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

On the road again...

Sticking to the format, I got a couple things to share. First off, a picture of the boy.

This was taken on Halloween, Van was a punk rocker, and this was after the other parts of his costume were shed. Also, as promised I have the video I put together for SPACE 2008. There's not much coverage of the show, but plenty of footage of two guys in car! ...at least it's short.

And finally here are the three shuffle songs from my ipod.

"I hate myself and I want to die" by Nirvana, from the boxed set.

"Little red light" by Fountains of Wayne

"That Great Love Sound" by the Raveonettes.

I love Nirvana, but some of their noisy jam stuff is just to much of a wank off for me. Once again Fountains of Wayne show up, already and only two times into this thing, anyway, great song about an answering machine. Then there's the Ravonettes, an extremely unique band, with a Phil Spector type song structure mixed with loud fuzzy guitars. Great stuff. Just in case anybody wanted to know, the music on the video is Driver 8 by R.E.M.

Your Pal, Jeff

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