Location: The Office

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!

Tetris Brain

And now the Tetris theme is stuck in your head, isn’t it? You’re welcome. Also someone who knows how to make video games should make Hell, Inc. Spreadsheet Tetris a thing. Email or DM me or something, let’s make this happen.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cait is Employee of the Week both here and at her new soap company, Soaps & Sorcery. She is also the other person who is working from home in my art lair. Except not IN my art lair, she has her own work lair. It’s full of soap and also all of the books that I would normally be selling at conventions. If YOU want to be Employee of the Week and get a plug for your soap business or whatever, head over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon and help keep the lights on over here.

You can also vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics, which brings in a bunch of new readers. Click on the link below to vote, which you can do daily!

Next Week: The BAD CHAIR WARS *thunder and lightning*. Read it early on Patreon!

R.I.P. Your Butt

You can always tell which one is the bad chair, because, y’know, the seat is barely on it. And the backrest is creakily swinging off to the side. And one or more wheels are broken/missing. And because it looks like there’s scorpions or some shit inside of it.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Ben Hamlin is Employee of the Week. Ben is also in the business of keeping us all entertained during quarantine as a podcaster with the Infinity Break Network! If you think the entertainment you’ve been getting from Hell, Inc. is worth a dollar, check out the Hell, Inc. Patreon page and contribute to my only reliable source of quarantine income! Patrons have access to the third Hell, Inc. print book, including an exclusive short story, and over 1000 pages of other digital comics!

You can also help Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which is a big source of new readers for the comic. You can vote daily by clicking the link below!

Next Week: The Tetris theme is the only song, now. 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!

Too Much? Too Much

“We need a six out of ten, and you’re giving us a fifteen, so maybe let’s dial it back a little?” Also I am not at all going to miss drawing the practice calendar in the background, because it always ends up making things take longer.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Jillian Dolan is Employee of the Week! You should check out the comics she’s drawn, Kyle the Nihilist Dinosaur and Misha. We also just took the same digital colouring class last weekend, although you won’t see any of the things I learned from it in Hell, Inc. in the near future, because I’m like 30 strips ahead right now. If you want to help out your favourite independent artist/fake megacorporation, be like Jillian and support Hell, Inc. on Patreon. New patrons will be receiving a digital copy of Hell, Inc. book 3, “Team-building Exercise,” as well as over a thousand pages of other comics.

You can also support Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, because that’s the largest source of new readers for the comic. You can vote daily by clicking on the banner below!

Next Week: Sara’s enthusiasm continues to be mismatched to the situation. Read it early on Patreon!

Be the Cockatrice Butt

I don’t know why I’ve been going really crazy with backgrounds lately, but I definitely have. As I type this, I’m taking a break from colouring a scene that is even more full of stuff. Also, I’m typing this several days before it goes up, because when it’s live, I’ll be on the first vacation I’ve taken in 14 years. COMICS, EVERYONE.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Joe Amon is Employee of the Week! If you, like Joe, think Hell, Inc. is worth a dollar, kick that dollar over to the Hell, Inc. Patreon, which helps finance things like “my mortgage payments” and “drawing this comic instead of hunting for freelance jobs.” You can get rewards like early access to Hell, Inc. strips and EVERY DIGITAL COMIC I’VE EVER MADE (that I’m not legally prevented from offering as a Patreon reward). So go do that.

You can also help Hell, Inc. by voting for it on Top Webcomics, which has been the best source for bringing in new readers to the comic. Click the banner below to vote!

Next Week: Helen’s priorities are very well-defined. Find out what they are by supporting Hell, Inc. on Patreon.

Vital Knowledge

For a comic that was originally intended to test how fast I could draw a strip from blank page to finished letters, I’ve sure started spending a lot of time drawing backgrounds. This isn’t even that absurd an example of them – there are some pages in upcoming weeks where I spent as much time drawing one background as I did the rest of the strip.

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Damion is Employee of the Week, and you can too! If you think Hell, Inc. is worth a buck, donate to the Hell, Inc. Patreon and help keep the lights on around here. As I post this, I’m sitting around waiting for a freelance gig to start so I can get my next paycheque, and I have NO IDEA when that will be! Could be tomorrow, could be October. The Patreon gives me, an artist, a predictable income, which is invaluable to me, and also to the bank, to whom I pay my mortgage.

If you can’t afford the Patreon because capitalism has crushed the value of your labour, vote for Hell, Inc. on Top Webcomics. It’s been the best way to gain new readers (and potential Patreon patrons) thus far, and voting is free! Click on the banner below.

Next Week: Butt-based comedy is the best kind of comedy. Read it early on Patreon!

If I Don’t Laugh, I’ll Cry

This is one of several recent strips where I was sure I had written way too much dialogue and it would never fit, then when I sat down to letter it I had plenty of space. That’s something that tends to happen every so often with comics that I letter digitally. Even using old strips as a guideline, there’s some guesswork involved in how much space the lettering will occupy. It’s much better to overestimate the lettering than underestimate it, though. There’s nothing quite as demoralizing as trying to rewrite text so that it fits into a much-too-small space.

Before we get to Employee of the Week, Hell, Inc. has been nominated for an award! Well, sort of. I was nominated for an award and it happened to be for my work on Hell, Inc. (and also GWAR). You can vote for me in the Favourite Cartoonist category here: http://bit.ly/smavote2019

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK:

Cait is Employee of the Week! You should go buy her short story collection, Dead Man’s Candle and Other Short Horror Stories, which is available for purchase as well as on Kindle Unlimited. It was produced as part of a writing challenge in October, and Dead Man’s Candle collects her favourite 13 of the 31 stories written during that challenge.

If you think Hell, Inc. is worth a dollar, you can help support my cartooning endeavours by donating to Hell, Inc. on Patreon. Patrons get to read every Hell, Inc. strip a week early, can get a shoutout as Employee of the Week, or even get access to a folder with every digital comic I’ve produced. There are THIRTY-ONE (31) comics in there right now, including the PDF versions of the print collections of Hell, Inc. that were funded on Kickstarter last year.

If you want to help Hell, Inc. get new readers, click on the banner below to vote for it on Top Webcomics! Votes early in the month are worth more as the standings reset. You can vote once a day!

Next Week: Harry imparts some vital knowledge. Does it finally answer Sara’s question? Find out early on Patreon.