Jeff’s life was changed forever at the age of four when his
parents brought him to a drive-in theater to see a showing of Star
Wars. Since then he’s been obsessed with robots, aliens,
spaceships, superheroes, and fantasy worlds that are far more
interesting to him than reality.
After straying from the geek path in high school, Jeff combined his
newfound passion for writing with his love of comic books and Star Wars
in his 20’s, contributing monthly comic book columns for his
college newspapers and conducting interviews with Star Wars creators
like Drew Struzan and Timothy Zahn for the Echo Station
website.
Sometime in the mid to late 1990’s, Jeff put the words
“Boxcar” and “Astronaut”
together and through
the years that word combination has been a comic book, screenplay, and
most recently a blog. While perusing webcomics during the winter of
2007, Jeff came up with the idea to use the title for a webcomic about
a kid who pretended he was a space pilot in his backyard using an old
appliance box, much like he used to do as a child. Jeff shared his
concept with his best friend and established artist, Marc Lapierre, and
soon the two creators were working to bring Ben, Devin, and Diogee to
life on the Internet.
Displaying an aptitude for art by age 3, Marc has been drawing ever
since. His early imagination was shaped by Mighty Mouse cartoons, the
live action Spider-Man t.v. show and of course, Star Wars. Many hours
were spent drawing pirates, space men, and super heroes while sitting
at the kitchen table growing up.
Upon reaching his high school years, Marc's interest in cartoons and
comic books had exploded as the world was discovering the Massachusetts
based comic phenomena known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Seeing
how a couple of regular joes from his home state had hit the big time
with their silly cartoons, Marc was inspired to create his own
underground comic book mini-sensation. While in his junior year, Marc
began to self publish a super hero comedy adventure called the Green
Gnat. All the issues were not only written and drawn by Marc, but
published and distributed by him as well. Selling them at a hand full
of local comic book shops as well as at his high school as a fund
raiser for his class, Marc completely sold out of the first issue's
initial print run.
It was also during these crucial high school years that Marc met Jeff
in a freshman year art class. for more than 15 years, They have been
collaborating on many little projects from comic books, to student
films, to college radio. And now comes Marc and Jeff's
biggest collaboration to date, Boxcar Astronaut, a webcomic combining
all of their strengths and none of their weaknesses! A collaboration
that's sure to become your NEW favorite comic strip!
