G.I.JEFF is Actually Starting to Happen!!

After months of apparent inactivity (believe me, I was ANYTHING but inactive), I finally have some progress to report for G.I.JEFF: A REALLY AVERAGE HERO! I have rewritten the script for the initial G.I.JEFF story, "Dead Men Don't Eat Quiche". Additionally, as you will see below, I have pencilled a cover picture and the first page of the story, which as rewritten, will run six pages.

(I guess I need to add here a disclaimer: My G.I.JEFF comic has absolutely nothing to do with the parody cartoon - of which I only learned this afternoon - that ran on the cancelled NBC tv show, COMMUNITY. Jeff Roberts and I came up with G.I.JEFF back in the mid-1980s, when we were co-workers at Mr. Moe's Subs. G.I.Jeff was a nickname I gave Jeff back then. Then we decided to make him a comic character. I've got the three almost-30-year-old pencilled/inked/lettered black & white pages here at home.)

The first photo is of the cover pencils, the second is page one of the story.

These pictures were taken on my cellphone, since I don't have a scanner large enough to handle the 14"x17" Bristol board I'm working on. Once I have these inked (that's right, I'll be inking right over the pencils -- and then ERASING the pencil marks!), I'll have to take them somewhere to get them scanned so that I can color them and add word balloons on the computer. Unless I can find a really good deal on a large scanner.

So we're still a ways away from actually publishing the comic online, but we're a lot closer than we were just a few days ago. My plan is to (in more or less this order):
1) Ink the cover, get it scanned, color and letter it on my PC and publish it on the G.I.JEFF site;
2) Finish pencilling "Dead Men Don't Eat Quiche";
3) Write the script for the follow-up story, "Real Men Don't Wear Plaid";
4) Ink all six pages of "Dead Men Don't Eat Quiche"; and
5) Color and letter 1 page each week, publishing it online weekly for six weeks.
I'm guessing that it'll probably be at least three weeks before the cover goes up on the site. Then, it'll probably take a couple more weeks to finish pencils on the story. Another week for the "Real Men ..." script. A couple more weeks to ink the six pages. So, we're looking at about eight weeks before the story starts its run. That puts it at late-July/early-August. We'll see.

Let's just pray that I can stay healthy enough to actually stick to this timeline. Last year, once I finished "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" over at the ROADFROGS site, things kind of ground to a halt, first because of my own health problems and then my mother's cancer, which took her away from us last October.

Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be back on this site in a week or two with more news.

BTW, in case you're not already reading these webcomics, check out Eddie Pittman's RED'S PLANET and Brian Shearer's WILLIAM THE LAST. I also recently found Jeff Smith's latest project, TUKI. All great stories. All beautiful artwork. All lots of fun.

As I hope G.I.JEFF will be.