Crisis Weekly, the eleventh.

Crisis Weekly #11.

The last new character is introduced this week (probably), and his name is Ezrah.  Ezrah is named after someone I met during my first six months in childcare, who was in fact one of the kids.  Interacting with kids all day, you see a wide variety of personalities, and naturally some are going to stick out.  Sometimes it seems like the ones who do stick out for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes it's not even their fault, but because for one reason or another they have developmental delays.  Ezrah required a lot of attention, but I didn't mind at all.  I tend to feel most accomplished when it's clear I'm helping kids like Ezrah, and I guess that kind of instant gratification is basis human nature.  You want to know you're making a difference.  Most of the other staff in the facility are women, and it was theorized that Ezrah responded to me because I'm male, as he was at the time otherwise at home with a single dad, and you can do the math for the rest of it.  I like to believe it wasn't so simple, but who can say?

For those keeping score at home, I'd love to disclose some additional inspiration for the fictional Ezrah, but that would be telling.  Instead, I'd like to just reference one additional source of inspiration that cropped up this week, for the splash page involving El Dorado's apparent death, which is a callback for me to Mike Costa's brilliant G.I. Joe/Cobra comics, in which Chuckles gets the last laugh by assassinating Cobra Commander.  It was Costa's biggest moment in his long run (and led directly to two G.I. Joe crossover events, "Cobra Civil War" and "Cobra Command") across several series, and I just like to bring up his work, on the chance it'll inspire more people to read it.