Location: O'Hellihan's

Evolution of Dance?

Yes, I DID have to Google what the name of that dance video that was big on YouTube and got referenced on The Office was called. That was probably an unnecessary effort, but that is what we do here at Hell, Inc. It’s very clear that the comic, the corporation in the comic, and sometimes my studio area are all named the same thing.

I’m starting 2023 with a lot more concrete plans than normal, art-wise. The staggering artistic achievement that will be BURGERPUNK, the RPG, will be launching on Kickstarter in February. If you reacted to that with “that title rules,” then congratulations, you’re gonna like it a lot.

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 (who are cool, weird cyborg-things) 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. If everyone who read the comic last week chipped in $1/month, that would be enough to almost completely eliminate the need for freelancing. That would be rad!

Also check out the Newsletter, where I’ll be dropping some art from the Rent-A-Thug graphic novel for the first time!

Next Week: Diane lives a funk-based existence. Read it early on Patreon!

Iterative Toasts

Happy New Year! It’s 2023 now, which is… I dunno. It changes my signature and not a ton else. As far as what’s on the horizon for 2023, there will be plenty more Hell, Inc. including the omnibus of what were originally intended to be the first six volumes. I’ll also be working on the Rent-A-Thug graphic novel, which I’ll be posting on Patreon unless I can convince a publisher to give me a bunch of money for it. In the near future, the newest addition to my RPG empire, BURGERPUNK.

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.

A Skeleton Lover or a Skeleton Fighter?

I have been suitably shamed by Cait for not making a “does the skeleton want to bone?” joke in the Patreon post about this strip, so I will re-present Skeleton Lover or Skeleton Fighter?, my game show concept where the player must decide if the skeleton wants to bone or battle.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Christmas, for making this Christmas party arc topical again. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you out there reading the ongoing adventures of a bunch of weirdos doing demon paperwork in Hell.

Spiritual Quest

This was a strip where what I was thinking it would look like while I was writing it and what it looked like as I started to lay it out did not match in difficulty AT ALL. I expected I’d do the one shot where Doug was visible, and that would be a bit tough, but everything else would be pretty straightforward. But then I was all like “but what if I made it more dynamic and grounded the characters in the setting more?” Because I’m an idiot, you see, and do a lot of things that make my job harder because I want things to be “good.” In this economy!? We don’t have room for good, we need art-stealing robots and entire animation departments getting slashed.

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. Indie artists need your support now more than ever, so check out his stuff!

Speaking of which, over on Patreon I’m serializing a new comic, a Rent-A-Thug one-shot called La Cosa Glasnostra. When that wraps up (it’s looking like it’ll be 40ish pages), I’ll be moving on to the full Rent-A-Thug graphic novel, unless I miraculously pick up a book deal somehow. Patreon is my (currently only) predictable form of income, so if you like Hell, Inc., every dollar helps!

Sheila’s Sign Language

Sheila’s Sign Language is much easier to learn than ASL, but more limited in expression. It’s really just communicating the one idea, isn’t it? Still, it’s an important one.

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!

Christmas Party Benefits

“Christmas Party Benefits” sound like the kind of thing a company would include in a job posting that definitely doesn’t post the salary. Encouraging employees to view each other as having “stab here” signs on their backs also seems like the kind of thing a job that doesn’t post the salary would do.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Caitlin is Employee of the Week, and currently helping finish the Hell, Inc. The RPG Kickstarter fulfillment. Our kitchen table has been a packaging station for a while now, but the end of the shipping tunnel is in sight. Until there’s more shipping. I should just get my living room classified as a Canada Post depot.

A new book series has started for $5/up patrons! The first published Rent-A-Thug story in 12 years, La Cosa Glasnostra, is being published in print-page format for the first time on Patreon. The first 5 pages are free here. The rest will be going up on Patreon, and seems like it’ll end up being somewhere in the 40 page range. I don’t know if I’ll end up printing this one, we’ll see how I feel once I see the whole thing compiled as a PDF.

I haven’t plugged it in a while, so go sign up for the newsletter.

Solidarity

I wrote about it in more detail in the Patreon preview post for this strip, but this one is an example of writing a script that presented me with some visual problems. It’s also probably one of the better examples of those problems resulting in better visual storytelling than solving those problems in the script phase would have.

In other news, my kitchen table belongs to Hell, Inc. The RPG books now. The first batch of books has gone out, and many more will follow as we get packages put together.

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.

The next project to be serialized on Patreon (for $5/month and up patrons) is RENT-A-THUG. Some of you might remember that as my first published work, but I’m reimagining it as a graphic novel that utilizes all of my improvements as a creator. I’m aiming for it to see publication around the 20th anniversary of the strip’s first publication in 2005, but that’ll be dependent on a lot of factors outside of my control. Right now, I’m posting the print-formatted pages for La Cosa Glasnostra, the short story I created for Webtoon as practice for meshing the original art style with my current skillset. Like with Hockeypocalypse: Slashers, I’ll be posting the first 5 pages as a free preview, and then adding a few pages every month as they’re made.

 

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!

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!