Closing Time [7-12]

[Edited: Originally posted as pages 1-6]

Or

The band goes shopping

A.K.A. “A secret third thing I'm not gonna reveal just yet to not spoil the whole thing”

Pages 1 to 6 "To Be Continued"

Based on true events.

As in, that whole story about the instant ramen being made out of plastic, my mother actually believed that and wouldn't let me eat it as a kid. The difference is that I still ate it when she wasn't around. 

That is one of the very few aspects in which I'm cooler than RJ.

…

The Worn Down Children have the night off after a small gig playing at a town fair. Will they be able to hang out today? Let's find out.

So here is the first chunk of that big comic I had been talking about. I'm actually doing it. This one excites me because it actually has a b plot of sorts.

Here's just the first 6 pages for now to set out the”plot” I'm actually trying to figure out how I should post the rest.

I could post them in batches like this but that’d make wait times longer, or individually as soon as I have them and that could be fun but there's the issue that they're always subject to changes or edits. Like page 3 and 6 here that originally was just page 4 before it got split. 

If you have a preference let me know.

Originally this comic was supposed to be a direct sequel of Band on the run, hence the presence of Tak and the summer clothes, but after I developed further I grew unsure if that works anymore. So I left that as a bit ambiguous. I could still retcon it to make that the case but for the time being I think this happens a couple of months or so earlier.

A thing that worried me was the setting, being a grocery store it could have drove me to madness with all the things I'd had to draw. But I tried out this minimalist UPA like style I specifically took out of some Pepe Le Pew shorts I was watching the other day and It worked. At least for these comic.

A fun thing about this one is that you actually see Tony tell a joke that bombs hard not only once but twice. Though he's happy that Tak is there to help him out with that.

Another thing we can finally see is RJ and Zara hanging out beyond just a still picture. I mean, we had seen some of that before but we finally see it again.

Also, Lil being something of a personal space enjoyer which, speaking about “based on true events”, that whole thing with Lil in the Apple (Apeach?) store, is basically a thing that happened to me the last time I visited one of those. I designed that Otter guy to be like Lil’s Nemesis or something. The closed eyes, while a common trope, I specifically took from Bleach’s character Gin Ichimaru, cause in my head they sound the same (Latin American dub).

For the first part of Zara and RJ talking in the car, she originally was going to be talking about the Phil Collins’ “In the air tonight” urban legend of him watching a man letting another drown but while making it I remembered that family guy had already done that exact bit. So I made a tweet and a post on blue sky asking for cool music related urban legends and got a bunch of cool ones, like Klatuuh secretly being the Beatles and such, but in the end I went with Avril Lavigne’s replacement by a double in 2004 cause that feels like one Zara would know well.

I also made an alternative version of that page where she talks about the Elvis Twins theory which I'm surprised no one mentioned.

I'm still not sure which one I like more.

I'll keep working on this but for a moment I'm going to take a small pause because I got to draw some spooks.