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| Jeph Jacques | |
|---|---|
 Jacques in 2012 | |
| Born | Jeffrey Paul Jacques (1980-06-17)June 17, 1980 (age 44) Rockville, Maryland |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer, artist, musician |
Notable works | Questionable Content |
| http://questionablecontent.net/ | |
Jeffrey Paul "Jeph" Jacques (/ˈdʒɛfˈdʒæks/JEFJAKS) (born June 17, 1980) is an American-Canadiancartoonist who writes and draws thewebcomicQuestionable Content. Jacques has formerly created the webcomicsindietits,Derelict Orbital Reflector Devices andAlice Grove.
Jacques was born inRockville, Maryland, and was later adopted.[1] He has a younger brother named Justin.[2]
Jacques lived nearNorthampton, Massachusetts, whereQuestionable Content is set; in 2015, he moved toHalifax, Nova Scotia.[3]
Jacques graduated fromHampshire College with a degree in music. He was married to his business manager Cristi until their amicable separation in 2014.[4][5] In 2017, Jacques travelled toFrance and remarried.[6]
Questionable Content (QC) is a comedicslice-of-lifewebcomic that Jacques started on August 1, 2003. It was initially published two days a week, and then moved up to three updates a week when Jacques published strip #16.[7] On September 4, 2004, Jacques lost his day job, and decided to try publishing QC every weekday andmake a living selling QC-related T-shirts.[8][9]
Jacques was a member of Dayfree Press, an online webcomicsyndicate which included other artists such as Christian Fundin and Pontus Madsen ofLittle Gamers, Sam Logan ofSam and Fuzzy, andRyan North ofDinosaur Comics.[10][11]
Jacques launchedindietits as an anonymousside project on April 1, 2005, to use ideas that did not fit intoQuestionable Content's setting.[12][13] Compared toQuestionable Content, it is a simple strip, eschewing detailed art and linear storyline in favour of reusable pre-drawn panels and one-shot jokes. To further broaden his drawing limits, Jacques createdJephdraw to place unnamed drawings of his onto theInternet. He puts anything from favored panels to simple sketches for others to see what he does in his spare time.[citation needed]
In September 2014, Jacques launched a new comic,Alice Grove, which updated once per week until the story finished in July 2017.
Early in 2015 Jacques purchased the domain name walmart.horse (using the more recently availableICANN-era generic top-level domains). The website's sole page is an image of a horse in front of aWalmart store. Jacques created the website as a piece of postmodernist "nonsense-art".[14] In March Jacques posted acease and desist letter he received from Walmart who claimed the website diluted their intellectual property. Although Jacques said he believes the site to befair use, he said he would be willing to post a disclaimer on the site indicating that it is parody if Walmart requested it.[14][15][16] Jacques gave up the domain after Walmart filed a domain dispute.[17]
In October 2015, Jacques launched a new strip titledDerelict Orbital Reflector Devices at the URL "dord.horse".[18] The strip revolves around a pair of sentient solar collection satellites (known as "DORDs"), part of a network of 2×1013 similar satellites[19] that were placed around the Sun to gather energy for a civilization that has long since departed,[20] leaving the DORDs to contemplate their purpose and while away vast stretches of idle time.[21] Each strip consists of a centrally-placed white sun disk on a black starfield, with the two DORDs assuming various positions in front of the sun, and text balloons for either or both of them in most panels.[citation needed] DORD updated on a daily basis, but no strips have been published since November 19, 2015.[citation needed] The domain registration for "dord.horse" expired.
In 2005 Jacques launchedDeathmøle, a virtualpost-metal band whose works are available online.[22][23][24] The band is currently composed of three characters from his comic,Questionable Content. The name for the band appears in Strip 554 for the first time.[25] Since its inception, Jacques has periodically released individual Deathmøle songs through hisLiveJournal[26] or hisTumblr[27] where they remain available; newer albums have been released onBandCamp.[28]
Jacques states that Deathmøle's style "...started out as a joke- I wanted to write and record a really stupid metal song ... and it turned out to be really fun. So fun, in fact, that I started writing more 'serious' metal tracks, and that’s ... how the music evolved."[29]
In chronological order, the Deathmøle albums areMoletopopolis,Long Songs,???,Trial Period (EP),Amps,Absent Gods & Creatures Foul,Fear of Black Horses,[30]Meade's Army,[31]Advances,Permanence (ongoing) and finallyJephmøle (ongoing). Each album typically has seven or eight tracks with Trial Period's three and Moletopopolis' fifteen being the extremes.[32] The music is Jacques' original work, with the exception of a cover ofLow's "Two-step" onLong Songs.
On August 11, 2013, Jacques launched a Kickstarter project with a goal of $9,500 to professionally record the Deathmøle albumPermanence. On September 10, 2013, the Kickstarter projects funding period ended with a total funding of $141,115 breaking all 10 of his listed stretch goals. Much of the funding came from fans of QC.[33]
Jacques was the Artist Guest of Honor at the 2006Albacon.[34] His webcomicQuestionable Content has been honored multiple times in theWeb Cartoonists' Choice Awards.[35]
Jacques's relationship to major internet companies has twice gotten him attention from the kinds of high-profile media outlets that do not normally cover webcomic news. In 2017, he was part of a creator backlash against a plan byPatreon, a subscription platform, to add fees to donations regardless of their size. He was extensively quoted in theWashington Post as one of the leaders of the creators objecting to this plan: "Jacques's average patron gives him between $1 and $2 a month. Creators like him, who rely on small payments, said the new system would discourage their very business model."[36]
Several years later, he again came to widespread attention when he was banned fromTwitter for a prank at the expense of Twitter ownerElon Musk, which led to his being interviewed by theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation.[37]
