Location: Doug's Place

Floor People

This week’s Patreon preview involved discussion about how I handle compositions for actions that are repeated multiple times over the course of a series. I probably could have written an entire textbook on the subject if I had talked about HEAT, because that series involved drawing roughly 5000 lariats.

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: Maybe the office party was okay, after all? Read it early, and with author commentary, on Patreon!

The Worst Morning

We have reached the end of book 6! That’s the kind of thing I keep track of, but probably doesn’t come across or matter to you, the reader. The comic strip format of Hell, Inc. means that the story structure doesn’t have big dramatic splashes or cliffhangers that read as obviously being the end of an issue, like a print comic series does when it’s collected together. The story kind of flows along, with plot and jokes happening, and where a volume begins or ends is less important than what the main thrust of the book’s story is. I should write something about getting to the end of book 6, since that was originally supposed to be the end of the series.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Leonardo is Employee of the Week! They supported the creation of Hockeypocalypse: Slashers, and helped make that book possible! 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 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: Sara gains further insight into the hazards of floor-sleeping. Read it early on Patreon!

Hindsight

In the Patreon preview for this strip, I talk about the concept of joke density and my approach to incorporating it into Hell, Inc.

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: The strip that ends this arc! To be followed by… another arc! Read it early on Patreon!

Don’t Book a Massage in Hell

And that is the very weird line on which we end Hell, Inc. book 3, “Team-building Exercise.” Patrons have been able to read it for a few months now, so you should think about getting in on that action for the future.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cindy Gauthier is Employee of the Week, and can help fulfill all of your COVID-related mask needs. If you want to get your comics needs handled, support Hell, Inc. on Patreon, where you’ll get a digital copy of the aforementioned “Team-building Exercise” book (which includes a book-exclusive short story) as well as over 1000 pages of other comics!

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is the number one source of new readers for the comic. You can vote once per day, so click on the banner below to get voting!

Next Week: The beginning of the book 4! Get a head start on it on Patreon!

Friiiiiends

Sometimes I forget that Hell, Inc. is basically a romcom and needs scenes where people talk about their feelings, because I can’t assume everyone is understanding everything that facial expressions are usually carrying. On the other hand, too many of those scenes just gets lazy and hacky, so maybe it’s for the best that I approach writing it the way I do?

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Robbie Dorman, host of The Simpsons Show podcast, is Employee of the Week. If you like Hell, Inc. you probably also like The Simpsons, because that’s pretty foundational to my sense of humour and how I write jokes, so you should listen to The Simpsons Show. If you like Hell, Inc. you probably also want to be Employee of the Week and help Hell, Inc. continue existing by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon. All new patrons are receiving a digital copy of Hell, Inc. Volume 3: Team-building Exercise, as well as access to a Dropbox folder with over 1000 pages of digital comics!

It’s a new month, which means votes on Top Webcomic are worth even more as the rankings reset! Top Webcomics is the largest source of new readers for Hell, Inc., so votes are super helpful. You can vote once every 24 hours, so click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: Learn about massages in Hell! Find out early by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon!

You WANTED to Melt Your Skin Off

Listen, if you didn’t want to melt your skin off, you shouldn’t have assumed a shower in Hell would be less hot than the water cooler in Hell. Also, the first panel took a lot of time, because I pulled up all of the previous appearances of Doug’s apartment and used them to kluge together what the layout of his apartment could be. I realized that it had a hallway, so I needed to be a bit careful with making sure it didn’t end up being to big. Nobody in Hell should have a spacious, Friends-style apartment. Really, even having a one bedroom-one bathroom like Doug is probably too much, but I didn’t think it all the way through when I only needed to draw parts of some rooms.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Sylvia Douglas is Employee of the Week, and is returning to her weirdest and most delicious project, the Waffle Log Blog. If you think what I do here with Hell, Inc. is worth a buck, head over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon. Until COVID-related lockdown ends, patrons will receive the third Hell, Inc. book, Team-building Exercise, which isn’t available anywhere else (and won’t be until whenever the next print book Kickstarter happens at some point in the future). There are also over a thousand pages of other comics available to patrons, so check those out. Patreon. Go there.

Hell, Inc. is also on Top Webcomics, and a lot of new readers are driven to the site through the visibility provided by climbing the rankings over there. You can vote for Hell, Inc. by clicking the banner below!

Next Week: We’re friiiiiiiiends. Read it early on Patreon!

Taking the Stairs

I wanted to come up with an M.C. Escher/emcee Escher rap joke, but I couldn’t come up with one I liked, so here we are. I like to think that I do more with the comic strip format than most, as far as the formal storytelling elements of panel layout and page design go, but this is one of those cases where I feel like that’s really the case. And yes, the first two panels are based on the M.C. Escher drawing “The Stairs.”

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Brien Aronov is Employee of the Week! Do YOU want to be an Employee of the Week, and help contribute to my only reliable source of pandemic income? Head on over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon, where you’ll also receive the digital version of Hell, Inc. Volume 3: Team-building Exercise as well as over 1000 pages of other digital comics! So you should do that.

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which is the number one source of new readers for the comic! In the last couple of months, Hell, Inc. has been in the company of some comics that I’ve read and consider to be heavy hitters in the webcomic sphere, which is really cool. And weird. Click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: What does Doug’s living room look like? You’ll find out! Patrons can find out right now on Patreon!

Couch Spiders

I’m not entirely sure why Sara sleeping on floors and Doug tripping over her became a running joke, but it has, and I fully intend to continue calling back to it in the future. Fun fact: this will be the first strip in the 3rd Hell, Inc. print collection (as of now untitled). The first two are on Kickstarter right now – this is your opportunity to make up for missing out on the ground floor of Apple or Google or Amazon, and get in on the ground floor of Hell, Inc.*

*Not actually a real corporation with shares, because nobody would let an artist run that.

Click the image below to check out the Hell, Inc. Kickstarter campaign and help support the first two books!

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

The Employee of the Week honours are going to be changed up a little bit for the next month as the Kickstarter runs. I’m going to be shouting out all of the Kickstarter backers from the previous week. I’m eternally grateful to everyone who is willing to spend their entertainment dollar on my work, and chooses to spend their time in the worlds I create. Is list form the best way to express that? Probably not, but it’s the form I’m going with. So without further adieu, the week one list.

Sean Tonelli

Sylvia Douglas

Gail de Vos

Caitlin Fortier

Joey Gruszecki

Robbie Dorman

Melissa Hooper

Matthew Smith

Cindy Gauthier

Mike Harrington

Gayle & Gary Martin

GMarkC

Paul D Jarman

Elaine Cassell

Daniel Schneider

Jaroslaw Ejsymont

Heather Rusk

Tayson Martindale

Chase Kantor

Brent Jans

Barrie Deatcher

DBDH

Mountain Barber

Brent Finnestad

Kelly Tindall

Serah Blunt

Chad Colpitts

Variant Edition Comics & Culture

Mark Allard-Will

Chris Anderson

Matt Kund

Tardulv

Ian Mondrick

Jay Lofstead

Nicole Daenzer

Dan Collins

Whew. That’s a hell of a list (pun very intended). A heartfelt thank you to every person on that list, and for everyone who will be in future iterations of the list. Do you want to be at the top of next week’s list? Pledge your support to the Hell, Inc. Kickstarter.

Next Week: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Hopefully not the bathroom.

Catching The Beelzebus

“Beelzebus” was a joke I didn’t think of until I was drawing the transit sign, then promptly botched by spelling it wrong. Whoops! This is the first strip where I really had to figure out the palette for the comic, since the first strip mostly took place in the dark. For those interested in such things, most of the colour choices are “if you’re not sure what colour to use, make it red.”

Tomorrow: Getting to the office is half the battle. The other half is red and blue lasers. Wait, no, that’s GI Joe…

The Snooze Button

It’s the first Hell, Inc. strip!

For the first week of this exciting new adventure in webcomickery, I’m going to be posting a new strip every day. Then, starting next week, we’ll move to the usual schedule of one new comic a week, on Mondays.

Doug’s alarm clock is based on mine, although I keep mine out of my reach so that I can’t keep hitting snooze. Because otherwise… that snooze button is being abused and I’m never getting anywhere on time EVER.

Tomorrow: Time to greet the day!