Or.
TFW your place is low key the squad’s headquarters.
See, it's actually no coincidence that one of the omnivore members of the group likes Hawaiian pizza. Actually, that's what I like to call pizza topping based world building and as a little extra treat here's everyone in the comic’s favorite pizza.
Tony: Veggie (because he, as a bird, is a vegetarian)
Davo: cheese
Tak: Hawaiian
Diego: Hawaiian (Omnivores FTW)
Lil: Anchovies. (Easy joke, but also a classic)
Lola: Pepperoni
Diana: 3 meats (Some Hawaiian if no one is watching)
Tina: Cheese (She and Davo are made for each other)
Caleb: Veggie (but with a different combination. I guess they have more veggie variants in their world.
Zara: Veggie
RJ: Pastor (In a sense, fancy mexican Hawaiian. But better)
For a while I had wanted to make a comic with everyone! I'm almost there I guess.
New comic, new comic! And finally, this one has been in the works for a while now. Really, I drew the layout for most of it in like a day, but then stuff happened, something, something, vampires and now I’ve finally finished it!
I remember a while ago that right after Closing time AKA: The long one, I mentioned I had two comics I wanted to do and they would be titled “Play the Game” and “Our House”. The problem I had with this one is that I felt that I needed to introduce Diego to the comic Lore before so it wasn't just a bunch of new characters appearing for the first time out of nowhere.
And I say a bunch because originally instead of Caleb, Tina was going to bring home some of her friends from school, but I decided it would be better for them to be introduced to Davo first in a different adventure. Like, we've seen Tina being the new one with Davos band, it's just fair for him to try to impress her friends as well.
Speaking of… Oh look, it's Tina's brother Caleb! Making his debut in WornDown Children canon.
While the timelines of these comics have been kind of loose and not strictly defined, this one in particular takes place specifically after Closing Time, and that's because it explores Zara and RJ trying and learning to keep their relationship a secret from the rest of their friends. And how bad they are at keeping secrets.
This actually represents a departure from my original plan, as I enjoyed the idea of the ZaraXRJ reveal, or "ZaRJa" (nah just kidding lmao), being unceremonious and anticlimactic, like in the Keep It Dark comic. But I didn't expect that drawing these two trying to be sneaky and failing to the point of having to execute Looney Tunes-esque plans to keep their secrets would be so much fun.
Now the question here is, did the lights switch thing work? I think yeah, for the most part. Like, they totally ended up thinking something is up but not necessarily that RJ was involved. What probably didn't help was RJ arriving later smelling like the same shampoo Zara uses.
Speaking of, I'm not totally sure about the last page’s canon status. It started as a bonus gag page but I felt it did work as an ending even though it does stretch suspension of disbelief a bit with the climbing the wall bit. For a moment I thought it could be a good way to expand the story with then RJ being confused as a burglar and being arrested giving us a good chance to learn about his previous arrest 👀. But that would be better for another occasion.
Actually, both the last 2 pages started as an attempt at an extra bonus page but I felt they actually did add to the narrative.
Before changing it to flow better I to page 9, the original page 8 ended with RJ and Zara wondering if their secret was safe and then concluding: Yeah, Like, probably…
Speaking of scrapped pages, page 10 was originally going to have all the characters greeting RJ the same way they greeted Tina and Caleb, and it was going to be a reveal that during the time it took RJ to climb down the building, even more characters arrived at the apartment, including Sylvie, Tomas, and Jenny. But I cut the page for two reasons. 1. Because canonically, RJ shouldn't meet Lola until "Keep It Dark." (Zara shouldn't either, but I think that even though she saw her, I think she was so distracted that she didn't really notice.) And 2. Because I got lazy.
Although there's another bonus page on the way, so stay tuned for that.
One of the challenges of this comic was designing the girls' apartment because, as I've mentioned before, if you try to combine all the elements that have been seen of it, it simply doesn't make sense. Some things contradict others, so I took the opportunity to design the definitive version of the apartment. I included my favorite elements, like the large window in the living room, or the brown wall that they started painting green but eventually gave up on.
Having said that, I might make some changes later. The hallway bothers me a bit; it's too wide.
The map so far looks like this:
As for the bathroom and Zara's room, it was fun recreating them from other images that have been seen of them. In the case of the bathroom, I based it on the background seen in the "Band's Mornings" series, which I'll be revisiting soon.
I also got Diana's shirt from this series, although it was a bit late to correct it when I realized I'd accidentally reversed the colors. So I guess she has two shirts like these.
And for the Zara room, I used this drawing of her as a base, although of course, here it's presented in a slightly more minimalist way.
Finally, there’s a spanish version of this comic in the page and if you don’t speak spanish you won’t know this but I kind of like the way I did the “Hanging out” pun at the end a bit more there. It implies that he lied saying he had a date but he got hanged, Mexican slang for ghosted or something of that style. I think there’s a similar idiom in English but I couldn’t remember it.