High-Sticking

Page 129

High-Sticking
Cartoon Brian

High-Sticking

Original Release Date: October 6, 2009

This page might as well be a tribute to my bachelor experience. I was once woken by neighbors playing loud techno at 3am. I managed to eventually sleep through it, but Amanda left a passive-aggressive note on their door the next morning on my behalf. Apparently it worked because I never heard the techno again.

The stains on the carpet are in reference to the duplex I lived in right after moving out of my parents' house. All of the carpets in that place were pretty gross, and I believe they were replaced immediately after I moved out. For the record, I think I only spilled something on the carpet one time while I was living there, so I was not the cause of all the stains.

The Kung Pao monster is an amalgamation of any time I left food out for too long and it grew into something...well, unappetizing. I was never too bad about it, but it did happen from time to time. The worst case of food being left out that I can remember was in my friend Josh's basement, where a crock of rotel was left after a Super Bowl party. Josh left to go back to school three and a half hours away and didn't return for a couple of months. The rotel was still in the basement for all that time, and when Josh returned, he found the rotel to be sentient and preparing to colonize the rest of the basement.

I recall spending a great deal of time on the highlights in the goo of the Kung Pao monster. It looked too flat without them. Little did I know that I was taking my first step into a larger world, a world of shadows and highlights that would eventually improve my artwork quite a bit.