Ladies Man Doug

After my impromptu dissertation on translating a script into panels in last week’s Patron preview, this one didn’t have any formal element of comics that I got hung up on talking about. Incidentally, the Hell, Inc. Patreon is going through a lovely* period of losing patrons instead of holding steady or (rarely) gaining, so maybe head over there and kick in a buck to support your favourite eternal wage slaves.

*It is not lovely, it is bad.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Leonardo is Employee of the Week! They supported the creation of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers, and helped make that book ! You can do that with my next graphic novel, Rent-A-Thug, which I will be serializing on Patreon as well. Backers at the $5/month and up tiers will get a copy mailed to them when it’s finished! You can also help me out for as little as $1 a month, because that really adds up when enough people get involved.

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: Harry and the Arbitrary Nature of Time. Read it early on Patreon!

The Most Christmas Party

It occurs to me that I’ve never actually been to a company Christmas party as an adult. I remember being dragged to some of my dad’s work events that were intended for the employees to bring their families, but my experiences at those were largely of being bored because I was, like, 8 or something. As an adult, I’ve either worked alone in my studio, which does not involve staff parties unless I put little party hats on my pets. Prior to that, I’ve either worked retail or in education, and the one Christmas party I was involved in at a school was a meal at a restaurant at a giant table seating 20 or 30 people, where everyone just talked to the 6-8 people near them, who were almost always the same people you talked to all the time at school. It certainly lacked Helen’s… bigness.

I’m going to be at Calgary Horror Con for the first time, selling the horror and horror-adjacent books from my catalogue, and maybe dipping out to watch movies if I get tired of talking.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Sebastian is Employee of the Week, and you can, too! It’s how I have predictable money, which is both Cool and Good. If everyone who read the comic in a month chipped in $1, I’d be able to turn down most freelance work and focus on doing Hell, Inc. stuff and my own graphic novels! That would be preeeeetty cool.

You can help Hell, Inc. for free by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which has been a great way to draw in new readers. Click the banner below to vote daily!

Next Week: The bar staff are less enthusiastic about how things have gone than one might hope. Read it early on Patreon!

 

Drunk Santa vs. Ceiling Skeleton

Drunk Santa vs. Ceiling Skeleton, the fight of the century! If this was HEAT, you’d get about three months of that. I miss drawing beefy wrasslers doing violence to each other, but I do NOT miss trying to pace wrestling as a webcomic. The fact that anyone kept reading that comic while the Super Max Challenge Final took up a YEAR of posts might qualify them for sainthood. I’m currently developing another wrestling comic as a graphic novel pitch, so maybe drawing a lot of wrasslin’ again will be in my future.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Barrie Deatcher is Employee of the Week, and will get to read my new Rent-A-Thug graphic novel as I draw it! Subscribers to my newsletter have already seen the first page, which I think is several orders of magnitude cooler than any previous Rent-A-Thug stuff. 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.

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: Sara has very strong opinions about having gone to O’Hellihan’s instead of the Christmas party. Read it early on Patreon!

Cartoon Brawling Dust Cloud

Despite it seeming like the obvious visual choice, I avoided drawing an actual cartoon brawling dust cloud. I don’t have a high-minded formal reason for it, it just looked squashed and weird once I accounted for the space the balloon would take up. It was easier to communicate the same idea with a tangle of bodies that used the space better. Thinking about those kinds of decisions that go into making a comic is always interesting to me, as there’s rarely a definitive correct answer, but rather many viable options depending on what the artist intends to communicate to the reader.

In other news, Calgary Expo and FCBD are in the rearview mirror, which gives me a little over a month until I next appear amongst the living. I’ll be back in Calgary, this time for the Horror Con, on June 17th and 18th! It’s themed around Killer Klowns from Outer Space this year, which kicks ass, because that movie rules.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Barrie Deatcher is Employee of the Week, and will get to read my new Rent-A-Thug graphic novel as I draw it! Subscribers to my newsletter have already seen the first page, which I think is several orders of magnitude cooler than any previous Rent-A-Thug stuff. 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.

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: Helen’s romantic past! Read it early on Patreon!

Chaotic Helen Noises

Speaking of chaos, I have returned from the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. For my part, most of the chaos was the result of construction on the Stampede Grounds ensuring I rarely knew I where to go if I needed to go anywhere. Otherwise, things went pretty smoothly for me – a pleasant drive down, leisurely set-up, I remembered what all of my books were about to pitch them. And I went home with A LOT fewer books than I arrived with, which is always the goal. Thanks to everyone who bought books or prints, and hello to those of you discovering Hell, Inc. as a result of the con!

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Me, because I am too tired to look up whose turn it is. If you would like to help support Hell, Inc. as well as my other comic-making, and the all-important “continuing to feed and house myself,” consider chipping in $1 a month or more over on Patreon. Patrons get bonuses such as early access to Hell, Inc. strips, tons of art from my other projects, and even custom digital art!

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: The Ballad of Flailing Helen. It’s not a ballad, it’s more of screeching sound. Read it early on Patreon!

Against Helen’s Love

In the Patreon preview for this strip I wrote about the ways that Helen’s characterization has been unconsciously influenced by trash reality TV, and also accidentally created everyone’s new favourite reality show, Real Wine Moms of Hell. I assume the season order from Netflix is already in my email inbox.

April 27-30 I’ll be at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo for the first time in 4 years! Have I already had a panic attack about it? Sure have! My brain is garbage. Come and see me at table P01 in the Big 4 building, which I have conveniently mapped out below:

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! Go there. Do that. It is my most reliable source of income, and that is very helpful when living that freelance life. If everyone who read the comic last week chipped in $1/month, that would be enough to almost completely eliminate the need for freelancing. That would be rad!

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: Helen’s problems become EVERYONE’s problems. Read it early on Patreon!

Sobering Sponge

Sponges – for when you need to absorb things in your stomach, and also are a demon and already eat garbage and poison.

Also, some of you read this on Sunday, because I don’t know what time is and scheduled it for the wrong date. I also texted a friend of mine to ask how his book signing went… the day before it happened. I’m SO GOOD at time. And yet, I have never missed a professional deadline? I don’t know why I am like this.

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 (more on that in the near future!) 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: Helen’s demands of Santa interrupt the party. Read it early on Patreon!

The Old Femur Harmonica Song and Dance

At some point there will be an actual femur harmonica in the comic, maybe? That seems like the next level of this recurring joke.

BURGERPunk The RPG is on Kickstarter now! It’s already funded and we’ve served up 5 of 7 stretch goals, but there are still stretch goals and nearly four weeks left, so become one with the Living Meat(TM). BURGERPunk is absolutely the weirdest thing I’ve worked on, and if you want to hear more about it, you can hear Cait talking about our process of writing tabletop RPGs and the origins of BURGERPunk on the Rite Gud podcast. You can also hear us talking BURGERPunk and the movie Hell Comes to Frogtown on Podside Picnic.

You can also click on the image below to back BURGERPunk. The digital tier with the book and all the stretch goals is only $5 CAD, with the print version (and all the digital stuff!) is $15 + shipping. Here’s a look at one of the 7 Flavour Profiles (character classes), the Cola Commando.

Click on the Cola Commando and back BURGERPunk on Kickstarter!

Bridget, Bar Fight Champion of Hell

Bridget, Bar Fight Champion of Hell could also be the name of a Hell, Inc. video game where Bridget beats up demons. Maybe if Guinea Pig Press RPGs continue to do well, I’ll become wealthy enough to be the dictator of a small video game studio that adapts my comics into games. For some reason I recently started thinking about Hell, Inc. as an action platformer (like how everything got adapted as an action platformer in the NES/Super NES era). Doug bouncing around Hell popping people in the schnozz with his Popeye arms and collecting souls or something.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Leonardo is Employee of the Week! They supported the creation of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers, and helped make that book ! You can do that with my next graphic novel, Rent-A-Thug, which I will be serializing on Patreon as well. Backers at the $5/month and up tiers will get a copy mailed to them when it’s finished!

In other news, BURGERPunk the RPG launches on TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14th! Click the image below to sign up to be notified when the campaign launches! The main event is the BURGERPunk The RPG ‘zine, which is 32 pages of fast food action movie post-apocalypse chaos including the complete gameplay rules (using Powered by the Apocalypse) and 7 Flavour Profiles (character classes), available in print and digital formats.