1

Justin: Jon and I had been tossing ideas for a project to work on together back and forth for quite some time. Unfortunately, due to various scheduling conflicts, we were never able to have a sit-down and really get behind any of them. When he came to me with the Hangin' Out Gang concept , I literally dropped what I was doing, cancelled my 4:15 with famed Screen Actor's Guild Award nominee John Malkovich, and told him "you and I are going to make this work".

Jon: Yes, yes, I do remember that. We had just met in Cleveland? i believe it was? for an art festival of some sort. We had sort of worked ourselves into a rut artistically, trying to reach for things that...I guess weren't really there. So I was sitting in my study a few nights later, reclined back in my chair, legs kicked back on the sill and just letting the moonlight shine in. Then I thought, it just sort of came to me, "Why don't we write something about real people doing real things?" And it was just, it struck me, right there. I stumbled out of my chair, and God you should have seen me, I actually fell down the spiral staircase -- true story -- fell down the staircase, picked myself up and found the phone to call you. God, it's a wonder I didn't roll an ankle or something.

And it's like, if I had rolled my ankle that night, we wouldn't have been able to go around and shoot pictures, and who knows what would have happened. Just one of those weird things.

By the way, one note about the guy in the first panel. He's actually a very gifted guitarist. We asked him to join our shooting team early on to up our spirits a little bit. He actually specialized in Nick Drake covers, and he also did this thing where he could yank the tablecloth off our coffee table during breaks. He was a big hit.

Justin: You know, its always weird going back and revisiting some of these earlier strips. I mean, no respectable artist in our line of work is ever going to be truly happy with the final product, but to just - I mean, marveling at how far we've come since those admittedly meager beginnings. I'd imagine this is how God must feel while comparing modern man to say - the Moors.