Steve – Hell, Inc.

The Bill

I’m currently in the midst of a particularly notable streak of having no idea what day it is, so I’m glad some neurons fired to remind me that it was Monday and I needed to post the new comic.

Over on Patreon, my usual early reader post ended up being a much more detailed than usual look into the process of breaking a script into panels for the strip. If you’re interested in the process of the comic, chip in a buck and check that out.

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. You should also check out the Hell, Inc. Patreon, which is my predictable form of income. One of these days it will replace the need to freelance! Not a SOON day, but one day!

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: We’re kicked out of the bar, now what? 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:

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:

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!

A More Interesting Topic

This strip was the end of my buffer, which activated about two weeks of furious drawing to rebuild said buffer. That was in the midst of the BURGERPunk Kickstarter wrapping up, although by the end of that I wasn’t having to do all that much. For whatever reason, RPG Kickstarters go much smoother than comic ones for me – they start off hot, and then I just kinda ride it along until there’s a slow patch in the middle, then I do some stuff that doesn’t actually help, and then things pick up and get hot at the end. Compared to comic Kickstarters, where I feel like I need to grind my ass off for a month straight, it’s downright relaxing.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

“Game Time” Art Middleton is Employee of the Week! Follow him on Twitter 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: Sara learns that getting up is overrated. Read it early on Patreon!

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.

Anti-Gravity Spiders

I’ve been playing a lot of Hollow Knight lately, and was somewhat delighted to realize that it was about bugs. They’re so stylized that I didn’t read the characters that way until I saw them in the game’s environment. As someone who really likes the idea of army ants being taken literally, Hollow Knight feels like if those old Army Ants toys were in the supernatural fantasy genre. Also, Hollow Knight is really fun.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Speaking of fun, it’s my birthday tomorrow (unless you read this on a day other than January 30th). If you feel the urge to celebrate with me, feel free to drop a buck or two on my Patreon, which supports projects like Hell, Inc. and the upcoming Rent-A-Thug graphic novel. I will likely be spending my birthday either drawing more pages for said Rent-A-Thug graphic novel, or working on BURGERPunk, the RPG that nobody knew they needed.

If you want to hear more about BURGERPunk, sign up for my newsletter, which will be debuting some never-before-seen BURGERPunk art prior to the February 14th Kickstarter.

Topics of Conversation

Conversations with my parents during the pandemic made me realize how much “things we have done recently” form the core of most casual conversation. When the answer to “what have you been up to” is “nothing, same as you,” it’s a lot harder to carry on a chat. That was indirectly how I arrived at writing this strip. I wasn’t consciously comparing the gang not having anything to talk about because they’ve all been together for a month straight to not having anything interesting to tell my parents because I’ve been at home for a month straight, but upon reflection it’s pretty clear how I ended up at this week’s joke.

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. Speaking of graphic novels, currently Rent-A-Thug: La Cosa Glasnostra is being reformatted as traditional comic pages and posted. Following that, the Rent-A-Thug graphic novel will be starting up (unless some publisher gives me a lot of money before that happens).

Also, the next RPG in my burgeoning empire is going to be launching in February, so sign up for my monthly-ish email newsletter to learn about BURGERPunk.

Diance Party

I don’t know what a table-dancing jam is in Hell, but Diane probably has some insight on that.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

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: Ever look at a group of people and wonder “what would they even talk about?” Sara does. Read it early on Patreon!