Jeffrey Rowland (webcomics)

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Jeffrey Rowland at Comic-Con International 2006

Jeffrey J. Rowland (born May 22, 1974) is the author and artist responsible for Wigu and Overcompensating, two popular webcomics. Originally from Locust Grove, Oklahoma, Rowland now lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts 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. TopatoCo has the distinct honour of being the world's largest webcomics merchandising company.^{[citation needed]}

Jeffrey Rowland's comics are part of the Dumbrella network, along with comics such as Diesel Sweeties and Scary Go Round. 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.

1 Comics
2 Snakes on a Plane
3 References
4 External links
- 4.1 Interviews

[edit] Comics

Rowland started his webcomics career on June 14, 1999 with the webcomic When I Grow Up, a comic about four friends living in an apartment building in the fictional town of Shallow Brook, Oklahoma. The main characters were Neal, a young African American scientist working for the U.S. government; Roger, an unemployed slacker; Zoe, a selfish, bitter newscaster; and Gina, a college student and part-time employee of a video store. When I Grow Up was hosted by Keenspot for some time, but eventually Rowland moved it to its own webserver.

In January 2002, When I Grow Up ended. On July 1 of the same year, his new comic, Wigu began. Wigu was about the adventures of a young boy named Wigu, his dysfunctional family, and Topato Potato and Sheriff Pony, a couple of magical cartoon characters from another dimension. Rowland planned to end Wigu in December 2004, but in early 2005 changed his mind and continued to work on the comic.

On September 19, 2004, Rowland began another comic, Overcompensating, a kind of journal/daily blog 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 and Vera Brosgol^[1] make appearances, while other characters, such as Baby, do not exist.^[2] In April 2005, Rowland predicted and then 'faked' his death by having Weedmaster P, a character in the strip, update the comic, posting that Rowland had died.

For a time, Rowland announced that Wigu was to become a primarily print-based format, to be published monthly and distributed via the Internet and some comics shops. The first issue, The Case of the Missile Crisis!, went into presale on March 14, 2006. A new online Wigu storyline was launched on November 22, 2006, but the print storyline was continued through two more issues.

Rowland's comics were used along with Penny Arcade, Fetus-X and Questionable Content as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud's 2006 book Making Comics ^[3]

[edit] Snakes on a Plane

In addition, Jeffrey Rowland has been strongly linked with the Snakes on a Plane internet phenomenon, partly because of his comic about it^[4] and a resulting T-shirt^[5] which, though unofficial, has been worn in promotion of the film. At the 2006 Comic-Con International he appeared on a panel with Samuel L. Jackson discussing the film. Rowland attended the film's premiere and appears in the "Snakes on a blog" featurette on its DVD release.