Broken Record is the first of two Reckless Life stories that I didn't do entirely on my own. This story was written (unsolicited) by my good friend and Reckless Life editor, Terry Haller.
The story that follows is only nominally changed from the original script. This is mostly Terry's story. Some of the panels are drawn just as he described them. The sequence where Locke swipes the winter gear is a great example of this.
This is also one of the only stories where Locke narrates a lot of what is going on. (The other being the other Reckless Life story that I didn’t write myself.) Most RL stories are action-driven and I found I really didn't need much in the way of narration but it is a nice change of pace of to get inside of Locke’s head.
In yet ANOTHER first, this story contains the only "George Lucas-ing" of any of Reckless Life art. I didn't have an image of the back of Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show at the time so I guessed. (My guess was not close.) I've updated that panel with the actual back cover. (Which I now own myself in a bit of meta record collecting.)
Broken Record begins to address some of Locke's backstory and that's where I made changes to the original script as Terry was making guesses at stuff I'd only alluded to in-series and vaguely described to him over beers. I'd hinted before that Locke has a broken heart and a life somewhere else pre-Vegas but this story definitively lays it out there and in greater detail.
I'll leave you with a bit of Terry's inspiration for writing this one:
Here’s a little backstory for you I don’t think I ever shared. In my mind this whole expedition started at some ungodly hour in the aftermath of an epic bender after he read an article about this exhibit that stick in his mind for days as he systematically drank, did crazier and crazier things to distract himself, and finally got so bombed he bought himself a plane ticket back to NYC on flight that was departing immediately before he could sober up. Hence the reason he lands with zero appropriate attire for what is clearly the winter, which he wound know, having lived there. So now he’s there, and he can’t just turn around and leave, but he also won’t fully admit to even himself in his inner monologue that he’s thee purely for deep sentimental/emotional reasons, so he has to case the joint and do all those things to justify being there, quite literally, to himself in his own inner monologue.