An Ohio native, Jeff traveled to New Jersey to find fame and fortune in the world of comic books. These are his words from an interview earlier this year…
I think the ambition of being a comic book artist began soon after high school graduation, although it would be a few years before I hauled myself off to the Joe Kubert School in New Jersey.
When I was young, I wasn’t the kind of kid who would sit around and draw all day. In fact, I rarely did. I wanted to be a pro football player. Zero chance of that happening. One day, my brother borrowed a Green Lantern comic book from a kid in school. As I laid on the floor looking through it that night, it hit me that somebody actually draws this for a living. From then on, whenever I went to the grocery store with my mom, she would allow me to pick out a 12 cent comic off the spinner rack.
I liked them all, from Gold Key to Marvel and I was a big Superman fan. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the old TV show we watched daily. Ironically, the one comic I don’t remember them carrying was Archie. It wasn’t until the Saturday morning cartoon came out that I knew anything about Archie and the gang.
After high school, I attended Sinclair Community College in Dayton.
I was in the commercial art program, but after a year, I knew that wasn’t for me. When I would show up early for figure drawing class, I would begin drawing cartoon characters. I was kind of in limbo for the next few years.
In 1983, I had a subscription to Superman and The Flash. In a letter from the editor, Dick Giordano talked about the Joe Kubert School. Eureka! I knew that was where I needed to be.
So, once again, I was back in school, three years of it. I was excited to go my first year, I kind of dreaded my second year, but felt a lot different going into my last year. There was more freedom in the assignments, and just knowing I’d be out soon, made it a lot easier to get through.
At my first job after graduation, I was doing paste-up at the Morris County courthouse. I spent about six months there, then took a job in downtown Dover (where the school was located) doing souvenir and T-shirt designs. I got pretty bored with that and the pay was lousy.
One of my friends from school took a job in Kansas City doing Peanuts licensing work. When he went to work at Archie Comics, I was hired in his place. I only spent six months there, which I regret even now. I went back to New Jersey and it took a while to find a steady art job.
I was doing some work for DC on their Tiny Toons and Looney Tunes magazines.
At the same time, there was a studio in Connecticut by the name of Animated Arts. They were overworked and contacted me through the editor at DC. I became the ghost artist for the Tom and Jerry newspaper strip. I worked with them for about a year and a half. For some reason, the strip was removed from them. The only place I could think of to go was Archie Comics. It helped that my friend was working there. Like a lot of newer artists, I started out drawing stories for the digests. I soon became the artist on the Veronica book. That is when I met Dan Decarlo.
To me he was THE Archie artist. I took my work into the office once every couple weeks. Sometimes he would look it over and add or change something. It was so amazing how effortlessly this was for him. He was SO good! Most people who follow comics know about him being fired. I was then given the Betty and Veronica book to do. When Victor Gorelick handed me an envelope of scripts, I didn’t know what was going on. At the time, I didn’t know Dan had been fired. I asked Victor if Dan was on vacation. He said “something like that.” So here I was, only the second person to regularly work on Betty and Veronica, and following a legend. It’s so funny how nervous I was drawing that first issue. It was like being the quarterback replacing Tom Brady. I got through it, and for the next 11 years, all was fine. I even got to draw the newspaper strip for a while.
Then, in 2011, on my birthday, I got a call from the company telling me I wouldn’t be getting any work for the next year or so. Now I’m married and have three kids, but no job. It was rough to say the least. But after twenty months I was called back to do a series of five books. Jon Goldwater had taken over the company. There would be no more Betty and Veronica or any other regular titles. During that time, a new company was just getting started—Sitcomics, started by a sitcom writer in California named Darin Henry.
I worked on a book called Super Suckers. Archie had gone to printing mostly stories for the few digests they were putting out. I continued doing those. Super Suckers ended after four issues, and not that long after, my time with Archie Comics was over.
Now I have a book of my own called The Way-Out Life Of Riley! It’s a humorous book about two college age girls, drawn in the Archie style. I’m currently working on issue #2. It will be available through Kickstarter and Indigogo.
When I look back on what I’ve done, even though I have my own book, (which I mostly like writing), my favorite thing to draw was Tom and Jerry. I’ve always been into more of the animated style of art. So, that’s basically my professional life.
