Closing Time [25 - 30]

Pages 1-6

Pages 7-12 

Pages 13-18

Pages 19-24

Closing Time [25 - 30]

Or 

The Ballad of Ruben and Zara.

And yes! That's the official subtitle. I was suggesting there was one all the time and that's the one.

So, the main reason I wanted to do a double update was to have the new pages 1-6 establish this story as a prequel in the comic itself so I didn't have to do all that lifting through text here.

I had actually teased the prequel aspect of the comic before so I imagine it wasn't really a surprise for many of you.

Based on a true story.

As in, I once also waited in line for a while and the cashier had to do the balancing when I had only 2 guys in front of me in the line. Making me wait at least half an hour more.

Which makes me think I wasted my parrot’s cameo in the crowd shot before, he should have been here behind our heroes.

Anyway, twas the night before Christmas eve years ago. My mom needed some stuff for the Christmas dinner the next day and I lived close enough to a store so going there late at night wasn't that much of a problem.

(By the way, help me with this, I actually had trouble finding the English equivalent to “Corte de caja” . Is it really balancing? Is the phrasing ok?)

All of this to say that this comic is now a Christmas special…

Well no, but I'm what it actually is, among other things is a love story!

One of the main things I wanted to do with this comic since I started was to actually tell of how RJ and Zara got together. 

I've actually had that last page with RJ and Zara in mind for years now. Panel by panel.

And I finally got to actually make it.

Unfortunately due to that being the joke, we don't really get to see them actually kiss on this batch of pages but if you really would like to see that I got a nice bonus surprise for you to enjoy on the attached files below.

This page was always part of the plan for this comic since from when it was only going to be like 12 pages. So long ago. But luckily, as you can see I actually got to show more, including Zara and the band’s first time meeting RJ and on how he got to be one of them.

Between you and me guys, If not for Davo interrupting I think RJ would have made his movement right then and there. And It would have probably worked, who knows. But then the band gave him work and he decided to keep things professional. But as we know, it didn't last.

That's another story I have always known though I hadn't really thought of a way to tell before. But the Tony bottle part was new even to me. 

Btw I did my research and it turns out that staying awake after a concussion thing is a myth, but it worked too well here so let's say that the doctors that stitched Tony hadn't gotten the memo and still believed it.

Four stitches by the way, the good thing is that you can't really see the scar through his feathers. Or maybe the bad thing, Tony heard once that chicks dig scars.

I kind of want to retroactively add Tony’ poorly cleaned blood stains to the car seat in the rest of the pages where it would apply like in the last one. It could be a cool fun detail but it may be too much work. If I actually do it I'll let you know.

This is the reason why I lack the confidence to do a long story comic and publish it page by page like other artists. I know I'm gonna be changing stuff as I keep going. Like adding 6 new pages to the beginning for example.

RJ working fixing phones is an idea I've always had because I really liked the visual gag of this really big guy working with really tiny things and using really tiny tools but I feel like I didn't do it justice here because I really wanted to drive home that Zara's phone was truly busted but fear not! The memory survived!

I'm really excited because with this more than 50% of the comic is officially completed so we're getting close to the final lap.

But before I continue with it I have a couple of things I have to do. For example a quick little extra bonus page for the Davo and Tina's comic that I will be making public later this week.

The last couple of comics did really well but this one is probably going to bomb because Twitter's algo has been kicking my ass lately but that's what I get for not making it public last winter lol.