Patriot's secret origin is that he's actually five of the world's most powerful politicos who joyride an avatar, but it records each of their personalities and memories so that he's the sum of his parts, not just whoever's in charge of him at the moment. It's a little bit Captain Marvel by committee, and a lot terrifyingly ignorant neoconservatism.

Say what you will about Patriot, the man has incredible abs. Like, even for a superhero.

I was working from such an old script when I lettered this, Shock & Awe were still one person called Bombardier.

You ever notice how yellow, blue and red this team is? I tried to color The Bug green in my misguided effort to follow Rocio's path (ugh...look back at those pages now and can only thank goodness Andres told me to knock it off.) but the artist insisted we go with white. I think it looks better now.

I like working with a guy who puts the book first and can stick to his guns to make sure it looks its best. A lot of guys, I don't understand why, really, would have a problem doing that. And those same guys would have a problem hearing it. But my partner in this crime only wants to put out gold, which is why I keep him around. (Why he keeps me around is a mystery.)

Franco's doing really interesting stuff with the lighting on Patriot's face here. I think it's the shadow from the lighting fixture in panel 1 overlaid on the natural facial shading, but I can't be sure. All I know is it works and if I tried that he'd look like he had a bad morning with a waffle iron.

Pros, man. It's fun to see how people take an idea you had, whittle away the crap, and add a few simplifications or ornamentation that comes closer to what your idea is than the form you presented to them.

Say, that wasn't Kahin after all.

I love the directional lines on those little gaps swirling into the black hole. I couldn't do that with a full day's effort and care. Andres is bound for glory in comics.

It's a traaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!

J.I.N. really should have noticed the stowaway. Especially once Geist uses his powers.

I'm going to blame that one on her being utterly spent from being ghostly for seven out of the last ten minutes, plus modifying his voice enough to imitate Brother Jon's.

I love what my artists can do. Franco's colors glow and Andres gives him plenty of ground to plow.

Guess what? The Man's Book of the BBQ comes out today, and I begin my daily duties as Maxim's blogger. And it's my birthday. And we're having a massive release party/BBQ. Groovy times!

Look at this row. Really look at it. Look at the layout in Panel 1, the colors in panel 2, the touches of shadow and lighting on a fisheye distortion no less. Andres and Franco are why I love comics. You're right there in the scene, each action's a thunderbolt in your eye: Geist doing his version of ducking out of the line of fire, T.I.A. taking the brunt, the ruthless blast to Awe's head, and then wasting time he doesn't have on scorn for the observing camera. This is so far beyond a few lines I wrote in a Word document. Collaboration, when you've got it working, is a beautiful thing. These men made something beautiful out of my hastily jotted notes.

By the way, I didn't really mean to have Geist punching out women for three pages. I think it was Shock waiting in the hallway in the script and we never really remembered which was which, only that they were sort of jerk Wonder Twins. If I've learned one thing in comics, it's if you leave an artist any ambiguity or free rein, a good-looking dame will find her way onto the page.

Although hopefully most of them won't be shot in the head with a stun gun.

Awe, shocks.

(rimshot)

Well, presumably he's in the hallway. She saw him running towards the wall and disappear before he got there.

Our take on Geist is when he's using his ghost powers he's really not there. It's not like someone's going to see him on a different EMF. He's literally outside the world, just viewing it like a 3-D movie, unable to interact with it until he comes back in. You don't get to go halfsies on that kind of power.

As for how long he can stay outside, the time varies depending on the demands put on Jin, but we figure it's related to how long you could hold your breath before you start to do permanent damage. Let staying calm be to simply turning into a ghost what swimming to the bottom of the pool is to towing a large object into the ether with him. More demands = shorter time. That's partly why he catapulted himself into the satellite with the laser: to achieve light speed, yes, which is beyond his capabilities, but also to have enough substance by the time he got there without adding to his flight.

It didn't help him, though. JIN still had to burn a lot of effort just slowing him down and keeping them on course.

Heist is back!

You want to see an artist who knows his craft? See those two plumes of smoke? The gun on the left is still smoking, but the gun on the right is farther away from its smoke trail because a couple of seconds pass within the panel as she speaks. So as your eye travels left to right, Andres lures you into a moment rather than taking a snapshot.

Comics crystallize time, my friends.