Friday Outlined, Edition no 4

Yep, as predicted it’s late, but it’s here!

Welcome to Edition #4 folks, how time flies when you give yourself a deadline every week! (and then promptly miss it)

As mentioned last week, this week was always going to be a tricky one to produce while being on the road, and as I write this I’m sitting in a very nice hotel in sunny Newcastle, which to be honest, is nothing to complain about.

Yes, I can hear you now “Oooh, jeez, the quality of chaz’s penmanship has really dropped this week” - And Yeah! You’re goddamn right it has, because as the aforementioned comic dictates, I’m on holiday so this week we are doing it fast and messy because that’s what holidays are all about. Let’s go! 

Sorry, this graph is probably confusing for Americans so I’ve made an adjusted version for you guys

So the week started with me arriving at Melbourne Airport, naturally, a full 90 mins before I really needed to, which gave me some time to catch up on the news of that WWII bomb they found in Yarmouth. Using the airport wifi, I then spent the next 90 minutes researching bombs in order to draw a comic about it, because it’s important to have some sketchy plans to really incriminate yourself should anyone have been listening in.

If anyone was surveilling my concerning searches, I can only assume they didn’t see me as a threat, but rather just one with bad time management skills, doing some last minute googling while at the airport.

Anyway, here’s an unrelated comic set at an airport serving as a page break to move us onto a new part of the story. 

A few hours later, I found myself in Sydney, not in a sense of achieving self-actualisation, but rather geographically.

Sydney really is a wonderful place, it has incredibly stunning views and is full of the most amazing things all of which are rendered completely inaccessible by a nonsensically labyrinthine road system and an utterly crippling cost of living.

Coming from Melbourne, and living in Berlin, I think I’m just generally shocked being anywhere that has the kind of climate where plants seem to not just grow, but grow with little to no help from anyone. There is stuff growing everywhere in this town, I saw a tree growing out of another tree, which in turn was growing out of the side of a wall. The place is out of control. 

It also makes for some beautiful streets chock-full of pot plants just sitting on the footpath beautifying the streetscape. (I know this is comic publication, but here’s some photos just to prove I’m not making this up) - Even the alleyways have plants!

Although as someone quite rightly pointed out to me, this would never work with the houseplant-loving Berliners, and their sensible and tidy policy of ‘if it’s on the street unattended, it’s being given away for free’

The other beautiful wonder of Sydney is of course the majestic and beloved ibis, (latin: Quisquiliae Pullum), which has more-or-less become a Sydney icon, held aloft with a kind of awe, respect and near religious fervour not seen since the days of ancient egypt. 

The other thing I’ve been enjoying while being back in Australia is coffee. Australia does coffee VERY FUCKING WELL*. For anyone not familiar with Australian coffee culture, just imagine that one friend you know who’s really into coffee, drinks loads of it and knows all the coffee stuff,  then imagine an entire country who thinks that guy is embarrassingly pedestrian at best. 

*Yes, before you New Zealanders get all New Zealandery, NZ makes better coffee, I know. 

And that brings us to the end of another week! Again, so very sorry for the hastily drawn comics, but I learnt a long time ago that perfection of a thing is often debilitating to the very existence of that thing. In short: Better messy than not at all! 

As always, the comments are open to all, and please do give this post a ‘like’ - I’m hoping that might help the algorithm to boost the publication or something, I dunno - we’ll see, I’m still working this out! 

I’ll see you all next week, where I’ll hopefully have some more refined comics for you!

Till then…

C.