Character: Steve

One For Everybody

Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m bringing back a character we last saw about 140 strips ago. I’m an unstoppable juggernaut of (very) slowly turning Hell into Springfield. Wait until a few strips from now when I do it again! And probably more times later! I’m actually getting ahead again, so expect to hear about some other projects as well as Hell, Inc. in the near future. One of which is still Hell, Inc. related, I suppose, since it’s Hell, Inc. The RPG, which a lot of my recent efforts have been dedicated to.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Leonardo is Employee of the Week! They’ve got a copy of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers coming in the mail because they supported its creation! You can do that with my next graphic novel, 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 sign up for my newsletter, where I’ll be announcing a new Hell, Inc.-related projected later this week!

Next Week: Enter the Drunknasium! Which I guess is just a bar? Read it early on Patreon!

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 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.

Next Week: It turns out that angels don’t sound threatening unless you’re from Hell. Read it early on Patreon!

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is a very fun word to say, even if Doug apparently doesn’t know what it means. This strip means I’ve caught up with the buffer again, so I’m going to have to get back to the comic mines.

I’ve lately been spending almost all of my creative/work time in the RPG mines, which I didn’t expect to have such veins. As I mentioned last week, Hell, Inc. The RPG has launched on Kickstarter. This was a project undertaken on a whim and which we didn’t have huge aspirations for – the costs involved were pretty low, so we figured we’d recoup those pretty easily and then maybe hit the first stretch goal. Instead, it’s absolutely blowing away every crowdfunding thing I’ve done to a pretty comical degree. Not in terms of dollars, because the rewards aren’t that expensive, but the backer numbers are already nearing the most I’ve had one one project and it’s not even been a week. Is this being successful? If you haven’t, yet, click the images below to head over to the Kickstarter and check it out – it’s a very fun rules-lite RPG with a unique mediocrity-based dice mechanic.

Next Week: Sara plays motor oil mixologist. It goes as well as you think it will. Read it early on Patreon!

The Boot-lickening

One of my favourite ways for people to signal that I should not respect them is when they are shitty to anyone “below” them in whatever hierarchy they are part of, but a sniveling toad to anyone “above” them. I have seen this at comics industry parties and the secondhand embarrassment is STRONG.

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. It turns out that humans, like demons, need money to live! Me, specifically.

You can also sign up for my newsletter, where I just announced that Hell, Inc. The RPG will be part of Kickstarter ZineQuest, launching on August 23rd!

Next Week: Stan and B.L. Zebub have a stirring intellectual debate about the finer points of motor oil. Read it early on Patreon!

Antifreeze Vibrations

I don’t remember how, when, or why, but Helen’s personality being informed by middle-aged white women whose personality has never stopped being “drinking” has given me so much more material than I ever expected. Helen is one of a handful of characters who didn’t exist at all in the original black and white Hell, Inc. comics (I haven’t mentioned those in ages, eh?) but who I now actively seek to include in scenes because she adds a specific kind of energy that the other characters don’t bring. An extremely chaotic wine goblin energy.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Shane Lees is Employee of the Week! He has launched a new webcomic, Tales of Abuse, which you can check out at his website. With Hockeypocalypse: Slashers concluded, Patreon patrons are going to be getting a new graphic novel serialized soon, but first, starting in August, you’ll be seeing the remastered for print version of the first Rent-A-Thug story published in over a decade, La Cosa Glasnostra. I drew the entire thing in Webtoon’s vertical scrolling format, so reconstructing it into printable pages has been a challenge.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY MONTHLY NEWSLETTER for what I’m working on, what my friends are working on, and pictures of my pets. If YOU have a creative project of some sort that you’d like to share with Hell, Inc. readers, get in touch to be featured in The Friend Zone.

Next Week: The opportunity to escape is looming as soon as a certain head/butt-based interaction happens. Read it early on Patreon!

Exhausted

I, too, am exhausted, although it’s the Sara kind and not the B.L. Zebub kind. Running a crowdfunding campaign is a strange thing, as it feels simultaneously like there’s no time and it will never end. It also feels kind of like a sports season, where the long view of the entire thing is what’s important, but it’s impossible to see that and avoid getting caught up in moment. Sometimes you feel unbeatable, and sometimes it feels like you shouldn’t even be in the league.

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.

Hockeypocalypse: Slashers ends on Thursday AND it has passed its funding goal. so head over to Zoop and preorder a copy. It is my favourite comic I’ve ever written/drawn, and I think you’ll agree. Preorder your copy to help fund the book’s existence! Get it for yourself, get it for a friend or family member, or do all of the above! Not interested in Hockeypocalypse (you should be, are you okay?)? Donate your copy to your local library when you get it!

Not A Good Time

I look forward to having a Hell, Inc. buffer again, which is creeping toward being a reality. Granted, I still have to write and draw said buffer, but I have less urgent demands from elsewhere to get in the way of that.

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! If you don’t, you need to head over to Zoop and preorder a copy, which will ALSO help fund the creation of the book. It is my favourite comic I’ve ever written/drawn, and I think you’ll agree. Preorder your copy to help fund the book’s existence! Get it for yourself, get it for a friend or family member, or do all of the above! Not interested in Hockeypocalypse (you should be, are you okay?)? Donate your copy to your local library when you get it!