4komatose

Hopefully, one of these days, I’ll take you on a whirlwind tour of the past of 4komatose. It’s an interesting story that has more than a few roots in real life.

Perhaps you don’t know this, but real life factors BIG into 4komatose. For instance, Issue #12 – The Growling Meatball is based upon an actual event, though perverted for Ariake.

Here’s the story:
I had been watching the movie Lethal Weapon 4. Some of my favorite parts of that movie are when Mel Gibson & Danny Glover’s characters are making fun of the Chinese guy, “Uncle Benny” by calling the fried rice “flied lice”. Plus, I’d had a whole bunch of sugar and caffeine during this time as well, so I was a bit hyper.
Michael and I were on our way over to our friend Lance’s apartment for a night of role playing. We stopped at Safeway to get some Chinese food. While we were in line, I was asking him if we was going to get “flied lice” and generally embarrassing the absolute heck out of Michael, which was great fun as I remember. I really couldn’t help myself as I was so dang hyper. This, I believe, happened before 4komatose was created though after the creation of Ariake and Kyushu. Mike may be able to shed some light on that exact timeline.
In the original drafts of the issue, the “fried lice” comment still existed. It wasn’t until the final draft that the comment was removed. Actually, I felt that Ariake would only start with that comment, not end with it. And, at the time we only had 4 panels plus a background, so we had to quickly get to the point. So, it was eventually cut from the comic.

That is a good chunk of the story. Michael may have more to add, he may not. I hope you enjoyed this quick peek behind the scenes of one of my personal favorite issues of 4komatose. Stay tuned next week for another Behind the Scenes look.