Thank You for Your Support - 24 Hour Comic Day!

Tomorrow's the big day.  

When we test our mettle.  

When we run the gauntlet and count the survivors at the end.

When comic creators from around the globe, amateur and professional alike, to write and draw a 24 page comic in 24 hours.

I want to thank my supporters in advance for their help on the big day.

Usually here on my page I draw panels on 8.5 x 11 and you have to click on each one,  That's the quickest way that I can do what I do.  On 24 Comic Book day however, it's kind of assumed you will work in comic book format as above.  It doesn't matter what size...it's actually advised you work smaller...on 8.5 x 11 as the entire page or even 5.5 x 8.5.  I don't think I could draw that small and be readable though...not to mention, I can be a tad word balloony.

I'm gonna do my best to limit dialogue on whatever I do for the big day, but I know my style...and it ain't gonna like it!

I will be working on 11 x 14, like above.  Above was done with patching separate drawings together though, and I'm not quick enough on the math to figure out dimensions and proportions on the big day, so I will be drawings on full sheets.

This of course means I won't be able to scan them here at home either, so I'll take them to Kinko's to be scanned...and this of course cuts even more into my 24 hours.

There's going to be some interesting creative decisions made during the day...even MORE interesting as I get more sleep deprived.  

But that's the whole point.

I also won't be adding the time of coloring into the day.  I am a medium speed writer, an EXTRA speedy cartoonist (IF that's the style I choose to draw in) but a SNAIL at coloring.  My comic WILL be in black & white as most of the entrants will be...if I'm that into it when it's done, I may go back and spruce it up.

Typing that makes me just as anxious to see what everyone else is going to be doing for their comic as I am to see mine.  Should be fun.

Really, really fun.

To read more about the big day, click the below banner and read on about it and the tradition that's lasted a couple of decades now.  There are entrants who come back every year, and plenty of folks like me, doing it for the first time.

I plan on putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard at 0900 hours Pacific Time on Saturday and finishing before 0900 on Sunday.  See you along the day for updates.

Talk to you soon!

"I Keep Tripping Over Loose Ends"!

Continued from here!

All seems well at "The Steamy Grotto"...




Sigh...I got more to clean up...

Talk to you soon.

Kinection to Austin!

Continued from here...

Jeffy and Scotty return to "The Steamy Grotto" to find Mike waiting...

...and so it goes with ALL leaps forward in technology, it all leads to porn.

Talk to you soon.

"Contemplatin' Companions"

Continued from here...

Jeffy and his nephew Scott leave "Ye Olde Drink Hole" and head for Jeffy's home, taking Jeffy's favorite short-cut, "Contemplation Beach". They're joined by an old friend.

Talk to you soon.

Drink Hole Loyalties Shift Like the Sands!

Bigfoot and Jeffy happily make up, but then Jeffy's heart turns to meloncholy oncle again!

Awww, come on Jeffy. YOU know better than that!

Talk to you soon.

Bigfoot Knows His Feminine Side

Jeffy, his nephew Scott and Frank slowly soothe Bigfoot's jangled nerves...

Sigh! I'll finally get the habit of meeting deadlines down, but it'll be a week after I'm dead.

See you tomorrow for "OTR Friday", followed by "Unca Jeffy's Toy Box Saturday", "Sunday Funnies", "Mad Monday" and we'll get back to more of whatever this nonsense is I do with my cartoons on Tuesday.

Talk to you soon.

Meanwhile, Back at The Drink Hole...

Nephew Scottie drops by the Drink Hole for a visit with his Ol' Unca Jeffy...



"Well...." said Jeffy, "I tell ya Scottie...it ain't been an easy road!"

"Lay it on me, my brotha! Rest your worries on MY shoulders for a while!" replied the sympathetc and empathetic nephew.

And so Jeffy explained.

Jeffy continued, "You know I have quite the wide spectrum of friends that I hang out with."

"And how!" answered the enthusiastic and caring younger family member. "You said a mouthful there!", he added.

A somber-toned, grim-visaged Jeffy began his tale of woe, "It all started back in October of last year, when my old buddy Mark…



“…announced out of nowhere that he was leaving Southern California for the wilds of Austin, Texas."

*See here for the full post*

*here for his goodbye*

“Wait a minute, Jeffy!” interrupted the listening Scottie, “Isn’t this a strange new narrative style you’re using?”

“Shut up and listen!” said the perturbed and forlorn Uncle with impatience, “I’ll do the story telling around here!”

Scottie sat back, took a sip of his beer and let the story wash over him in the manner it was meant to be.

“This”, Jeffy continued, “Was just before a rogue Superman who had been exposed to red kryptonite from Rusty’s fillings, dressed up like Herbie and tried to kill me!”



“…but that’s another story for another day.”

They both took long pulls off of their beers, wetting their pallets AND their minds for the fascinating story to continue to unfold.

“I took it kind of hard,” resumed Jeffy after taking a deep whistly breath through his nose, “and I decided to do some reorganization in the blog. Maybe it was just too much heartbreak to have friends….maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it.”



*see here for the full post*

“Where I made my big mistake . I was singing the praises of only having imaginary friends, rather than real ones…



*see full post here*

“…and when Bigfoot overheard me…” Jeffy stopped his flow for another question from the confused listener.

“Bigfoot?” queried the young buck, his shock of dirty blonde hair striking a quizzical poise atop his head.

“Yeah, Bigfoot.”, retorted Jeffy, somewhat nonplused. “Back when The Mysterious Shadowy Figure wanted to abduct me on behalf of The Illuminati, he brought Bob the Alien and Bigfoot with him as hired muscle. Luckily Willie Nelson intervened, and afterwards, Bigfoot stayed on as a bouncer here at ‘Ye Olde Drink Hole’ and Bob stayed on as a bar-fly”

*See here for…ah nevermind, just hit the “Illuminati” label to the left, you can read it all*

“Anyway”, the by-now weary story-teller finished, “long story short is, I made Bigfoot cry and now Jesus and Superman are all mad at me.”



*See full post here*

More tomorrow.

Talk to you soon.

Goodbye Mark Crowley... There's a "Vacant Chair"

This week's Jeffy Music Monday is turned over to an old song from the 1860's performed by Kathy Mattea. Thanksgiving is approaching and it was Abraham Lincoln who established it as a National Holiday. A way to be with family when the Civil War was tearing the country apart.

This was the first ever Thanksgiving song and tells of a family's "Vacant Chair" at their table as a brother was lost fighting the war.



I am losing a brother this week too, albeit not as permanently...


This weekend we had a farewell "Pub Crawl" for my good buddy and member of my "blog family" (though he swore to whatever pagen Gods he worships he would never read the dang thing) Mark Crowley.

Mark, along with his significant other Katherine are leaving Southern California for the home of Outlaw Country and all great live music, Austin, Texas...and I'm jealous as hell.

The usual suspects for Pub Crawl fun showed up. Preparing for our drunken march at "The Steamy Grotto/House of Whacks/Jeffy's apartment below are (l. to r.) Mark, Katherine, my nephew Scott, Mark's mother Kathy, the lovely backside of Naomi "Nay Nay" Barraza and Action Frank...

Below l. to r. Scotty, Kathy, (can't get enough of Naomi's back), Frank, Kelli "designated driver and probably eternally miserable" King and Mike Crowley...

As we hit lovely downtown Huntington Beach, the sun set on our party, but we didn't go down just yet.

We were all there for food, drinks and to say goodbye to one of our favorite people and got to know Katherine (a newer member of our family) a little better.

We wish them all the luck and happiness they deserve.

I'm gonna miss ya, ya big dumb ol' softie of a mook!

Talk to you soon.

New "The Telepone Song" Video - Now With Production (If Not Values)

Ah memories of Labor Day. The last paid day off between here and Thanksgiving. Harrumph!

Last week I reported that the Saturday of the holiday weekend was hosted by myself and roommate Mike here at "The Steamy Grotto" and a motly crew assembled for a day of beer, music and Italian Beef sammiches. Pictured below in a hackneyed panoramic shot are most of the players. Left to right Mark Crowley, me, Scott Michael Campbell (my sister's number 2 son), Frank Terando Jr. (my panoramic gave him 3 arms...betcha he brags about it) and Mike Crowley.


Taking the picture was Kelli King, taken here from a surveylance video at the mall I presume.

As the afternoon got greasier and drunker and clear thoughts seems few and far between...someone remembered us making a big to-do out of my "I Love Rachael Ray" song in video form and inspiration struck.

The audio is punchy in places, apparently the sound guy was as drunk as the rest of us, but here's the end result. A full cast version of "A Phone Call We've All Made (The Telephone Song)" an Uncle Jeffy composition...

Thanks guys. I dig the hell out of this stuff.

Here's hoping next Labor Day is as good.

Talk to you soon.

Happy Labor Day 2010

Happy Labor Day everyone! I'll get back to regular blogging by next weekend...this was a weekend of rest and spending time with family.

Enjoy the music, food and beer...we did!



Talk to you soon!

Show Bid'ness and The Economy: A Goofy Tale of Woes!

"Show me da money!" I guess I'd say if I felt like beating a dead horse. Here's a tale of life outside of show bid'ness.

Regular readers here know I like to make noise on my guitar and like to every so often make up songs on my own. This is called "writing songs" to most...I humbly just make up stuff that rhymes.

Wayyyy back in 2001 the company I work for had a talent contest at their Christmas party. A "Gong Show" type of thing actually. I wasn't going to enter the contest because I'm a sensitive artistic type of guy and was sure there weren't enough folks at my company to appreciate the high-brow humor and subtle nuance of my craft.

Then they announced there would be cash prizes and I decided it was not beneath me at all to pander.

And so I did.

I made up a song called "Christmas Time at OCB" (OCB is the company I work for, but for the sake of relativity in my story, insert your company name) and is was about as filled with inside jokes about our industry and our company's president and CEO as you can get.

The crowd and the judges loved it and I was honored with 1st prize. Like Loudon Wainwright III said "Shakin' hands with the devil ain't as bad as it seems." and I forsook my lofty artistic knuckleheadedness for good old commerciality...

...and was awarded a $1,000 cash prize. Other than the fact that those big foam-core backed checks don't fit well into ATM machines it was great! My brush wit' Show Bid'ness!

I then opted to go back to my bohemian roots and have fun with banging on the guitar and caterwauling for friends and family and neighbors...whether they liked it or not.

Somewhere along the line my nephew, Scott Campbell got into real show bid'ness. That's him below during one of our shared birthday parties. His birthday is the 14th of August and mine is the 8th and damned if some one's gonna spoil 2 weekends celebrating with us!

He appeared in a small independent movie a couple years back and did a scene where he was to play the guitar and sing a song. The only part I'll really take credit for in any of this story is that Scottie was inspired to learn to bang on a guitar after hearing me make noise on one...I'm proud to say that I helped pay forward the fun that can be had doing this.

During the filming, he decided to play a different song with every take. On one take he did a song made up by his old Uncle Jeffy called "A Phone Call We've All Made" alternately titled "The Telephone Song". For anyone who may have missed this universal broken hearted love song, here's my version.



Bring a tear to your eye? I thought it would.

Anyway, to make a short story long, in the editing bay the director decided to use the take with this song in it for the final cut of the movie.

I spent 9 months or so receiving e-mails and phone calls from lawyers on both coasts trying to convince them that they could have the right to use this made-up song in the movie at no charge. The movie was a little $300,000 indy film and I'd be proud to see my nephew up on screen singing something that I was gonna write even if they didn't pay me.

Besides the real fun would be to one day be walking down the street and hearing some stranger humming the dang thing. THAT would be cool.

I did work out that they only had the rights to use it in conjunction with this film at no cost and that I was the sole publisher and would receive credit as such.

Well the movie, after a long delay was finally released straight to DVD this week. Here it is.

After months of e-mails and stacks of pages signed, I got a call from the production company last month. It was time to reimburse me for my efforts.

Giving up on telling me for the unpteenth time that I wasn't seeking pay, I just folded and confirmed my address and waited to see what would happen.

This happened.

Don't get all jealous now...shooooooooot...anyone could negotiate like me!

The Brothers Crowley and Co., Nay Nay, Kelli and Frank all ran out this last weekend to celebrate my windfall!

I of course threw down the base of the cost from my $1 payday, everyone else filled in the rest!

I don't understand the why's a wherefor's of all this, I can just assume that there's some legality that says that even if I sign 27 contracts saying it's for free, they have to pay at least a dollar to prove acknowledgment.

And I got a copy of the contract stating this.

That's right...Uncle Jeffy's in the movies.

I gotta say though, over the course of 10 years the value of a song can drop 1,000%, from $1,000 to $1...times are tough all over.

Next time though I'm gonna take the advice of this anonymous "Jeffy's Angel"...

"SHOW ME DA MONEY!"