Harry – Hell, Inc.

Who Doesn’t Have to Take This?

Who doesn’t have to take this? Ray! That’s who! Except that he kind of does, because he needs his desk for desk stuff.

Also, this update is early because the thing that lets me schedule posts in WordPress is broken, and I have to go to bed at a normal time. As some sort of owl-man, this is an annoying turn of events.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cindy Gauthier is Employee of the Week, and you can read her comic on Webtoon! It’s called Posthumous, and is a comic about two friends (who are cool, weird cyborg-things) exploring space and how the things that are in space are often terrifying. Season 2 is underway!

Patreon! It’s a predictable income that I would like to be bigger so I can do less freelance and more stuff that I want to do! You get early access to Hell, Inc. strips, new comics, my video game Space Jerks, and more!

You can also support Hell, Inc. for free by telling your friends about it, because that is infinitely better than any promotion I can do. Also voting on Top Webcomics by clicking the banner below is very helpful!

Next Week: We check in on Sara in Infernal Pacts. Read it early on Patreon!

Meanwhile, Madness

The Patreon preview for this strip is about my rules of thumb for making “a bunch of people at their desks talk to each other” strips interesting. Making talking scenes interesting is the most vital piece of a cartoonist’s arsenal.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Ben Hamlin, host of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben (among other casted pods), is Employee of the Week. In their most recent season, I made my fourth guest appearance on the show, this time discussing crime drama Better Call Saul! If you want to hear me talk about how artfully executed BCS is, then good news, you’ll have a great time listening to that podcast!

Patreon! It’s a predictable source of income, and ALSO Patrons can play Space Jerks, the video game I made!

Also check out the newsletter, which is how to hear about what I’m up to without needing to subject yourself to things like Twitter.

Next Week: Ray takes a stand. It involves literal standing, at points. Read it early

Very Successful

The Patreon preview for this strip is about the differences in approach between digital and hand lettering, because I guess I’m thinking about lettering a lot lately. The fact that I have any room for thoughts that aren’t about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is probably a good sign? Then again, if the Oilers win the Stanley Cup, I might end up only ever drawing Hockeypocalypse comics for the rest of time, so who knows!

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

New hire Raymond is Employee of the Week! And you can, too! Supporting me on Patreon makes you both a Cool and Good Person, and also means I can dedicate time to the art I want to make instead of spending time in the panic-inducing world of freelancing!

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is a very useful way to reach new readers. Click on the banner below to vote daily!

Next Week: Bridget asks what she missed, and gets more information than she would like. Read it early on Patreon!

Psychic Memo

Psychic memos are how I wish I could make story notes. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a perfect joke or line of dialogue, then by the time I tried to write it down I had forgotten some or all of it. It’s very annoying.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Brien Aronov is Employee of the Week, and you can, too! I deeply appreciate your support on Patreon, which is a predictable source of income that, should it grow enough, can reduce or replace the need to freelance. That means more of the stuff you like, and less trying to figure out how to get work as every industry funnels all of its money into the C-suite. You also get benefits like early comics, pages from my graphic novels as I work on them, and other stuff like my video game!

You can help out Hell, Inc. for free by clicking the banner below to vote on Top Webcomics, which you can do daily! It helps make the comic more visible to webcomic readers.

Next Week: The Great Shamening begins! Read it early on Patreon!

Vital Liquid Science?

The Patreon preview for this strip is about my process of drawing study, which involves drawing a lot of comics. Speaking of a lot of comics, I’m going to be at the Art Gallery of Alberta’s Comics & Zine Fair on April 13th and 14th, and if you’re in Edmonton, you should be, too. Click on the image below for more info:

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Barrie Deatcher is Employee of the Week, which means they are one of the folks helping support Hell, Inc. and my other non-freelance art endeavours! For example, I just had a graphic novel pitch about wrestlers in a fantasy world rejected by a bunch of agents, but I still think it’s very cool and want to draw it. Patreon can make that possible! Even $1 goes a long way, and adds up pretty fast when enough readers show their support.

Next Week: A triumphant return! Read it early on Patreon!

Doris Noticed

As we’ve established previously, Sara is clearly very good at sneaking around and doing things clandestinely. This week’s Patreon preview post was about the ideas that need to germinate in the back of your mind before they’re ready, and how sometimes that means a poop joke is the catalyst for that.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Caitlin is Employee of the Week, and also author of our RPG BURGERPunk, which is now available digitally on DriveThru RPG.

Also available digitally are all of the Hell, Inc. volumes (1-6), on both Patreon and GlobalComix (the covers aren’t actually squashed and weird, it’s a display thing I don’t understand). Speaking of Patreon, you can subscribe to help me keep making art and also being alive, for as little as $1 a month!

You can help Hell, Inc. for free by telling people about it! Send links to your friends and co-workers, or vote on Top Webcomics! It’s the beginning of a new month, so the votes count for more as the rankings reset. Top Webcomics helps direct people looking for new webcomics to Hell, Inc. instead of whatever comic is using robots to have thousands of votes instantly!

Next Week: There are important shame plans. Read it early on Patreon!

Here There Be Monsters

I’ve drawn weird monsters on bathroom signs in a couple of series now, and every time it’s because I’m imagining a fantasy map with “here there be dragons” written on it and applying that logic to toilet signs. I think I used it first in Hockeypocalypse, but regardless of which was first, it’s appeared in that and in Hell, Inc. In this week’s Patreon preview, I talked about how early the geography of the office was decided on, but how the reader gets that information much more slowly.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

“Game Time” Art Middleton is Employee of the Week! Follow him on Twitter, if that’s still a thing you do, or check out his Twitch streams, OR… do both of those things. Also, head over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon, where you can support the continued existence of your favourite office demons and read new strips early (see above!). It turns out that humans, like demons, need money to live! Me, specifically.

In other news, social media’s slow collapse strengthens the case for Top Webcomics. The Old Internet becomes the New Internet! Click the banner below to vote daily.

Next Week: Hey, so if you didn’t know WHERE the bathroom was… Read it early, and with author commentary, on Patreon!

Huffing Misery

You probably shouldn’t huff misery – like any inhalant, it will kill a whole lot of brain cells. Like sadness whippets. This week’s Patreon preview is about the amount of time it takes to make a comic compared to the amount of time it takes to read it.

This strip is the “Halloween” one, which I put in quotes because all of them and none of them could be considered Halloween-y. It’s a story where everyone is monsters, which is a point in favour of Halloween, but it also doesn’t really have what I would consider Halloween energy. I haven’t really thought about how Halloween might be reflected in Hell, Inc. Maybe I should? If nothing else, drawing everyone in dumb costumes might be fun.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Barrie Deatcher is Employee of the Week, and will get to read my next graphic novel as I draw it! It was intended to be Rent-A-Thug, but now it might end up being a different thing, depending on how some things pan out! Freelancing is chaos, as I often say, and part of that means pitching a lot of things, and almost all of them being rejected! In this specific case, it also means getting offered an illustration job completely unrelated to all of the work I’ve been doing on pitches. Patreon is my predictable source of income, and I would very much like it to grow to the point where I can get into a workflow of webcomic + graphic novel, without worrying about pitches and the publishing industry.

Remember Top Webcomics? That’s still a thing, so if you want to boost Hell, Inc. in the rankings and funnel some new readers in, click on the banner below. You can vote daily.

Next Week: Important Cerberus Update. Read it early on Patreon!

The Bee Tooth Rule

The bee tooth rule is a very good one, I think. If you’re doing anything and your teeth start to feel like they’re full of bees, you should probably stop doing that thing. That line is courtesy the time I forgot that I had already taken my ADHD medication, and the accidental doubling of the dosage made it feel like my teeth were vibrating. I don’t recommend it!

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Brien Aronov is Employee of the Week, and you can too! Get Employee of the Week shoutouts, read my next graphic novel as I draw it, or commission digital art! All of those things also help provide a level of predictability to my income that basically doesn’t exist otherwise, because freelancing is chaos.

If you want to keep up with what I’m working on, what my friends are doing, and (most importantly) see cute photos of my pets, sign up for my monthly(ish) newsletter!

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is a helpful source of new readers! It’s early in the month, which means votes are more valuable as the rankings reset.

Next Week: Ray’s Stay Awake Juice. Read it early on Patreon!

Time Keeps on Ticking

I wrote another Patreon piece about the process of making the strip, in this case focusing on different ways that the same scene can be broken into panels and why those different choices might be made. It’s been fun to get back into the headspace of creation and think about what other versions of the strip might have looked like.

This weekend, I’ll be at the Calgary Horror Con with Hell, Inc. (in RPG and comic form), Hockeypocalypse, GWAR, and probably some other stuff that has interest overlap.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cait is Employee of the Week, and will ALSO be at Calgary Horror Con. If YOU want to be Employee of the Week, and also help me keep making art you like instead of continuing to flail about in the chaos that is freelancing. Patreon is the most convenient way to do that, and you also get to see a bunch of cool art way before other people!

You can also help Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which helps bring in new readers. Click on the banner below to vote daily!

Next Week: Doug is in control of his life, right? Right? Read it early on Patreon.