This page is a homage to a comic I made in high school, called Circel Dukes Saga. I actually posted the entire comic on my blog a while back, so you can give it a read if you want it. Fair warning -- it is not a very good comic, nor does it make a lot of sense. 

To spare you having to read the whole thing, the homage is specifically to this panel:

Yep, that's me. I had long hair in high school. 

Circel Dukes Saga was top of mind when I starting writing Heroes of Thantopolis, and I thought it would be a stroke of genius if I created this call-back by reversing what the character in the original comic was asking for. Open, instead of close!

I guess you could say had a big ego in high school XD I felt like I had accomplished something monumental by making it to senior year and was on top of the world. Then I learned how small that world was and how much more I had to learn and grow. Still, I wanted to do right by my younger self and keep this scene in HoT.