This delightful piece of art is brought to you by neko_no_baka. I really adore Charlie, she didn't get a lot of screen time but she plays a pretty vital role in Ben's un-life, since his quest to get her to notice him is more or less what brought him to where he is now. This sweet image is delightfully modern-art to my eye, playing a little fast and loose with the relationship of objects to canvas in order to bring a kind of unity and energy to the image. Classical art thinking is that objects should never lead the eye to fall off the page, but comic artists train themselves to lead the eye to the next image, and it's often a habit we don't break. In this case, whether or not it's habitual, the effect lends just the right feeling to the image in my view, because the eye is led to shy away from the crowds in the cafeteria, led right where Ben's eyes would go, down at the plates, off to the side, anywhere but at the people milling around him.

I really love getting art like this, many thanks to Neko for the work. Check out her other work at Lord of the Shepherd and Amhelaki Misadventures.