#the comic will almost certainly never be finished because it is truly very dumb

[senselessalchemist]

Various doodles slash dumb comic crops

[smol-and-grumpy]

Sky Full Of Stars - CH05

Sequel to Something Just Like This

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: He’s Dean Winchester, ex mobster boss, still a little cocky, less ruthless and not at all short tempered anymore. Instead, he thinks he’s hilarious (she doesn’t agree, though). They both try to live a quiet life. And Dean hopes, very hard, that his former life won’t come knocking at their door.

Warnings: Mostly fluff really, with an added sprinkle of angst

WC: 2889

SERIES MASTERLIST

Dean’s sleeping on the couch in the private room he upgraded her to because Y/N needs to stay for a night and he wants her to be as comfortable as possible. She guesses that it has a lot to do about her hating hospitals. 

He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping comfortably at all though, his big body nearly spills out of that tiny couch. His upper body twists away from the rest and she’s sure that his back will hurt like a bitch once he wakes up. He looks almost comical and she takes her phone, snaps a picture. Maybe she’ll make it her home screen. 

She likes to take pictures of him in unflattering circumstances because it’s the only way she can be reminded that Dean is not perfect after all. He might look perfectly delicious all the time but he’s certainly not perfect in every sense and that’s totally perfect to her. She wouldn’t want it any other way.

Ella’s sleeping in her cot next to Y/N’s bed. 

Ella.

She remembers the start of their journey in search of a perfect name. Either one of them always had the right to veto and if someone vetoes, the name must be dropped completely. Dean suggested girls names and she doesn’t know if he knew women with these names? Maybe he did. Maybe he even slept with half of the names he suggested and really she didn’t want to be that kind of girl but she does have insecurities and that’s just how she is as a person. She can’t change the fact that she’s always going to be jealous because he’s had so much more and could still have women better than her. Y/N knows that her way of thinking is dumb, because he chose her after all, he wants to marry her, he has a baby with her—

—yet still...

So, when one day she suggested Ella — because she loved Cinderella when she grew up — Dean was quick to agree, there was no pausing to think or anything, just Dean repeating the name a couple of times, to hear it roll off his tongue. He then just walked to the chalkboard they had, with names written on it to choose from, and put Ella right on top. And it stayed there until the day she gave birth.

The girl starts to stir in her cot and Y/N leans over, takes the baby out and tries to dock Ella on her still milkless breasts. The nurse informed her, but she already heard it from Anna too, that the milk will only come a couple of days later. Nonetheless the baby needs to drink now and apparently she has already produced colostrum that Ella would be needing in the first couple of days. 

Now Y/N’s trying to do what the nurse taught her before. She docks her little girl to her nipple and lets Ella suck the needed milk out of her. She’s not going to lie, it hurts like hell, has to bite down on her lips not to cry out and wake Dean up. And with every suck on her nipple, she feels something flowing out of her down there, and she gets cramps in her stomach. They’re not worse than menstruation cramps though, so at least there’s that.

Ella starts to grunt and trashes around with her arms and that’s when Y/N knows that she needs to switch breasts. While she does it, Ella starts to cry, which prompts Dean to wake up from his short nap.

He blinks and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, yawns once more before he sits up and stretches himself. Dean looks over when he remembers where he was, sees her docking Ella to her nipple and he stills then as he watches her nurse their baby. 

She chuckles at him, “Maybe you should take a picture, it’ll last longer.” 

He grins, it’s all cocky, and that’s when she knows that she shouldn’t have said that. 

Dean grabs his phone out of his pants, “Okay,”

“I was joking, put that thing back.”

Dean laughs and stands up, walks over to her to sit on the bed, leans down to kiss her and then Ella. 

“I’m not gonna lie,” He says, as he watches his daughter drink from her, “Maybe you’d think I’m a creep but seeing you nursing her turns me on very much.”

“Ugh,” Y/N huffs out, “No sex, Dean. Never again.”

He raises his eyebrow, “Never?”

“You heard me. It brought me into this situation in the first place. And I’m all messed up down there. You can’t change my mind.” She strokes Ella’s head while the little one sucks her nipple raw. 

“That’s a challenge I’m up to.” He grins.

After a while Ella finishes and falls asleep right on her naked chest. Dean leans down, noses at the baby’s head. Takes in the baby’s scent. It smells heavenly, she knows. 

“Dean? Could you go to the bag and get a little box out of it? It’s in the side pocket. I can’t remember which side, though.”

“Okay,” He pushes himself up from the bed and walks over to the bag, he tries the side pocket, comes up empty handed and tries the other one. 

Fishing out the box, he looks at it but he doesn’t get suspicious at all. He walks back to her and hands it over but she shakes her head, doesn’t take it. “No, it’s for you.”

“For me?” He frowns and she thinks it’s cute how he has no clue whatsoever.

Y/N nods, smiles up to him, to which Dean frowns some more. “Go on, open it.”

And that he does, opens up to the ring she bought for him. His jaw drops. Dean looks to the ring, back to her, and to the ring again. 

“Why, what?” He swallows, “I need so sit down.” He says then, sits next to her on the bed, slides his body down a little and she moves to the side, making room for him. Dean lays down next to her, kisses her temple, his hand still holding the box. “Do you maybe want to explain why you’re giving me a ring?”

She tilts her head to look him in the eye, “Well,” She starts to say and is somehow not struggling with the words as much as she thought she would be, “I thought you’ve been so good with me, with us. You’ve been so patient, and you let me insult you on a daily basis,”

“You didn’t do it on purpose, so,” He mumbles, throws it in. 

“You shush, my lips are still moving, I’m still talking.” 

Dean snorts.

“Right, where was I?” She tries to remember, “So, you were really my rock, and I’m sorry I made you go to the store so many times.”

“That’s okay,” He  kisses her temple once more, his hands are still holding that damn box and he doesn’t take out the ring yet and she knows it’s because she doesn’t tell him to.

“I was just thinking that it’s not fair that it’s only me who gets to wear a ring to know where I belong. Just as you want to keep me, Dean, I want to keep you too. Will you let me keep you?” 

Dean chuckles, and he sniffles a little but he’s quick to bury his face in the side of her neck, and when she tilts her head, he quickly looks up and kisses her. She knows that it’s because he doesn’t want to come across as a wimp because of the amount he already cried in the last twenty-four hours. 

“Yeah, of course,” He whispers against her mouth, and she smiles into the kiss. 

“Take it out, wear it.” Y/N urges him and he has to tell her to calm down before he slips it on his ring finger. It fits him like a glove, she made sure of it. He doesn’t ask her how she knows what size he needs though, but she guesses he knows that Cas has something to do with it.

“You’re full of surprises, you know that?” He noses at her temple. “I love it, thank you.”

 ***

 It’s two days later that her milk starts to come in. She knows because as soon as she wakes up, her chest feels funny.

Dean brings Ella over from the girl’s bedroom. That’s right, Their girl is sleeping in the other room because Y/N couldn’t get any sleep when they were all in the same room. She would hear every grunt, every movement and it drove her crazy. 

Y/N thought that she was an awful mother to not want her baby close but Anna told her that she felt the same. It was kind of a relief to know that she wasn’t the only one. 

During the day, Ella’s always by her side, it’s just the nights that she needs space. 

So, Dean volunteered to go get her while she tries to get out of bed with a funny feeling. Her chest feels heavy, and her breasts feel like they’re burning up. She rolls out of bed, stands in front of the floor lengths mirror and lifts her shirt, and holy shit!

Her tits are ginormous, hard and heavy, there’s stretch marks on the side of her boobs and around her nipple, blue veins all across it. Her tits look absolutely fake and they’re near exploding.

Dean walks in, all smiles, and in only his underwear, balancing his girl on his arm when he stops dead in his tracks. “Jesus, baby, what happened to your boobs?”

She turns around then, her hands still holding up the shirt but she can’t focus on her own chest, instead she looks at Dean. He looks so damn yummy in only his boxer briefs and their girl in his arms, his bed hair standing out in all different directions and she loves that, thinks that she’s really the luckiest girl in the world. 

Dean does his best to hide his boner while he watches her nurse their baby girl. He’s so mesmerized that he didn’t even hear her calling for him to go get a towel because her other boob is leaking. 

And it really, truly is leaking because the milk just flows out and now he can’t take his eyes off it either.

He didn’t hear her tell him to go get a cloth, which prompts her to elbow him in the ribs. 

Dean runs to the bathroom, comes out with a fresh cloth and holds it to her tit. Jesus, it’s so full and hard, same as his cock.

“You’re hard,” She chuckles as if she can read his mind.

Well, she doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know it since she can most definitely see a clear dick print through his underwear.

“Yeah, can’t help it. What would you say w—”

“—No,”

“Baby,”

“Dean, I’m still in a fucking diaper myself, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It’s yuck.”

“Yuck?” He laughs, “I was only joking,” He moves closer, presses his lips to her naked shoulder. He really did joke, because after all, he wants for her to get better. 

And the diaper thing is kind of true either. They were laughing about it on their way back from the hospital. She’s not laughing about it anymore, though. 

When they released her, they said that her vagina should heal soon. Dean hopes so too. He absolutely hates to see her struggling with so many things at the same time, and wishes sometimes that he could nurse Ella himself so at least she gets that weight off her shoulders but since it’s not possible, he just tries to help as best as he can. 

Dean found out that he’s a fairly reasonable diaper changer. It took a lot to get there though. When he changed his first diaper, he gagged so hard the tears shot right into his eyes and Y/N just stood there laughing. He then found out that if he pins a peg to his nose and only breathes through his mouth, it was bearable.

His hands are too big though, so he has trouble cleaning Ella thoroughly and it takes him much longer than when Y/N does it. He also accidentally slips occasionally, and would dip his hand into the warm poo every time he rolls the damn diaper up, and then he’s gagging again, even if he doesn't even smell it. 

So despite all that, life’s really good right now. Everyone’s healthy and he hopes it’ll stay that way.

They settled into life with little Ella. She mostly keeps them (or rather Y/N) up all night because she’s only two weeks old and her feeding schedule right now is every three hours.

Y/N tries to get in naps during the day when Dean can take care of Ella’s other needs and everything that needs to be done in the house. She’s really thankful for that, thankful that they’re able to live comfortably and Dean doesn’t have to go to work to provide for his family. She knows that it’s a privilege and she doesn’t take it for granted. 

Another thing she’s thankful for is Dean being a closet neat freak. Oh, he can be sloppy too, but in moderation. Only if he wants to be. Most of the time though, he picks up after her and Ella and now more than ever because he wants to make himself useful around the house. 

She usually takes naps after a feeding. She would hand Ella to Dean and leave him to do the rest with changing diapers and walking around with her until she falls asleep again while Y/N plants herself on the sofa. She falls asleep immediately too and sometimes she would wake up with Dean spooning her and taking a nap too. 

They’ve become so lazy, living like sloths for the first four weeks. Only when Ella’s feeding time changes to every four hours do they go out to take walks, taking Truffles with them and that boy loves the little baby to death. He constantly watches her, alarms them when Ella so much as lets out a grunt.

Bubbles needed more time to adjust though, but Y/N can feel that the cat slowly accepts the new family member. 

Y/N takes a shower after she feeds Ella and Dean takes over, changing her diaper and lays her down for the night. When she walks out from the bathroom, Dean’s not in their room, which is unusual because it’s already late and he usually goes to bed when she does.

She slips a shirt over her head before she walks out to search for Dean in Ella's room. But the house is awfully silent as soon as she steps onto the landing. The door to Ella’s room is wide open and there’s no sign of either Ella or Dean.

Walking down the stairs, she doesn’t see them in the living room either, but then she hears  creaking of wood.

The door to the terrace is open, she can hear the rocking chair outside through the thin screen door. She hears a bass too, a humming of a melody.

She tiptoes closer, comes to stand on the inside, listening to Dean humming to their baby girl.

He’s sitting in the rocking chair, rocks back and forth with Ella on his chest, a blanket draped over both of them. 

Dean’s humming Metallica, and she has to smirk. Ella stirs on his chest, yawning.

“What? You don’t like it?” He whispers to her before he chuckles softly. 

Y/N watches Dean placing a kiss on Ella’s temple, her heart fills with joy. Ella doesn’t really register Dean but he starts to talk to their girl in a soft voice. A voice he uses whenever he soothes Y/N. A voice he whispers when he wants to reassure her that she’s all he wants. 

She sees him looking up to the sky. The stars are all out tonight. 

“Daddy loves you so much,” Dean whispers, places another kiss on the little girl's cheek, “Mommy loves you, too.”

Dean leans his head back, rocks back and forth before he sighs, “Daddy has done bad things, Ella. Things that might come back to haunt me. I’ll explain everything to you when you’re older, alright? Not going to lie to you.”

Y/N’s heart that just filled itself with joy starts to ache and she hugs her arms around her body tighter.

“I wanna see you grow up. Wanna see you becoming a strong girl. I really hope I’ll get to see that.” Dean’s voice is shaking a little, she can hear it.

“But if I can’t, the only thing you have to know is that daddy loves you, okay? So, so much. You’re going to be a good girl for mommy, you hear me?”

Little Ella stirs, as if she listened and understood what Dean just told her. 

Dean smiles, kisses Ella once more.

Y/N retreats, leaves Dean quality time with his daughter. She’ll ask him later what he means, because the thing he just said worries her.

CH06

[nova-network]

hello I just beat Luigi’s Mansion 3 and I have headcanons for all of the new boss ghosts

Steward:

He’s originally from New Donk City.

He used to be a taxi cab driver, and he died when he was driving home one night by himself and his headlights failed and he crashed into a tree.

He was one of Hellen Gravely’s very first employees, along with Chambrea!

He’s really nervous and kind of awkward when not on the job, but he works very hard.

He and Chambrea are really good friends and get coffee together after work.

Chambrea:

She’s a New Donker too, and used to work as a maid in a fancy hotel prior to, well, getting a job as a maid at a different fancy hotel after dying.

She died by slipping and falling down the stairs.

She is a really sweet and enthusiastic person when not under King Boo’s control, and really loves her job!

She’s a HUGE gossip, and loves to hear and tell everyone about the drama going on with employees and guests.

She and Steward knew each other back when they were alive.

Kruller:

He used to work in the Coconut Mall. Yes, that one, from Mario Kart. He was a mall cop.

He died during a robbery. He wasn’t attacked by the robber, he was chasing after the robber and knocked over a shelf and it fell on him.

He’s a HUGE fan of Morty’s movies. He can quote everything.

He likes to hang out in the cafe area at the shops with his Goob buddies.

Death hasn’t really changed him -- he was a cowardly goofball back when he was alive, too.

Chef Soulffle:

He was actually a TERRIBLE chef back when he was alive. He only learned how to cook after he became a ghost.

He died because he accidentally burned down his kitchen at home.

He used to be called Chef Souffle, but started calling himself Chef Soulffle after his death to be more “ghosty”.

He HATES mushrooms.

He doesn’t have a lot of friends, but he has a weird friendship with Clem, because he thinks Clem is the only other employee who truly appreciates his cooking.

Amadeus Wolfgeist:

He speaks with an exaggerated German accent.

He died of a heart attack.

Outside of King Boo’s influence, he’s actually rather pleasant to be around! But he’s also very intense and takes everything super seriously.

He’s not a full-time employee of the Last Resort, he’s just a famous ghost musician and composer who gets hired to perform there a lot.

He loves the artwork of Vincent Van Gore from the first Luigi’s Mansion game, and in turn, Vincent Van Gore is a big fan of his music! But they’ve never actually met in person.

King MacFrights:

He is not and was never a king. He’s just an old ghost warrior who got a job as a hotel mascot.

But he doesn’t really understand modern life, so he thinks he’s a king now.

He died in battle. Probably in a battle fought over something really stupid.

He sounds very, very Scottish, and when he’s angry, nobody else at the Last Resort can understand what in the world he’s saying.

The castle movie in Paranormal Productions is based on the battle where he died! But it’s extremely historically inaccurate, because the only source Morty has is King MacFrights himself, and MacFrights loves to make stuff up.

Dr. Potter:

He names all of his plants. Most of them have very silly names, like “Chompy” or “Pokey Pete”. Some of them have names that reference other Mario characters instead, like “Vivian”.

He died of old age.

He loves to play board games.

Even outside of King Boo’s influence, he’s kind of a jerk, and likes to mess with people and make fun of them.

He gets along really well with little kids, though.

Morty:

He’s from Diamond City, home of Wario!

He died when he was filming a movie on a skyscraper in the rain and he fell off the roof.

He’s just so wrapped up in his own little world of film direction that he has absolutely no idea what’s going on in the rest of the hotel and is totally immune to King Boo’s influence over ghosts.

He and Amadeus Wolfgeist are really good friends.

He makes all the commercials for the Last Resort.

Ug:

He’s not an employee. He’s not even a paying guest. He’s just here because Hellen Gravely bought the dinosaur skeleton he was haunting.

He is really, really dumb. Not in a “cavemen are stereotypically dumb” way, just that Ug, specifically, is a really dumb caveman.

He died because he tried to fight a T. Rex by himself and it ate him. That’s the one whose skeleton he’s haunting.

He’s originally from the Cascade Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey.

He literally cannot tell the difference between Luigi and Gooigi. That’s why he keeps trying to eat Gooigi with the T. Rex skeleton in his boss battle.

Clem:

Even outside of King Boo’s Influence, Clem is really obnoxious and kind of mean. He’s just a total hick and doesn’t really know how to act in a place like the Last Resort.

The reason he’s such an asshole (normally) is because he’s really insecure about his intelligence. Clem is very smart, but he knows people probably think he’s stupid because he’s such a lazy hillbilly.

He died in a work accident, where he was electrocuted.

He loves to eat fancy food like what Chef Soulffle cooks, but he’s too lazy to go up and get some most of the time, so he mostly just eats junk food.

ALL of the rubber ducks in the hotel are his. He thinks it’s funny to leave them in weird places.

Serpci:

She’s not an employee, she’s a VIP guest!

She was a princess in the ancient Birabuto/Pyrapt Kingdom of what is now Sarasaland.

She died from being bitten by a venomous snake.

She likes to occasionally check up on modern Sarasaland, so she knows about Princess Daisy! But they’ve never met, and she has no idea about Daisy’s involvement with Luigi.

She actually has a rather silly personality. She loves practical jokes, weird puzzles, and trolling people in general. Her hotel room is right on top of what is almost certainly an escape room for ghosts, after all.

Nikki, Lindsey and Ginny:

Nikki is the ponytail one, Lindsey is the short pigtails one, and Ginny is the long pigtails one.

They died during a magic show, when they set up some special effects wrong and accidentally set off an explosion. They still finished the show -- as ghosts.

They love to play video games!

Like Amadeus Wolfgeist, they’re not full-time employees. Rather, they’re celebrity magicians, and the Last Resort hires them for magic show gigs.

They think Serpci is just THE COOLEST, and in turn, Serpci loves their magic shows and trickster style!

Captain Fishook:

He’s a VIP guest too, like Serpci.

That’s not, specifically, his pirate ship that he possesses during his boss battle -- it’s a pirate ship, but it’s technically just a special VIP seating area for the Spectral Catch seafood restaurant that has been styled as a pirate ship.

He died while fighting a rival pirate crew over some treasure, and one of them fired a harpoon into his eye.

He thinks King MacFrights is absolutely hilarious.

The Oozers from his boss battle are actually from his old pirate crew!

Johnny Deepend:

He’s not an employee, he’s a guest. But he’s not a special VIP guest. He’s just a normal guest who happens to be a really strong ghost.

His death was really stupid. He didn’t even drown. He wanted to swim some laps for his fitness routine, but the indoor pool near his house was closed for repairs. So he broke into the indoor pool in the middle of the night, but all the lights were off, and he accidentally did a big dive into the shallow end and hit his head and died.

He likes to go to the Museum of Unnatural History, because he thinks dinosaurs are WAY COOL.

Because of this, he’s friends with Ug. Neither one has any idea what the other is actually saying, though.

He didn’t actually figure out that Gooigi is weak to water until he squirted him. He just does that at everyone.

DJ Phantasmagloria:

She died during a wild outdoor concert. She set her speakers so loud that it caused the roof over the stage to collapse on her when she turned them up to full blast.

Her real name is just Gloria, Phantasmagloria is her stage name.

She likes Amadeus Wolfgeist’s music, but he doesn’t like her music.

In addition to being a mega-popular DJ, she’s also known among ghosts for being a really talented freestyle rapper!

She’s from Diamond City, like Morty, but she didn’t meet Morty until after they both became ghosts and got jobs at the Last Resort.

Hellen Gravely:

She’s also a New Donker! But she (and her original employees, Steward and Chambrea) never met Mario or Luigi while she was alive, because she died before they were even born.

She died of illness when she was old, which is why her true appearance looks the way it does.

Polterkitty is actually way older than she is, though.

She’s not exactly in love with King Boo. It’s more like that Hark! A Vagrant comic with Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe, with Hellen just being an obsessive loony fangirl.

She built the Last Resort on the site of an old mansion. It’s a Luigi’s Mansion game, after all, the mansion just isn’t actually there anymore.

BONUS!

Hammers are the ghosts of Thwomps.

[protagonistheavy]

Well I fully finished Stranger Things 4 and still very much of the opinion that this sucked and is a pretty eye-rolling near-end to a charming series. So many moments still stand out to me as being these glaring plot holes or inconsistencies or questions without answers (nor the intrigue to make you come up with your own answers). Dynamics between characters are horribly mismatched, and the cast is just way too bloated to even give everyone their fair share of attention. Some scenes feel so nonsensical with how they contribute almost nothing and can yet eat up ~10 minutes of runtime.

And overall, everything is just so over-the-top. Season 1 was so captivating because of its subtleties and eerie atmosphere, it was quiet so it could really startle you with surprises that meant something, it kept you intrigued. But all of the mystery is so artificial here, everything explained aloud like it's a comic book, all of the suspense tainted by awkward characters that, quite honestly, have never truly gelled with the rest of the cast -- mostly because they were burdened with overbearing personalities that gradually stretched the reality of the story into seeming more and more like a cartoon.

There are so many scattered things to complain about... The absolute nonsense that was Susie's house and that entire scene, the terrible handling of the Nancy/Steve/Jonathon romance plot, Robin falling in love with a near-exact clone of herself, Argyle's dumb pothead aspects, and my GOD the ENTIRETY of the Russian plotline -- a huge waste of time, an entirely different movie of events that simply didn't need to happen and had zero correlation with everything else happening. It was a pointless division of the cast, separating characters from the dynamics that deserve attention, and throwing them into the wacky shenanigans of two Russian nobodies that the story will grab you by the neck to try and make you sympathize with. Seriously, the most this plot connects to the rest of the story is that they think they can help the kids by hurting the demogorgon and demodogs, which ultimately doesn't really add any effect that wasn't already ongoing: its not like they severed Vecna's connection in some way, or meaningfully weakened him, they're just one more simultaneous attack in a scene that easily could have been executed without them.

Okay and another thing. Maybe I missed a detail about this. But why the fuck are gates suddenly such a difficult thing to create... when in season 1, we clearly had the Demogorgon making portals all over the place, without consequence. Several times, the characters go through these portals and back -- are these special portals that Vecna is making? Because his dialogue really seems to insist that he just, like, didn't know a way to get to the normal world. Some more weird questions: what the fuck even is the upside-down? Is it NOT a parallel version of the real world? When did it BECOME one? Like, we have Nancy point out that her bedroom is as it was several years ago, implying the upside-down Hawkins was made when the Hawkins Lab made their own portal... but then Vecna resides in the haunted house, which is as it was when he lived there... right? Or.... ??? this ticks me off so much lmao it feels like Im either an idiot for missing an explanation, or the writers are just confusing me with weird misinformation as they try to figure it out themselves.

It feels like evidence that the Duffer bros did not actually have a clear image of the total series, which seems to contradict what theyve told fans, suggesting they've already had this whole plot figured out since season one. that just seems so ridiculous to me lol when there's so many points within the story thus far that feel like the writers either had to make-up on the spot, or certainly did not see themselves writing when they first wrote season one. I mean good god are you really going to convince me that in season one, they had planned out that one day, Mike and Jonathon and Will and their stoner friend Argyle would have to go visit Susie, whose home is a total riot of eccentric siblings that they get the assistance of in order to hack the government and locate a secret underground base? Im sorry but it's clear to me they've been playing with mystery boxes that they didn't know the answers to, and that's fine! I get it that writers have to adapt to their own stories, or that they might create mysteries without yet knowing the answer, but these answers they've been coming up with are not great answers lol. This is just so not how these characters shouldve developed, not the plot that shouldlve happened.

God, and the whole plotline with Brenner................ I dont have the time to keep complaining but man, almost any angle I try to remember this season, I just recall either a glaring disappointment, or how that scene was played out really weird.

[jensen411]

Life, Love, and Licensure

Introduction I want to share a story that begins with today but began four years ago. I want to share this story because I need to reflect on the past few years. I want to share this story because people need to know that there is always something more beneath the surface of a post highlighting a milestone or tragedy, or in this case a milestone within a tragedy. I want to share this story because I believe it may edify those who care to read it through.

Today, I became a licensed architect in the state of Massachusetts. And honestly, it feels pretty good. This was the culmination of 3,740 required hours fulfilled, approved academic accreditation, five four-and-a-half hour exams passed, hundreds of prayers, and countless hours studying the weekends and nights after a full day’s work.

The Final Test The room was filled with the droning from the registers above my head - forcing air faster than ever. Intermittent sounds of forceful clicks of mice and keys intermingled with the ever-oscillating fan to my right. I held my breath behind a four-layered cotton mask as I opted to view the results of the final exam. Thoughts of the past, present, and future merged as I fumbled to read the minuscule blue font at the center of the screen. It read, “You have most likely passed this exam”. I fell back on my seat and gave the biggest sigh of relief in years. I took a minute and closed my eyes to mutter a prayer of thanks. 

There I stood, a whole head above the proctor who had previously mispronounced my name when I had first arrived. With scratch paper torn and recycled, my signature scribbled on the sign out sheet, and a half-empty ballpoint pen returned, I was finished. I was finished with this testing center that I had unwillingly become all too familiar with. I was finished with the keys to the personal lockers that had a comically large keychain that looked like an elementary school bathroom pass; finished with looking at a poorly planned water supply line straddling its rear half-way between the partition wall of the coat cubby; finished with staring at the three motel-art posters of lifeless greenery that laid against the sterile-colored backwall of the lobby, that even after two years were never hung. And I was certainly finished with the restroom that never had any paper towels stocked. Welcome to the Profession My mentor is old fashioned. He grew up in the days when the aroma of cigars and other types of smoke filled the offices. I would say he is an amalgamation of American idioms, Boston sports, afternoon martinis, traditional Catholicism, and someone with a passion for mentorship - always giving the benefit of the doubt. I knew the words that were coming my way. I’ve heard him say it many times to many others, and part of me was looking forward to hearing them. So, when the time finally came, in full Bostonian accent he said, “congratulations, welcome to the f-ing profession!” Strength in Weakness When I was a child, I fell within the shallow end of ADHD. For high-achieving immigrant Asian parents, my learning disability was a source of present worry and long-term concern. I did not measure up to the rest of the class - especially within the realm of literacy. As a result, my mother had written most of my book reports. I am proud to say that she did them very well. The attention deficit would often get me into trouble with instructors at school, parents at home, and even Sunday school teachers at my nondenominational church. Why mention this? I’ve always felt academically inadequate and ill-equipped to handle tests that attempt to measure comprehension skills. I’ll quickly note that as time passed, my concentration and literacy levels had improved – almost supernaturally. I had grown to thoroughly enjoy reading (especially nonfiction) and went on to minor in General Histories. This endeavor was much more comprehensive and time-consuming than I had anticipated. Perhaps it was because many before me had made it look easy – knocking off exams week after week until they finished within a matter of months. Maybe they were much smarter? Or perhaps I was too dumb? In any case, many of them had not failed more than one or two exams at most throughout their entire process. Standardized testing is and will always be the bane of my academic career. One of the major reasons for my decision to enter the architectural profession (apart from the passion for design) was the limited exposure to test taking. And for the first time in my life, I thrived in school. Peers and professors took notice of my design-sense and rigor. I was featured in numerous design publications, won design scholarships and even a couple of national design competitions before my final year. School was finally fun. Careless me must have missed the fine print that said five to seven four-and-a-half hour-long exams might be waiting for me after graduation. The Start Four years ago, I decided to muster up the courage to begin licensure. It could not have come at a worse time. The next year would perhaps the most difficult years of my life, so far. I distinctly remember that frightful afternoon while finishing up lunch with my mentor. My head grew cold and life began to desaturate with the imminent news of my father. It was March 30, 2016 (three days after his 65th birthday), and my dad had just been diagnosed with stage 3, locally advanced, inoperable, pancreatic cancer. He had been losing a considerable amount of weight in the months prior to the diagnosis, but none of us had any idea of the sinister and cowardly illness hiding itself from early detection. Eight months into his treatment, my mother had a life-threating and permanently paralyzing stroke. I’d barely just begin to mentally incorporate my father's terminal illness into my head space, and now with a compounding illness of my mother my life had now shifted from coping into survival mode. During this season, I met my future wife. Godsend would not begin to describe the impact Anna’s entrance into my life would have. On this earth, she is my strength, delight, closest friend, and the one I cherish and love. Without her, I could confidently say that I would not be here today writing this story. The story of my parents is certainly one to be shared, but not presently. It would be far too much at this point. The reference to my family life is to simply frame how I began this licensure process. I delayed the first exam but decided to push forward in gathering study materials and began my studies. A year later, my father passed after fighting courageously for 10 months – widowing my mother and leaving his own mother to survive both her husband and her only son. My family was never going to be the same. In 2018, I got married, and my wife and I became the primary caregivers to my grandmother. And my sister and her husband became the primary caregivers to my disabled mother. Family responsibilities flooded the daily schedule with financial appointments, liquidations, insurance payments, and hospital visits. Sadly, I began to realize that I would not be afforded an undisturbed period of time for my studies. I was faced with a decision of whether to wait until everything settled down or to figure out a way to incorporate my studies into the fray. So, I began. Every evening after work, every Saturday and Sunday before service began, I was hitting the books.  Reflection Two of the major pressures that I felt during this process of licensure and through my family’s ordeal was the need for stability and identity. As I attempted to comprehend how the built world came together, I felt like the world around me was falling apart. Many practitioners consider licensure as the true threshold into the profession. I was instructed by professors and colleagues to never call myself an ‘architect’ until licensure was attained. And it marked a milestone in one’s career development. The credentials endorse one’s ability to understand and integrate design and construction principles while upholding the health, safety, and welfare of the public. And as good as these principles may be, I turned it into something much more than it could be for me – I let it inform my sense of self.  Now, some may say, “what is the problem with letting an achievement inform identity? After all, isn’t that a good thing?” As I wrap up this account, I’m faced with a difficult task of articulating how the worldview that I have come to call my own informs such situations. I could begin by expounding the imago dei or doctrine of adoption, but at risk of turning this into a theological essay, I’ll simply say this: any gain found in career, wealth, religion, personal goals, relationships, and even family are simply not enough to truly inform who I am. Soren Kierkegaard once said that, “once you label me, you negate me”. I believe this is certainly true. Through this process, I have found that I am more than an architect – though I am honored and privileged to be able to serve the world in this manner. I am more than just a son trying to do the right things for my family during a season of crisis. I am more than a husband to the wife I love. I have found the secret of getting by with much and with less, and to be content in any circumstance. I can do all things through him who strengthens me, or to put it another way: I can only do all things through him who strengthens me.

[beldin327]

Touching the Void by Padraic Harrison Act I Scene I

ACT I SCENE I

(The stage is dark.  Suddenly from the dark we hear a scream.  Red lights illuminate the stage.  Center stage is the source of the scream, a male in his late teens named Ziggy.  Three figures, two male and one female, all in black surround him.  The two men are Malcolm and Albert and the woman is Roberta.  Rebecca is next to Ziggy.)

Mal: It so easy to upset these creatures.

Al: You say that as if it were a bad thing.

R: Why does it make a sound when it feels pain?  What is the purpose?

Al: I don’t know but I like it.  It’s like music.

Reb: Zig, it’s Zag.  Stay with me, Zig.  Fight it, Zig, fight it

Ziggy: I can’t.

Reb: Yes, you can.  Don’t let them win.

Mal: The other one is here again.

Al: Strange.  It doesn’t derive pleasure from watching the subject suffer.

R: It feels sorry for the subject.

Ziggy: Please, just go away.

Reb: That’s it, Zig.

R: It thinks we can be beaten.  Silence, subject Z.  (Ziggy opens his mouth but can’t make any sound the Voices laugh.)

Reb: Talk to me, Zig.  What’s going on?  (Malcolm whispers in Ziggy’s ear.)

Ziggy: The hands of the clock are wrong.

Reb: Zig!  It’s Zag.  Zig, do you know where you are?

R: My turn.  (She whispers in his ear.)

Ziggy: Turn the key.  Turn the key to open the door.

Al: It’s almost too easy.  Let’s give it time to recover.  We wouldn’t want it dead, now would we?

Mal: Not yet.  (They exit.)

Ziggy: It’s over, they left.

Reb: Come here.  (She holds him as he shakes from exhaustion.) It’s okay, Zig.  It’s okay.  (The lights change to illuminate a dorm room. Ziggy walks into the scene and sits next to Bill, a male his age.  Bill wears jeans, a white t-shirt, and combat boots.  His hair is dyed blond.)

Bill: What’s it like?

Ziggy: Having a pseudo-seizure?

Bill: Yeah.

Ziggy: It’s like being in a cage.  You can see and hear everything going around you but you’re powerless to stop it

Bill: Weird.  What do the voices say?

Ziggy: They command me to do things.  And I can’t resist.

Bill: Sounds scary.

Ziggy: You have no idea.

Bill: Do they know what causes it?

Ziggy: Fuckin’ doctors.  They don’t know shit.  Oh sure, they have theories but they don’t actually know.

Bill: What’s the theory?

Ziggy: Stress.

Bill: Do they ever hurt?

Ziggy: No, but sometimes…

Bill: Sometimes what?

Ziggy: Sometimes, I feel like they should.  That probably doesn’t make any sense to you.

Bill: It makes perfect sense.  (Enter Jenny and Hiram.)

H: Hey, guys, what’s up?

Bill: Not much. What are you up to?

H: Nothing.  We were in Jenny’s room but Robin and Brian are “busy.”

Bill: Again?  Don’t they ever do anything else?  Like homework perhaps?

Jenny: Jealous?

Bill: I just don’t think sex is a good thing to build a relationship on.

Jenny: I never thought I’d hear those words come out of a straight man.

Bill: What can I say?  I’m just a hopeless romantic.

Jenny: Hey, Z.

Ziggy: Don’t call me that.

Jenny: I’m sorry.  I, I didn’t mean to—

Ziggy: (still angry) It’s fine.  Don’t worry about it.

H: (awkward silence) Soooooo, how ‘bout them Packers?

Bill: What?

H: Just something one of my friends at home says when ever there’s a lull in conversation.

Bill: Why?

H: He thinks it’s funny.

Jenny: Sounds like an interesting guy.

H: Ever see a six foot five Navy sailor in full dress uniform dancing to Mariah Carey?

Bill: Can’t say I have.

H: Then you’ve never truly lived.  Like you said, Jenny, he’s an interesting guy.

Jenny: But it’s ironic, right?  He doesn’t actually enjoy her music, does he?

H: Oh, he does.

Jenny: Is he straight?

H: Very.

Jenny: Where’d you meet him?

H: (as if obvious) Charleston.  I only live half an hour away.

Jenny: That means nothing to me.

Ziggy: Charleston, South Carolina is where Navy nuclear technicians go for training.

Jenny: I didn’t know that.

H: It’s okay.  I’m just used to everyone knowing.

Bill: My parents want me to join the armed services.

Jenny: Which branch?

Bill: Well, at first it was the Marines but now they’re saying it should be the Army.

H: No offense, Bill, but I don’t think you’d last very long in the military.

Bill: That’s what I said.  They think it’ll toughen me up or some bullshit.

Jenny: Don’t most people join up before they go to college?

Bill: I managed to convince them this way would be better.  See, if I got discharged I wouldn’t be able to pay for college.  But this way I’ll have something to do in the event I get discharged.  Of course, if my grades aren’t impressive they’ll pull me out and refuse to pay for college, which means I have to find the money on my own and the military would look pretty tempting.

Jenny: What’s your major?

Bill: (Smiling ironically) Theatre.

Ziggy: Maine won the Civil War.

H: Huh?

Bill: H, do you know what he’s talking about?

H: Not at all.

Jenny: Little Round Top.

Bill: What ever happened to sequiturs?

H: I think they went out with hammer pants.

Jenny: During the Battle of Gettysburg the Union soldiers retreated to a hill called Little Round Top where the 20th Maine was.  They were the North’s last line of defense against the South.  They couldn’t retreat.  They were ordered to die to the last man if necessary.  And not only did they hold the line, they won the battle.  And it turned the tide of the war in the Union’s favor.

H: Where did you learn this?

Jenny: I’m from Philly.  You know, Pennsylvania.

Bill: What does the Civil War have to do anything?

H: Good point.  Ziggy, why did you bring this up?  (Ziggy remains silent.)

Jenny: Things we expect everyone should know.

Bill: Well, we certainly proved the point.

H: Ziggy, are you okay?  (Ziggy nods.) You went quiet all of a sudden.  (Ziggy shrugs.)

Jenny: (She stands) I think they must be finished by now.  Bryan will be anyway. Goodnight, guys.  ‘Night, Ziggy.

Bill: Later.

H: Auf Wiedersehen.

Ziggy: Bye.  (Jenny exits.)

Bill: You wanna tell me what the hell that was about?

Ziggy: What?

Bill: Oh, so you can talk.

Ziggy: What’s your point?

H: You were channeling Marcelle Marceau.

Ziggy: I didn’t have anything to say.

H: (rushes over to feel his forehead) No sign of fever.  But it could be a tumor.

Ziggy: Get off me.  I feel fine.

Bill: You aren’t acting like it.  First you blow up because Jenny—ohhhhhhhh. (He laughs.)

Ziggy: I don’t have a crush on her.

H: (smirking) Nobody said you did, Ziggy.

Ziggy: Just don’t tell her, okay?

H: Of course not, but you’ll have to tell her eventually.

Ziggy: (sarcastically) Oh, that’ll be a wonderful conversation.  Excuse me, Jenny, how would you like to go out with a complete loser with self-esteem issues?  C’mon, guys, Jenny’s smart and gorgeous.  She’s out of my league.

H: Awwww.  He’s so cute when he’s oblivious.

Bill: You gotta wonder how someone so smart can be so dumb.

H: Well, he is from Maine.

Bill: They still have girls in Maine.

H: That’s true.

Ziggy: You do know I’m right here?

H: (Ignoring him) Do you think he’s figured it out?

Bill: I think we have to tell him.

H: He still won’t believe us.

Bill: But he has a right to know.

Ziggy: (exasperated) What the hell are you trying to say?

H: (to Bill) May I?

Bill: Please.

H: She digs you.

Ziggy: Next you’re going to tell me you’re straight.

Bill: Glass half empty much?

Ziggy: You guys really think she’s into me?

H: Have I ever lied to you?

Ziggy: We’ve only known each other a month.

H: But have I lied to you?

Ziggy: No.

H: So trust me.

Ziggy: (stands up) I’m going to the library to do some reading.  Later.

H: See ya.

Bill: Have fun.

Ziggy: Oh, I will.  (Exits.)

Bill: Why’s he study so much?

H: He’s applying for a scholarship. Without it he can’t come back next year.

Bill: That shouldn’t be a problem.

H: Well, he wasn’t exactly studious in high school.  He barely graduated.

Bill: The seizures?

H: That’s part of it.  He tell you about Rebecca?

Bill: Not the whole thing, just that she was pure evil.

H: He got so wrapped up in her that he stopped paying attention to his grades.

Bill: How’d he get in if he had such bad grades?

H: His essays were fucking brilliant.  Trust me, I read them.  (Looks at his watch) Shit, gotta go.

Bill: GSA?

H: Yeah.

Bill: Can I stay here?  The beast is in my room.

H: Still not getting along with your roomie?

Bill: Not even a little.

H: Don’t break my stuff.

Bill: I’ll try not to.  (H exits.  Bill walks over to a bookshelf and selects a graphic novel deliberately, after some thought from Ziggy’s collection.  He sits on the bed and begins to read.  There’s a knock.)

Bill: Enter.  (Robin, Jenny’s roommate enters.)

Robin: Is H here?

Bill: GSA meeting.

Robin: Oh.  (Pause) My name’s Robin, by the way

Bill: Jenny’s roommate?

Robin: Yeah.

Bill: (Pause) I’m Bill.

Robin: Oh.  (Pause) I’ll just leave then.

Bill: Nah, stay.  I mean, if you want to.

Robin: I don’t want to bother you.

Bill: It wouldn’t be a bother.  I’m only reading a comic.

Robin: (sits) Thanks.  (Pause) How do you know Jenny?

Bill: We had orientation together.  (Pause) How’d you meet H?

Robin: Through Jenny.  (Pause) Have you picked a major yet?

Bill: Acting.

Robin: Getting a degree in starving to death?

Bill: Yeah.  You?

Robin: Art or art history.  Can’t really decide.

Bill: Art history people are pretentious assholes.  I mean, the ones here. I mean—

Robin: It’s okay, I agree with you.  But if I major in that I can actually feed myself.

Bill: Food is overrated.  Dignity is more important.

Robin: Living in a cardboard box is dignified?

Bill: At least you can decorate the cardboard box.  (Pause) You okay?

Robin: Bryan dumped me.

Bill: Oh.  (Pause) And this is a bad thing?

Robin: What?

Bill: I’m just saying the guy’s a douche.  You do know he was cheating on you right?

Robin: I didn’t.

Bill: Oh.

Robin: How do you know this and I don’t?

Bill: Everybody knew.

Robin: This day just keeps getting better.

Bill: Sorry, I was actually trying to cheer you up.

Robin: So far you’re doing a wonderful job.

Bill: Sorry.  I just think you can do better.

Robin: What makes you think that?  We just met.  I could be an axe murderer for all you know.

Bill: I may not know you but I know Bryan.  He’s a prick.  A dumb prick.

Robin: (Abruptly) Bill, are you hitting on me?

Bill: (cockily) Maybe.

Robin: Is your normal strategy to bash the ex-boyfriend?

Bill: I’m trying something new.

Robin: How’s it working out so far?

Bill: You haven’t run away screaming so that’s a good sign.

Robin: Not very subtle.

Bill: But it works.

Robin: Oh, really?  Maybe I’m just being polite.

Bill: You’re not.

Robin: How can you be so sure?

Bill: No woman has the power to resist William T. Sanders.

Robin: I see.  Then I’m doomed.  What’s the T stand for?

Bill: Terrence, my mom-- (She leaves her chair and sits next to him.) Wh--

Robin: Shh.  Don’t speak.  (She leans on him and he strokes her hair.  The lights on the set dim as Bill walks into the foreground. The lights on the stage are red.  Drums play as the Gremlin enters.  The Gremlin wears a mask with an absurdly long nose and claws. He holds a knife.  Bill is sitting on the stage; the gremlin circles around him. Bill rocks back and forth.)

Bill: Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? O, o, o, for a muse of fire.  G-g-g-gallop apace you f-f-fiery footed steeds.  All, all, all is lost.  It is the-the-the cause.  I (as in if), If you prick us do we not bleed?  No, no, no, don’t think of blood. Blood is bad, very bad. Bad.  Bad Bill.  Must be punished.  No, focus, Bill.  You can get through this.  If it were done, if it were done, if it were done ‘twere well it were done quickly (the Gremlin and Bill stare at each other.) O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I. (Addressing the Gremlin) Help me!  (The Gremlin offers Bill the knife) Just a little cut (as he reaches out for it). A tiny one.  Just deep enough to know.  No!  I can, I can fight this.  No, no I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.  (He takes the knife. The Gremlin cackles as the lights fade.)

[aion-rsa]

Latour On Finally Tying Up His Loose Ends with Brunner & Renzi

In 2007, the comics industry landscape was very different, with some of today’s most popular creators toiling away in relative obscurity. One such creator was Jason Latour who that year teamed up with artist Chris Brunner and colorist Rico Renzi to release “Loose Ends,” a four-issue Southern crime series.

The book, which developed a small, but devoted fan base thanks to Latour’s writing and Brunner’s breathtaking visuals, is an especially significant moment in Latour’s career because it directly led to the titles he’s known for today; “Spider-Gwen,” which he co-created with Renzi and artist Robbie Rodriguez for Marvel Comics, and “Southern Bastards,” the Eisner Award winning Image Comics series by Latour and co-creator Jason Aaron.

RELATED: Southern Bastards Announces Anti-Harassment Charity Variant

Sadly, the fourth issue of “Loose Ends” was never released, denying fans the chance to read Latour, Brunner, and Renzi’s story in it’s entirety. That all changes this month, as Image Comics gives fans of the creative team’s work, both old and new, a chance to rediscover and finish one of the their seminal works by repackaging and releasing all four issues of “Loose Ends.”

CBR: Image Comics is releasing “Loose Ends” #1 in January. I know some of your newer fans will be experiencing this book for the first time, but will that will be the case for long time fans of your work as well?

Jason Latour: Well for context— “Loose Ends” is a comic that originally came out in 2007, and was essentially self-published between the four of us (the creative team and our editor Keven Gardener). Creator-owned comics were a different beast ten years ago; audiences paid less attention, the market was less diverse, and we were still building our careers. You couple all that with how much we poured into making this comic, and it was just a real uphill climb. So despite a really great response from folks who read it, we only managed to complete three issues of what was intended as four-issue miniseries.

Luckily for us, we’re here ten years later, and all the doors “Loose Ends” opened for us — especially for me — have made it very possible to re-present this book through Image. Which is just tremendous, because I love working there and I love the idea of this comic finally having a home beside the amazing stuff they do.

So we’re reprinting the existing material — along with the last chapter. And the cool thing about that is — again, this is the comic book that all but started our careers, one that very few people got to see. So it’s essentially like making a new comic.

We’re very excited about it. I feel like it still looks and reads pretty fresh considering that it is from another era. It’s a fun road trip genre crime comic, but also a meditation of sorts on what it was like to come of age in an era where George Bush was as his height, we were at war in the Middle East, almost no one had ever heard of Barack Obama, and Trump was just a dumb show TV host. I think it’s an interesting time capsule in that sense. Hopefully it’s taken on some new relevance.

Has the end of the series changed at at all? Did you go back and revise “Loose Ends” #4?

Sure, we’re going to do some light things to repurpose, repackage, and re-present the series as a whole. But for all intents and purposes, though, there’s not a lot of George Lucas-ing going on. [Laughs] Han still shoots first.

Both plot wise and story wise, the fourth issue is all in stone. The only thing that I could possibly allow myself to change is — well, it’s my opinion comic books are not finished until they’re in print. [Laughs] So for the fourth issue, I might do some little lettering re-writes (which is convenient, since I letter it by hand). We’ll see. I’m trying to keep it more or less the same in terms of my involvement.

At a certain point, you’ve got to stand beside what you did. There certainly are reasons to readdress things, but I always like to try and stand on the work that we did, and just trust that even if you were in a different place, you still gave it your best effort at the time.

Let’s talk a little bit about the main characters and the inciting incident of “Loose Ends.” What can you tell us about your two lead characters, Sonny and Cheri, and the events that bring them together?

The comic more or less is a road trip gone sideways. I guess, for lack of a better word, you could call Sonny the protagonist. [Laughs] He’s a young man who has come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with potentially a new lease on life. He and his friend, Reggie, have decided to sell heroin. It’s a get rich quick scheme that is very quickly eating away at Sonny’s conscience.

So Sonny returns home to try and make amends for something he left undone, and at the end of one bloody night he and a young woman from his past named Cheri end up on the road and embroiled in the machinations of a pair of corrupt cops. So in the course of one night, these characters lives take on this breakneck momentum that forces them to rehash and reassess their lives.

So if you’re a fan of films like “True Romance” or “Drive” (which it still stuns me that we pre-date), this might be for you. Of course, it’s set in the South, which makes it obviously very personal to me, and I think separates it from just the genre elements of those stories a bit.

In terms of elevator pitches, it sounds like you could describe it as sort of a Southern fried “True Romance” by way of someone like “The Wire’s” David Simon.

Yeah, that’s a good elevator pitch. There’s certainly a lot of David Simon in it.

I started writing this around 2005. There was a period where I moved away from the South and lived in New York. I read a lot of David Simon during that time. He’s clearly a heavyweight intellectual, and he really got me thinking. At the time, I was living in a pretty impoverished area of Brooklyn, and being from the South, I was thinking about the commonalities of people growing up in different places and how everything is all a lot more interconnected than people seem to want to acknowledge. That helped this book really coalesce in a way.

You mentioned “Southern Bastards.” I assume “Loose Ends” is also like that book in that it can be quite dark at times, but it can also be quite funny at times.

Yeah, I would think so. I certainly take myself way too seriously a lot of the time. [Laughs] But if anybody follows my terrible social media feeds, they’ll see that I also can’t resist making dumb jokes. So there’s a lot of my own particular, warped sense of humor, and the senses of humor of Chris and Rico both slide in there too.

I’m just a big believer in embracing the interplay between what’s absurd and what’s super serious. More and more that’s reflected in our society and real lives.

What I’ve seen of Chris and Rico’s art for “Loose Ends” is, I don’t want to use the term magical, but it kind of feels that way.

Yes! There is literally no other artist that I felt would be capable of bringing this to life. That’s the highest compliment that I can give.

Chris was my roommate for the better part of four years while we were working on the bulk of this. I got to see him struggle with putting that magic on the page. He really bled for it and earned every bit of it. I truly think people should pick this comic book up, if for no other reason than for the art. It’s a virtuoso performance by somebody who is, unfortunately, a little underrated. Not among other artists, but as far as fans. I think it will really be worth people’s time to experience what he’s done here. Hell, he could be one of the biggest names in comics, and he’d still be underrated.

The same goes for Rico, who is obviously a collaborator of mine on pretty much all the stuff I’ve been doing at Marvel. That guy is my drummer, man. The steady beat to all this stuff. If you’ve read “Southern Bastards” #12, or the first story in the “Spider-Gwen Annual,” that’s a little taste of how this team works together.

But I can’t stress enough that — we really didn’t want to do a crime comic that felt old and dusty. [Laughs] A lot of crime comics end up using the same palette and the same sort of visual presentation over and over again. So this is sort of what I’d call neon noir. We all really like the early Michael Mann movies. His films like “Thief” are definitely an influence.

Finally, how does it feel to revisit and bring “Loose Ends” to a long awaited close?

I stand behind everything we’ve done, 150 percent. But it does feel a little weird to put a comic out ten years after you wrote it. Mostly because readers don’t often know or seem to care about the context of when something was made. Why should they? Their job is to enjoy it. And then there’s the idea that— well it’s not so much the fear that they’re not going to like what you did then, it’s that they’re going to like what you used to do a lot better. [Laughs]

It does feel really rewarding to get it all put together and all done, though. It felt like for a while we might be pulling a prank on everybody by calling it “Loose Ends.” [Laughs] It’s like our own little Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton prank.

This was a comic that opened a lot of doors for me. It was the first comic that I put on Marvel’s desk and said, “Hey, I can write.” It’s also a comic that was very influential and essential to me and Jason Aaron creating “Southern Bastards.” So it means the world to me to get to re-present it and repackage it. Plus, it will be new to so many people. 
Even if only 10 more people read it it’s really gratifying to put Chris and Rico on that stage again. Giving anything that you worked that hard for a new chance at life is an opportunity that you should never take for granted.

“Loose Ends” #1, by Jason Latour, Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi, is on sale now.

The post Latour On Finally Tying Up His Loose Ends with Brunner & Renzi appeared first on CBR.com.

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