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Jeffrey Rowland (webcomics)
Encyclopedia
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
s. Originally from Locust Grove
Locust Grove, Oklahoma
Locust Grove is a town in Mayes County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,423 at the 2010 census compared to 1,366 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Locust Grove is located at ....
, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, Rowland now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts
Easthampton, Massachusetts
Easthampton is the second largest city in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is on the southeastern edge of an area called the Pioneer Valley near the five colleges in the college towns of Northampton and Amherst, MA...
where he continues to work on the two projects, while running TopatoCo, a company he uses to sell merchandise based on his and other artists' comics.
Jeffrey Rowland's comics are part of the TopatoCo network, along with comics such as Dinosaur Comics
Dinosaur Comics
Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on 1 February 2003, though there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in two collections and in a...
and MS Paint Adventures
MS Paint Adventures
MS Paint Adventures is a collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. Because of the frequency with which the site is updated, MS Paint Adventures is estimated to be the longest web comic on the Internet with over 6000 pages total among its four series.These comics are written...
. Rowland can be considered one of the small number of professional webcartoonists, as running Overcompensating and Wigu, in addition to his merchandise company TopatoCo, is his full time job and source of income.
Comics
Rowland's comics were used along with Penny ArcadePenny Arcade (webcomic)
Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic...
, Fetus-X and Questionable Content
Questionable Content
Questionable Content is a slice-of-life webcomic written and drawn by Jeph Jacques. It was launched on August 1, 2003. Jacques currently makes his living exclusively from QC merchandising and advertising, making him one of the few professional webcomic artists...
as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artistic medium...
's 2006 book Making Comics
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artistic medium...
When I Grow Up
When I Grow Up is a webcomic written by Rowland, which ran from June 14, 1999 until January 1, 2002. It takes place in the fictional town of Shallow Brook, OklahomaOklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
. The main characters were Neal, a young African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
working for the U.S. government; Roger, an unemployed slacker
Slacker
The term "slacker" is used to refer to a person who habitually avoids work. Slackers may be regarded as belonging to an antimaterialistic counterculture, though in some cases their behavior may be due to other causes ....
; Zoe, a selfish, bitter newscaster
News presenter
A news presenter is a person who presents news during a news program in the format of a television show, on the radio or the Internet.News presenters can work in a radio studio, television studio and from remote broadcasts in the field especially weather...
; and Gina, a college student and part-time employee of a video store.
The structure of When I Grow Up is very similar that of Rowland's second comic, Wigu. It includes five different story arcs, which are often interrupted by short stories or single strips.
When I Grow Up was hosted on Keenspot
Keenspot
Keenspot is a webcomics portal founded in March 2000 by cartoonist Chris Crosby , Crosby's mother Teri, cartoonist Darren Bleuel , and Nathan Stone.-History:...
for some time, but Rowland eventually moved it to his own server.
Wigu
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
created by Jeffrey Rowland. It was publicly launched on January 7, 2002 and was also part of the Dumbrella
Dumbrella
Dumbrella is an alliance of webcomic artists who promote one another's sites, travel to conventions, and sell merchandise together. It is also the name of the website of that alliance, which serves as a shared weblog and an active forum community with over 10,000 registered users .The current...
bulletin board. Wigu is the successor to When I Grow Up and derives its name from the earlier strip's initials. There have been some guest appearances from When I Grow Up, but Wigu is otherwise a different comic with a new set of characters.
The comic is centered on the adventures of a little boy named Wigu Tinkle and his family. Each chapter of the comic represents one day in Wigu's life. Wigu is an intelligent child with an active imagination who uses much of his free time to watch television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and play video games, where he encounters the beings of Butter Dimension³, primarily the intergalactic heroes Topato (a flying potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
whose catchphrase is "Spring into action!" and whose primary defense mechanism consists of being made entirely of poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
) and Sheriff Pony (an eloquent Space Pony who, as the storyline reveals, excretes vanilla
Vanilla
Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla, primarily from the Mexican species, Flat-leaved Vanilla . The word vanilla derives from the Spanish word "", little pod...
ice cream
Ice cream
Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...
instead of fecal waste. Topato excretes sour cream, which he also uses to shave).
Wigu was nominated for the 2004 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards
2004 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards
The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards is an award voted on by web cartoonists. Because of planning problems, there was no online ceremony in 2004.-Outstanding Comic:* Count Your Sheep — by Adrian Ramos...
categories Outstanding Short Form Comic and Outstanding Story Concept. Wigu was originally intended to end on December 31, 2004, but resumed on April 18, 2005. The webcomic ended again on December 31, 2005 so that Rowland could continue the title as a series of printed books. It was intended that there be a new book every month, but due to various delays, only three have been published, and Wigu returned to its original online format on November 22, 2006.
Overcompensating
On September 19, 2004, Rowland began another comic, Overcompensating, a journal/daily blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
comic about his life. Overcompensating, though clearly fictitious, does appear to have some reality in it. Caricatures of real life people such as Richard Stevens, John Allison
John Allison (artist)
John Allison is the writer and artist of the webcomics Bobbins , Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery . John described Scary Go Round as "a comic that I've been making since 2002. It started off as a comic about barmaids Tessa and Rachel, then it became more about Shelley Winters and her bizarre...
and Vera Brosgol
Vera Brosgol
Vera Brosgol is a cartoonist and a graduate in Classical Animation of Sheridan College in Canada. She lives in Portland, Oregon and works for Laika Entertainment House where she does storyboards and concept art for their animation productions...
make appearances, while other characters, such as Baby, do not exist. In April 2005, Rowland predicted and then 'faked' his death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
by having Weedmaster P, a character in the strip, update the comic, posting that Rowland had died.
TopatoCo
Rowland is the owner and operator of the web merchant TopatoCo, which sells t-shirts and other items for a number of webcomics. As of September 2009, TopatoCo sells merchandise for over 25 different comics. Comics that TopatoCo represents include Questionable ContentQuestionable Content
Questionable Content is a slice-of-life webcomic written and drawn by Jeph Jacques. It was launched on August 1, 2003. Jacques currently makes his living exclusively from QC merchandising and advertising, making him one of the few professional webcomic artists...
, Dinosaur Comics
Dinosaur Comics
Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on 1 February 2003, though there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in two collections and in a...
, MS Paint Adventures
MS Paint Adventures
MS Paint Adventures is a collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. Because of the frequency with which the site is updated, MS Paint Adventures is estimated to be the longest web comic on the Internet with over 6000 pages total among its four series.These comics are written...
and Sam and Fuzzy
Sam and Fuzzy
Sam and Fuzzy is a webcomic written and drawn by Sam Logan. It initially appeared in 2001 in The Martlet as a four-panel gag strip with a rough yet consistent, heavily contrasting black and white style. In May 2002 Logan began posting the strips on his website, and it quickly transitioned to an...
. Rowland currently operates TopatoCo out of a large warehouse in Easthampton, Massachusetts
Easthampton, Massachusetts
Easthampton is the second largest city in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is on the southeastern edge of an area called the Pioneer Valley near the five colleges in the college towns of Northampton and Amherst, MA...
. The various cardboard box-related adventures of running the business play a large part in Rowland's comic Overcompensating.
External links
- Wigu
- Overcompensating
- When I Grow Up (Archives)
- TopatoCo
- Interview with Jeff Rowland from The Weekly Geek.