Doug – Page 13 – Hell, Inc.

What Drinking is About

Cait and I were having a conversation the other day about the movie trope where a female character is made clumsy to make her “relatable.” It’s like a character is written to be cool, exciting, desirable, and whatever other qualities the story needs, but then the creators realize that they need the main character to have flaws. But if they give them real flaws, the audience might not get on board, so what flaw can they be given that will come off as relatable and funny instead of giving them an actually negative trait? It’s usually that they’re clumsy, and they do some prat falls that make them seem cute and funny. It’s the character development equivalent of lying about your weaknesses being “working too hard” or “caring too much” in a job interview.

That made me think about Sara, who isn’t clumsy so much as she is the victim of physical comedy because she doesn’t understand what in her environment is dangerous. I knew from the start of writing the comic that Sara was going to get a lot of physical comedy, but the goal wasn’t relatability. She was the best choice to fulfill a comedic role. If this were a Hollywood romcom, Bridget would be the one doing pratfalls, but they wouldn’t be allowed to be nearly as cartoonish or (occasionally) grotesque. Which would suck, because I think the physical comedy in Hell, Inc. works BECAUSE it’s overstated like that.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Shane Lees is Employee of the Week! He has a webcomic, Tales of Abuse, which you can check out at his website. He’s also getting a copy of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers in the mail in the near future by supporting at the $5/month and up level! A new book will be starting up on there once my living room no longer looks like a Canada Post. You should check out the Hell, Inc. Patreon, which will be where you can check out the next book, and is also my predictable form of income.

You can also sign up for the monthly-ish newsletter, which has a shitload more subscribers than it did before the Hell, Inc. The RPG Kickstarter. Also, it has pet pictures.

Punishment Drink?

The real punishment drink is the fried chicken flavoured vodka that Cait and I made many years ago and inflicted on our friends. She was making infused vodkas, and asked me for flavour suggestions. My attempt to discourage that by making a purposely terrible suggestion backfired, as my bluff was called and we used KFC chicken skin to infuse vodka with fried chicken flavour. Now, that sounds awful. But it kinda wasn’t? It tasted like KFC chicken. Which is not really what you want in a drink, but when you expect it to be poison and it just tastes like chicken? Pretty okay. Several of Cait’s friends swore revenge after drinking it, though, which was just uproariously funny to me. If you’re told “this tastes like fried chicken and vodka. If you do not want that, do not try this,” then you try it and overact your displeasure like you’re in a Troma film, I WILL laugh at you. And I did. A lot.

Now that I think about it, fried chicken flavoured liquor seems like it’s in the ballpark of things that would be served at O’Hellihan’s.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Azhar Baig is Employee of the Week, and has a podcast called The Wisdom of Love that you should check out. It’s a comedic recounting of the Great Western Philosophers. He also supports Hell, Inc. on Patreon, which you should do, too, because it’s my most predictable source of income! I need income to do things like “buy food” and “pay my mortgage” and “keep my pets in their preferred spherical shape.” Which is just buying food, but not for me, I suppose. Anyway, Patreon.

Next Week: Hey, drink this blue stuff. It’ll probably be fine. Or you’ll vomit out your skeleton. Either way, it can be read early on Patreon!

Santa Sez

It is very appropriate to be posting a Hell, Inc. comic on Halloween. And also to be posting one about Christmas in Hell, because that’s just retail stores now that Christmas has started encroaching past Halloween. I propose that be countered by incorporating the leering, fanged Santa from this strip, who can caper about the store terrifying children while getting schlompered on antifreeze. I don’t know what that would achieve, exactly, but as long as I get my beak wet on the licensing, it seems like a great idea.

When I sat down to draw this one, I was like “awesome, this one’s three panels, should be an easy night. I might get the whole thing done in one sitting!” Then two hours of penciling the first panel later, I realized I had maybe chosen an overly ambitious first shot if I wanted an easy night. I do think it serves to set up O’Hellihan’s nicely, though, as we haven’t seen it for about 130 strips.

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 pretty cool.

Also, since Twitter may or may not become a (more) nightmarish hellscape in the near future, sign up for my monthly-ish email newsletter to keep up with the kinds of stuff I post on social media, but without me talking about sports as I watch them.

Cheers!

This is the 250th Hell, Inc. strip! That’s so many strips! No wonder I’m so tired. Is that why I thought it was a great idea to dedicate the 250th strip to a joke based on a 40+ year old sitcom that I haven’t even seen that much of? No, I definitely still think that’s genuinely a fun thing to do in the comic that is the closet I’ll ever get to making a sitcom. My original conception of this involved drawing in the style of the Cheers opening, until I rewatched it and realized the things I remembered as drawings were photos.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Barrie Deatcher is Employee of the Week, and he’s already got a copy of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers coming to him from supporting the creation of the book on Patreon! I’m gonna do that again with my next book, but work keeps piling on me before I can get my shit together to a level where I’m comfortable announcing what it is. Patreon is also how I make predictable money, so if you can kick in a buck, you should, because I can use it.

Also there’s a newsletter now, so subscribe and check that out.

Happy?

Doug is extremely good at “having emotions” and “understanding those emotions.” That is not autobiographical at all, nope, that is a fully made up thing with no basis in experience at all.

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 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.

Next Week: A strip based on a reference that I have no idea how many people will actually get, despite it seeming saturated within the culture to me, an old. Oh, also, it’s episode 250! That’s pretty cool, and originally would have been just two weeks shy of the end of volume 6. Then the pandemic changed how the books were going to come out, and keeping a uniform length didn’t matter anymore. Anyway patrons will be able to see it early.

The Only One Allowed to Puke

Aaaaaand that’s the end of the buffer (again), so I need to get back on that. I’m currently in the RPG mines doing editing, layout, and (inevitably) additional art for the book. I’m spending my spare time buried in packaging materials as I ship out Hockeypocalypse: Slashers and prepare to ship out Hell, Inc. The RPG. The post office is going to put up a poster with my face on it that says “do not serve this man.”

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Ben Hamlin, host of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben (among other casted pods), is Employee of the Week. I’ve been a guest on several episodes, most recently the strange and Hell, Inc.-esque animated comedy Ugly Americans – a short-lived series that never quite reached the potential of its premise. I’m also on the episodes about extremely well-crafted but under-remembered ’90s sitcom NewsRadio and 2010s stoner thing that loosely adheres to its premise, Workaholics.

Patreon! It’s a predictable source of income, so if you like things that I do, check it out.

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.

The Running of the Skeletons

It has been an extremely strange week over there at the ol’ corporate headquarters. Despite making it COVID-free through a wedding with numerous out-of-country guests and a convention attended by tens of thousands of people, Cait got the COVID. Being the medically knowledgeable and also insistent on doing things correctly person that she is, this has resulted in her living in her home office for the better part of a week. Is it weird to be communicating via text message with somebody who is literally in the next room? Yes. Yes it is. Her strategy to not get anyone else sick seems to have worked, though, as I continue to test negative. I also now frequently ponder how anyone who lives alone and has a job manages to have a place that isn’t a dumpster, because suddenly being in charge of all of the chores has been a real Too Many Things experience.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Robbie Dorman is Employee of the Week. He is co-host of The Simpsons Show, the only podcast about The Simpsons, and also the only podcast about The Simpsons that I have done a guest spot on. You should also follow him on Twitter to learn about his new novel releases. He writes that good good scary shit. And of course I like a scary hockey story, given that it was just a few months ago I wouldn’t shut up about my own scary hockey story. Speaking of which, I serialized that on Patreon, and will be doing that again with another book TBA. Patreon is my predictable form of income, so if you like Hell, Inc., every dollar helps!

I’ll be talking more about that in the relatively near future, and that will probably happen on my newsletter! But really, the main event is the pet photos. So go on, sign up for my monthly(ish) newsletter!

Next Week: Let’s make distract the intern from the skeleton trauma with different trauma. Read it early on Patreon!

Don’t Look at the Sun… er, Angels

The Kickstarter for Hell, Inc. The RPG is over, and it, quite frankly, staggeringly overperformed expectations. In an extremely funny turn of events, the Kickstarter for the RPG sold more copies of the Hell, Inc. Volume 1 and 2 comics than their own Kickstarter did. By A LOT.

The good news for you, the newspost reader, is that I don’t have any more campaigns to promote this year, so you’re back to the usual content of “stream-of-consciousness nonsense, Employee of the Week, Next Week on Hell, Inc.”

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!

Next Week: What, you thought I’d talk about face melting and there would be no face melting? Read it early on Patreon!

The Angel of Face Melting

The Angel of Face Melting is like the Angel of Death, except you only die if face melting is fatal. So I guess what I’m saying is they’re basically the same thing? Who knows what I’m saying, I don’t. I just tabled at a convention for the first time in 3 years, and have spent 3 days straight talking to an almost unending tide of other humans. My brain is soup.

Hell, Inc. The RPG is only on Kickstarter until September 22nd, so get on board before the clock runs out! THREE stretch goals have been unlocked, and the fourth and final stretch goal is less than $700 away. The 200 backer mark is also within sight, and I would very much like to hit that. I won’t belabour all of the free additional content that every pledge is getting, but suffice to say it is an increasingly great deal with each stretch goal unlocked.

Click on the images, back the Kickstarter, play the RPG! Like the intramural slo-pitch tournament, it’s mandatory.

Not an Angel Drill

Angel drills must be like fire drills in Hell. They’re mostly nothing and everybody resents them, but occasionally they’re vitally important and nobody is ready in those circumstances. Actually that reminds me of a story from when I was a teacher – during my second round of student teaching, I’ve got a class in the computer lab and an alarm goes off. Okay, but I know what the fire alarm sounds like, and this is a different alarm. I have no idea what it’s for. I look over at my mentor teacher, and he just says “it means lockdown.” Oh, okay, that makes sense, those should be different alarms since they have opposite intentions. Here’s the thing, though – I have no idea what I’m supposed to do in a lockdown. Nobody has mentioned it prior to this alarm going off. He isn’t really saying anything, but then I look over at the kids and they’re all closing the windows and blinds, then they go under the computer desks. I look over at my mentor teacher and he points at the door, so I lock it. Then I’m just standing there with a dude in his mid-60s thinking about how if this was an actual danger situation and he had wandered out of the room (as he often did once he was comfortable with me being in charge), we would be fuuuuuucked.

Completely unrelated to me being a teacher with no training for emergency procedures, the Hell, Inc. The RPG Kickstarter continues to steamroll forward. The second stretch goal, The Soup Drawer, has been unlocked! This means that for a meager 5 Canadian dollars (or 12, for a print version of the Employee Handbook), backers will be receiving the 32 page (maybe more) Employee Handbook, which includes all the game rules, a PDF blank character sheet, 6 PDF pre-made characters for the pre-written adventure about paperwork errors warping reality (also a PDF), and a PDF Hell, Inc. themed soup recipe ‘zine. Substitutions will be provided for consumption by humans. Click on the images below to head to the Kickstarter page and back the project, because it’s rad and I want you to have that in your life.