Character: Steve

Anthropomorphized Shapesball

It’s Shapesball Night in Hellmerica! Insert the theme of your favourite sports program here. And then duck if you see shapes flying at your head, because it’s probably the ball.

In other news, the book market graphic novel I’ve been working on continues to grind along toward completion, after which I’ll be wrapping up Hell, Inc. Volume 4.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Joe Amon is Employee of the Week, and has access to over a thousand pages of digital comics for supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon, including book 3, “Team-building Exercise!” You can, too, by supporting Hell, Inc. for as little as $1 a month! Patreon is my only really predictable income source, so even a dollar is incredibly helpful!

It’s also incredibly helpful to vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, because that brings in a lot of new readers! Click on the banner below to vote daily!

Next Week:A well designed practice schedule for a well-oiled baseball machine! Read it early on Patreon!

Anthropomorphized Shapes

And now you’ve got the Tetris theme stuck in your head again. You’re welcome. I continue to grind away on the graphic novel I’ve been hired to draw for one of the book market publishers, so I continue to lack things to say in these news posts.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cait is Employee of the Week! You can buy her fantasy-themed soaps on her Etsy store, Soaps & Sorcery. We’re also working on a roleplaying game together about failson Space Marines causing massive amounts of carnage through their incompetence. If you want to support Hell, Inc. (of course you do, it’s great), hit up the Hell, Inc. Patreon where you can also get exclusive access to the third Hell, Inc. book, “Team-building Exercise” by donating at any level!

You can also help Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics! It has been the largest source of new readers for Hell, Inc. Click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: Anthropomorphized Shapesball! Read it early by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

The Bad Chair Wars

Assume the lightning panel is accompanied by a super sick guitar riff that shreds your soul. I know that’s a thing you can actually embed into comics on, like, Webtoon and stuff, but I don’t want to learn how to do that. I also don’t know how to play sick-ass guitar riffs. Also I hate it when Webtoon comics play music, because I never realize that’s where it’s coming from until I’m halfway through the comic and have paused or muted whatever other media is playing at the time.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Joe Amon is Employee of the Week! Thanks for supporting Hell, Inc. Joe! If YOU, dear reader, think Hell, Inc. is worth a buck and want to help support it, you can do that by heading over to the Patreon. New Patrons will be receiving a digital copy of Hell, Inc. Volume 3: “Team-building Exercise,” as well as over 1000 pages of other digital comics from my catalogue, as well as some from guest artist Lukasz Kowalczuk.

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics to help boost its rank and get more new readers.

Next Week: The ol’ sinister swappity swap. Read it early by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

The Bad Chair

Early in working on Hell, Inc. I solicited weird office stories from my friends who work in offices, and the bad chair comes from one of those. Caitlin had her chair swapped at some point while she was out of the office, and realized pretty quickly that the new one was broken and hurting her back. After a week or so of scouting the office for unused chairs, she found one that was unattended and swapped it with the bad chair. And thus I had a very silly subplot that would prove to be totally obnoxious to draw.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Azhar is Employee of the Week, and has come to us via some crossover from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, which I’ve done some art for this year. Do you want a drawing of Napoleon as a donkey riding backwards on a confused horse? Well because of LLbD, you can do that. Do you want to help support Hell, Inc.? You can do that, too! If you think what I’m doing here is worth a dollar, you can support Hell, Inc. on Patreon to get early access to each strip and a digital copy of Hell, Inc. Volume 3: “Team-building Exercise!”

You can also help me out by voting for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is the largest source of new readers for the comic. It’s early in the month, so votes are worth more as the rankings reset and the playing field is leveled. Click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: The Saga of the Bad Chair continues. Read it early by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

A Very Normal Face

Sara’s dialogue in the first two panels is, in hindsight, a pretty concise encapsulation of my existence in the direct market comics industry. I have since fallen ass-backwards into the book market, which has been a far greater fit for both my skill set and career goals. In fact, I’m about to get the paperwork done for my first full gig in the book market (I did inking work on a book last year), which I’ll be spending most of the back half of 2020 drawing. Don’t worry, though, I’m like 30 weeks ahead on Hell, Inc., so interruptions to the regular update schedule should be minimal or not present at all.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Sebastian is Employee of the Week, and I forgot to ask him if he wants me to plug anything for him, so, uh… hit me up if you want me to plug anything for you? If you, dear reader, want to be Employee of the Week, or just think Hell, Inc. is worth a dollar and want to help support it, head on over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon. You’ll also receive Hell, Inc. book 3: “Team-building Exercise” and over 1000 pages of other comics!

You can also help support Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which is the largest source of new readers for the comic. Votes early in the month are worth more, so hit up the voting extra-frequently later this week. Click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: The Ballad of Ray Trying to Sit Down. Find out what the hell that even means by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

Failure to Toady

Don’t you just hate it when you’re trying to get some quality brown-nosing in and the boss slams the door right in your face? Just the worst.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Laurel is Employee of the Week, and one of the many new patrons to take advantage of the COVID-related benefits now being offered – new patrons will not only gain access to the digital edition of the third Hell, Inc. book, “Team-building Exercise,” months before it’s released to the general public, they will also have access to over a thousand pages of other digital comics! At the $5 and up tier, you’ll also get new digital comics as they’re released! If you want to get in on that, or just think that Hell, Inc. is worth a buck, head over to the Patreon page and help keep the lights on.

You can also help out Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which is the largest source of new readers. More votes = more visibility = more new readers. You can vote by clicking the banner below!

Next Week: The least alarming face, definitely. Read it early on Patreon!

Drag Me to Hell (from Elsewhere in Hell)

Having just lettered a later page in the series (the as-yet-untitled strip #134) and completely botched the balloon spacing to the point that I had to change font sizes to make things fit, I have no idea how I managed to leave the exact right amount of space in the last panel of this strip. Spacing weird balloons like that is much harder than spacing the normal ones, and somehow I got that one right.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Welcome new Employee of the Week, Christine! Christine is the artist behind Purple Pony Art, and is among the folks to have access to Hell, Inc. Volume 3: Team-Building Excercise well before the general populace! As a special thanks to the Patrons who are supplying my only income during the COVID crisis, the third Hell, Inc. book will be available to all Patrons at every support level. It won’t be made available otherwise until the next Kickstarter (for books 3 and 4). If you want to help support Hell, Inc., head over to the Patreon. Every dollar helps (a lot), and during quarantine/social-distancing all patrons will receive a Dropbox link with over a thousand pages of comics to pass the quarantime.

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is the largest source of new readers for the site. More votes = more readers, so please do that.

Next Week: The floor is lava! Kind of literally! Read it early on Patreon!

Princess of Hell

This was a “I think I wrote too much dialogue, but managed to fit it all in without ruining the art anyway” strip. They happen once in a while, and are usually the result of me not realizing while I’m writing that I should have broken a strip into two. A rule of thumb I tend to like for that is by counting the number of bubbles on the page – if I get past 7, I need to think about splitting the strip into two and punching up the mid-strip joke to carry a strip. Do people like it when I ramble about technical stuff like this? I don’t know, but you could tell me!

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Welcome new Employee of the Week Sebastian, who has joined up just in time for the new Patreon promotion – book 3! That’s right, as I announced late last week, Hell, Inc. Volume 3 – Team-Building Exercise, is finished, and is going to be available exclusively to patrons while we’re stuck at home due to COVID-19. I can’t do a lot to make your time in self-isolation better, but what I can do, I will! It includes a six page short story that will only be available in the book, so check that out. Patrons at any level will be able to download their own PDF copy at their leisure.

Patreon is the only source of income at the moment, so every dollar helps me AND gets you a copy of not only volume 3, but access to over 1000 pages of other comics I’ve worked on! If you dig Hell, Inc. and think it’s worth a dollar, I’d really appreciate it!

You can also help out by visiting Top Webcomics and voting for Hell, Inc., which exposes it to new readers and thus new potential patrons. You can vote once per day by clicking the banner below!

Next Week: Doug’s DIY Bouncer Service. Read it early by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

They’ll Find a Way to Kill Her Again

As patrons have already seen, a lot of the inspiration for the amount of physical mayhem that happens to Sara is a quote from Matt Groening on a Futurama DVD commentary. He was talking about how, on the Simpsons, all of the physical comedy happens to Bart and Homer, and with Futurama he wanted to see if it would still work if it happened to a female character, which led to Amy being very clumsy and accident-prone.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cait is Employee of the Week, and we’re actually in adjacent offices now, sort of. My desk is in the living room, and we’ve set up a telework office for her in the spare bedroom (or Nerd Shit Room, as we call it, because it is where we keep a large amount of our nerd shit. It’s like 80% Warhammer books by volume). I’d also like to thank the folks who have signed up for the Patreon during the COVID crisis, because that and my webstore are the only way I’m making money right now, and YIKES that is a bad time. Seriously, if you like Hell, Inc., and have a dollar to donate to the Patreon, please do. Pandemics are a bad time to be an independent artist, WHO KNEW?

Vote. Top Webcomics. Do it. It’s how I get more readers and keep this thing chugging along. Click the banner.

NEXT WEEK: Oh, look who thinks they’re the princess of Hell! Read it early on Patreon!

First Responders

“I mean, we’ve put in a small amount of effort, what more can we do!?” – Bridget and Steve.

This update is later in the day than normal, because the COVID social distancing situation has led me to struggle even more with knowing what day it is, especially now that Caitlin works from home. Every day is just kinda the same.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Welcome another new employee, Laurel! If you think Hell, Inc. is worth a dollar, head over to the Patreon and help keep things going. COVID has pretty much destroyed my income for March and April, which were reliant on going out into the public and selling things. As an added incentive, all patrons are going to have access to the digital comics library for the duration of the COVID crisis, which includes well over a thousand pages of comics that I’ve drawn, and bonus appearances by one of my favourite cartoonists, Lukasz Kowalczuk! So check that out, you will not find a better deal.

You can also help Hell, Inc. by voting on Top Webcomics. The comic is pretty highly ranked this month, and that’s helping to bring in new readers and keep more folks self-isolated without losing their minds. Click on the banner below to vote.

NEXT WEEK: Maybe customers retching on the floor is not ideal for the restaurant staff? Read it a week early on Patreon.