Jon Pfeiler was born on the south side of Chicago, in what is now an abandoned building slated for destruction. As a small child he playedalone frequently, imitating cartoon voices and watching the Looney Tunes; focusing on nothing else for longer than 30 seconds at a time.
At some point he attended and somehow completed his education through high school in Crystal Lake IL. Pfeiler thencontinued on to Northern Illinois University, where he was summarily thrown out of the Illustration department for arguing with the professor over matters of opinion (after a number of years i can admit the professor was right). Regardless of this setback Pfeiler graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Drawing (degree in waiting tables), and also managed to publish a daily comic strip (Cat and Reggie) in the Northern Star Newspaper with a run of 4 years.
Soon after college (5 yearsthats soon right?) Pfeiler left comics and the restaurant arts to accept his first industry job illustrating text books for Hydraulic and Pneumatic machinerepair.exciting stuff. During this period he met his wife, realized that Illustrators arent valued in modern society, and decided to find a job that could support a family. Thus began the downward spiral into the corporate hell where one in three people find themselves confined.
Pfeiler dreamed of opening a Video rental store that not only delivered your video, but also picked up your dinnerfrom local restaurants that didnt deliver themselvesit would have been called Dinner and a Movie. He also dreamed of owning his own comic bookshop, but Modern computer Technology slowly and surely wiped away all his entrepreneurial dreams, ironically leaving him with only computer skills as a marketable resource. Success in the IT field began to bear fruit shortly after , and so did his family as his first son was bornwhich required traversing further into the corporate plains of hell for more money.
Trying to find a balance between the happiness at home with a well taken-care of family and the dread of trudging into an office building to deal with intellectual zombies every day, he picked up his notebook and began to write comics againThus Surviving Normal was Born. Trying to make ones situation better by participating in an over-saturated dead art form isnt the best idea but its certainly the most fun.
Pfeiler currently lives in Cary, IL with his beloved wife and son.and sadly still trudges into the office every day.