels from issue 4 of Burning Building Comix. The first is what my notes look like, which in the case of Burning Building, are quick, action-descriptive lists. The second is a thumbnail, which I haven't always used, but does help to lay out the final art quicker, and helps me to work out pacing, and the logistics of fitting stuff on the page before I get to the full size art. Basically it's a lot easier to rearrange or redraw quick sketches, rather than a final penciled page. Then, the third is the final art all inked, minus the background that I drew separately and will combine on the computer. This is how I've been working for Burning Building, because it's a silent comic, and I don't have to worry about scripting dialogue, but for stuff like BlackStar, I'll usually start with a script of all the panels and dialogue written out, then go to the thumbnails like above. I've tried a bunch of different methods for the process, and kinda change it for what the project needs. However, I haven't tried the method of writing page by page as I draw, which is popular with a lot of great cartoonist, but I have no confidence I can do this and have it turn out the way I want. I guess I'm just a control freak, but maybe someday I'll try it and see what happens.

Here's the boy reading the scholastic color version of BONE. Everyone knows and loves Bone, and these scholastic editions are colored by all-around great guy, Steve Hamaker, who has been nominated for an Eisner award! The Eisner's are like the Oscars of comics, and Steve is well-deserving. Look here for a sample of his work. Good luck, Steve, with your big colored Bone!

Some songs from my ipod shuffle...

The Small Print, by Muse

Where Heroes go Down, by Suzanne Vega

It's not Unusual, by Tom Jones

Muse is this great band that sound like "The Bends" era of Radiohead, which is AWESOME cause I love that album, and even though I loved "OK Computer", and even "Kid A" to a lesser extent, their albums after that got too cold and atmospheric for me. To me, Radiohead was best when Thom was using his voice as an instrument and really belting it out, instead of the unaffected moaning he kinda does now. I think he wants to be a robot. But Muse rocks. I first heard them because of a song in the movie Millions. Hysteria, was used in the bank heist scene and worked so well with the movie that I looked up who did the song. They also have a song on Guitar Hero 3 that has a lick I absolutely cannot wrap my stupid head around!

That Suzanne Vega song is Emily's and I might have to start doing this differently cause of all her damn songs that keep popping up, plus all the songs I had to clear out to make space for Podcasts.

Ahh, Tom Jones. He's a beautiful man. The Voice has several great hits, "It's not Unusual" is amongst my favorites. I think the first time I saw Tom Jones, it was on an episode of Howard Stern on E!, and Stern, of course, was only asking sex questions, cause Jones is a notorious cocksman! The funny thing was, Jones answered every question with three responses. He'd either laugh, say "yeah" or say "sometimes". It was quite odd. Plus, there was a weird story about comparing penis sizes with Milton Berle.

Zombie Toddler

Let me give a quick "shout out" to a couple of my other non-comics efforts. I've been working with my twin brother, and Jay Gish on a website called bindledog.com for a while now. It's part flash animation and live action sketch comedy. We've built up a good enough bunch of material over there to keep a person busy at work for at least an hour. Recently we've been in a long production mode for a couple of more complicated projects. The live action one is called "Guitar Hero A-hole", and we're working on getting that edited, and the Flash one is an animated short for our website's mascot, Bindledog. Please go and peruse, if you haven't recently.

Also, just recently I've become a podcaster! (cue dramatic music) Yes, my brother Adam and I have channeled our love for the Chicago White Sox, into our own weekly podcast, Oral Sox. It's mostly a couple of fans talking about their favorite team, but we try to be funny about it. We've only done a couple of shows so far, but it's been fun, and we're planning on going through the whole season. So, if you are a fan of my comix, live in Chicago, like the White Sox, and listen to podcasts.... (sigh) anyway you can get it on itunes.

Well, as for the three things...

Here are some character sketches for another bindledog project. It involves a contest that Radiohead is holding, to make a video featuring one of the songs from their new album, In Rainbows. The story is a Greek tragedy with some weird magical elements. We're going to put together a storyboard for the video first and I'll post it here when it's done.

Here's a picture of Van transforming into a zombie from his 2 year photo shoot.

The ipod shuffle song selection.

Thank You by Dido

Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

So Fast, So Numb by R.E.M

So, the first two are Emily's songs. Songs, like Thank You are pretty and nice, but put me to sleep. Hey Dido, Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, and all you other easy listening broads, WAKE UP! Go drink a Mountain Dew!

There is something in Total Eclipse that I do like though. The vocal on it is pretty passionate and strong, and I'll take vocals like that, over a more technically sound, but dull performance every day of the frickin' week! Bring the Passion! Bring the Heat! R.E.M.'s new album is supposed to be good. I've just about given up on them, and their last couple of albums have been too passive and plodding for me, but when they're upbeat, R.E.M. is hard to beat for feel good, American rock 'n' roll.

Trust in Chuck

I just finished reading the Chuck Palahniuk novel Rant. I've been a big fan of Palahnuik since seeing Fight Club, then immediately reading the book. His style of visceral, quick and sharp writing was hugely influential to me as a writer, (at the time I was studying fiction writing) and Fight Club was something of an eye opener at approaching stories. I try to incorporate that influence into my comics as well. The way Palahnuik would use repetition and pacing in his writing would seem to translate perfectly to comics. Filtered through me, you get something like these panels from BlackStar #4.

Rant: an oral history of Buster Casey, is probably my favorite book of his since Fight Club. For those who haven't read anything by Palahniuk, he almost exclusively writes about strange deviant shit, and Rant is no exception. I actually didn't much like the first 40 pages or so, as it's written as an oral history. So it's like one of those books talking about jazz in the 60's with quotes from a dozen people making up the whole contents. I've read a couple of books like this before and find the form rather disjointed and annoying. Now Rant is a fiction, so the non-fiction form bugged me even more, but I should have had more faith in Chuck, cause he manipulated the form to suit his needs in genius fashion. Great stuff, if you liked the movie Fight Club check out his books.

In other news my son Van just turned two! And in this modern age with all of it's digital frills, my wife and I have been documenting his growth like scientist studying protozoa. For his first birthday I edited a video of pictures taken of Van once a day for the whole year. For year two, I didn't take a picture everyday, but there are home videos mixed in with the pictures to round it all out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3D8UZiqUlI

And now, three songs from my ipod shuffle.

Ink Studs with Sarah Oleksyk.

Sweet Child O' Mine by Sheryl Crow

Oh My God by Guns 'N' Roses

Ink Studs is actually a podcast. Like Indie Spinner Rack, Ink Studs is about the indie comics scene, with some great interviews. Not as excitable as ISR, but informative and enjoyable. They're doing a whole round of female figures in comics this month.

The Sweet Child O' Mine is the Sheryl Crow cover of the GNR classic. I like Sheryl Crow, or used to, and I love GNR, and I just sorta like this song. It's OK but it really doesn't wow me, although I did consider using it for Van365 ironically enough. In the end it was too on the nose for me, and I thought that Tender by Blur was pitch perfect.

A heavy Guns 'N' Roses round this time! Oh My God, is a song that was released on End of Days soundtrack, and is, I believe. the only original song released by Axl after "Use Your Illusion". It's the more industrial sounding G'n'R, and I dig it! Although I didn't digg it. I don't understand what the hell that website is.

Your Pal, Jeff