OUT OF TOWN - PAGE 2

It's Friday, but as we've established, the concept of Friday is meaningless to me. The only difference Friday makes is that it initiates a series of days in which I miss out on stuff. Back in Australia, at one stage, "To Pull A Jason" doesn't mean anything sordid (get your filthy mind out of the gutter) but to not turn up to stuff. Oh, I'd let people know. It's not like I just don't turn up. My mum raised me better than that. But it's a vague indicator that my social life is in more trouble than Steven Seagal's action hero career. Maybe it too should take up jazz. But I don't even think the sultry wrongness of Songs From The Crystal Cave could save the bleeding, whimpering mess that is my social life. It sits in the corner, chained to a wall on a stained mattress that is more iron springs than material. One of the springs has dug into its thigh and after weeks of inactivity the flesh has grown around it in a blistering flower of pus and putrid flesh. It gurgles weakly on a mixture of blood and bile through a collapsed trachea. A tiny pin hole of air squeezing its way through lips swollen with ulcers and weeping sores.

And that's a toned down metaphor for my social life.

Let's not even talk about how I'm feeling this morning. Normally my coffee is like a shining light piercing the heavens and parting the clouds. It bathes me in a warm, divine glow and empowers me with its holy caffeinating powers for the trials ahead. Sometimes I hear a choir of thousands holding a single, fragile, ethereal note as I take each sip.

But today it feels like its been chained next to my social life. I feel like the only thing that might help would be a couple rounds with a defibrilator.

Ooh... yeah. It's gonna be a tough one today.

But enough about me... let's move onto something better.

Me.

Kidding.

How about Out Of Town? That's a good compromise, isn't it? A bit about Heroes and a lot about me. Sounds fair to me. And since all these arguments are simply rhetorical or the product of a fractured psyche... that's what we're going with.

INTERLUDE: With an attention span shorter than the life expectancy of a vodka tonic in my hand, Jas forgets he was blogging. Works. And goes to sleep.

Alright, it's now no longer Friday. I wrote all the above, meant to finish it and then forgot about it. Around 4am last night I sat bolt upright in bed remembering that I'd forgotten to post this. But then I realised I cared about sleep more than I did about this blog. Yeah, you heard me. Sleep. You wanna see me on less than six hours sleep, just watch Dawn of the Dead and watch the world being taken over by Jasons on less than six hours sleep.

But let's talk about this Heroes comic. I find that my likenesses get better and better over time. In fact, by the time that I have to finish the comic, I'm about warmed up. If you look at all the likenesses on this page you can see that they're... not so good. In fact, I would argue that the only likeness that truly kicks artistic butt here is Mr Muggles. I'm pretty happy with how this canine rodent is looking. Alright, alright, I'm sorry I called him (and all Pommeranians) a canine rodent.

No! No, I'm not! Get a real dog! That thing is about as dog-like as viagra spam.

Ok, one of the funniest things about this page is Jim's script. I hope he doesn't mind, but I have to reproduce a couple of excerpts that made me laugh so hard. Alright, so it's no secret that Sprint and Nissan are sponsors of Heroes. So here are some choice moments of Jim acknowledging his unique appreciation of that sponsorship:

PANEL 4 From the passenger side of the car, we look at him profile. HRG’s sitting in a rented (but awesome) NISSAN SPORTS CAR outside of an office building.

I laughed so hard I forgot to draw a Nissan. Ooops. Sshhh! My bad! I'm sorry. As you can see, I decided to ignore Jim's awesome directions too. God forbid he actually tries to make my job easier by actually visualising a scene as he writes it!


PANEL FIVE

A closer shot of HRG, he’s holding his SPRINT INSTINCT PHONE to his ear, and his reception is awesome. His glasses glint a bit in the sunlight.

I did remember to draw the Sprint phone. On my layouts where I indicate the speech balloons I remember writing, "My reception is awesome!" inside HRG's. I must have erased it.

Ahhhh Jim... He knows how to keep his artists entertained.

NEXT: Yep, page 3. More shennanigans and hijinks ensue on Monday.

And finally comics have made it into the LOUVRE! Another step forward to legitimizing comics as an artform.

Now, I have a new goal.