My store has some new signed prints and signed posters you should entirely check out. Signed books as well!

This comic is sort of a pre-follow up to THIS comic. I used to be really ashamed to tell people what I did for a living, even though it provided my wife and I with a bunch of money and all the material attributes of “success.” Now that I have what is, for me, the perfect job, I rarely want to talk about it with strangers because I feel like it requires an hour long lesson or backstory in order to comprehend it.

Anyway, that’s basically my intent for the flashback comics: To show how Joel’s life pre and post “Experiment” parallels even when it drastically contrasts. I was always the type to think, “I can escape this problem IF I can get a new job/move to a new place/make new friends/etc.” Adulthood and parenthood and Leprechaun: In The Hood have taught me that I bring most of my problems with me wherever I go. They are literally inside me; inside my brain. I cannot outrun them any more than I can outrun the contents of my own skull. Stupid brain. Always full of conflicted thoughts about stupid stuff.

Funny story: I wrote this comic, laid out the text and sketched all the way to the last panel before realizing that smartphones didn’t exist back then. The idea that I would reach into my pocket and Google something is so ubiquitous now that I completely forgot that there was a time in my adult life when I was unable to do that. I decided to settle on comic Joel owning a pre-smartphone (a Palm Tre0 650), which did have basic internetting and emailing and such. In reality, at this time I believe I would have had a Motorola Razr, the semi-functional fashion statement of mid 00’s mobile communication. Before that I did own a couple of rather pricey Symbian OS phones that had access to a mobile-friendly, text only version of the internet via Edge or sub-Edge speeds. Looking up ANYTHING AT ALL via these devices was an exercise in self loathing.