As you’ve noticed already, I haven’t posted a Rent-A-Thug comic in about a month now (I don’t count the Christmas special). After drawing 305 pages/strips, which makes it the longest-running project I’ve ever worked on, I feel like I need a change. Effective immediately, Rent-A-Thug is going on an indefinite hiatus. I feel like I’ll probably go back to it at some point, but for now I need to go in another direction. Starting at some point in the next couple of weeks I’m going to be debuting a new comic, which will be conveniently located right here on this site.

“HEAT: The Space Age of Pro Wrestling” will be starting up soon. I’ve been watching wrestling with varying levels of interest since I was seven years old, and have been kicking around the idea for a wrestling comic for a few years now. I’ve been thinking about starting a new webcomic for a while now, but could never decide what I wanted to do. I came up with a few projects, but none of them really grabbed me and held my attention for more than a few pages. HEAT hooked me hard. I don’t think it hurt that, as far as Google is concerned, there are only about three wrestling webcomics out there (as opposed to tens of billions of “two gamers on a couch” and epic fantasy comics). As of this post, I’ve written the first 48 pages and am nearly finished drawing the first chapter, which works out to be somewhere around six weeks worth of comics, based on the schedule I’ve got in my head.

I’ll be updating you guys on the progress of HEAT’s start-up as things get done. Site-wise it’s not gonna be too much different than this one. I might try some stuff like putting some ad space in and prettying things up a little bit, but in terms of function it’s going to be pretty much the same. I’ve installed WordPress and ComicPress enough times that the basics should be up and running by the end of the week, but the fancy stuff will probably take longer (y’know, cool graphics for those stripey things down the side, a logo for the header, the ad space, that kinda thing). The comic itself will hopefully be up and running in about two weeks’ time.

I sincerely hope that you guys have enjoyed Rent-A-Thug as much as I enjoyed working on it. I also hope that you’ll jump on board with HEAT and make it an even more rewarding experience than Rent-A-Thug has been.

Merry Christmas, folks! With only five minutes to spare.

The printing is finished, and Hell, Inc. will be available for purchase on December 30th, 2009!

As part of Indie Comic Book Week, Happy Harbor Comics will be hosting a celebration of independent comics from December 30th, 2009 to January 5th, 2010. On December 30th, I’ll be at HHv1 doing a signing for Hell, Inc. and hanging out with other local creators (not sure who yet). On Saturday, January 2nd HH is hosting SketchFest, where you can donate items to the Food Bank in exchange for sketches from the attending artists. So come on down, pick up your copy of Hell, Inc., and support a good cause. And also my bank account, because it can use the help.

It’s pretty simple, but I like how it turned out. Especially considering that covers are not my strong point. At all.

In the last production diary I talked about how originally I wanted it to be a big reveal early on that Doug is a demon and works in hell, and how I realized that wasn’t going to work because I gave the whole thing away in the premise. This cover kind of fits with that, since there’s really no way to hide the fact that Doug is a demon and works in hell when he’s on the cover and the title of the book is Hell, Inc. I guess it could be done, but then nobody would buy the book.

This here’s a panel from page 2. It was used as part of a piece I wrote for the U of A Gateway about 24 Hour Comic Day. It was originally intended as a big reveal, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t much of a reveal, since I never really tried to hide the fact that the characters were demons. Actually, it’s the first thing I mention any time I describe the series to somebody. So it’s not so much of a reveal as a really intricate panel where a demon tries to brush his teeth and put on pants simultaneously. It involved me standing in front of a mirror holding one hand up like I was brushing my teeth and then pulling my pants on with the other hand to figure out what it would look like. I’m sure if anybody else was awake I would have looked like a complete jackass.

Edit: Hurray for functioning internet! My modem has been replaced and now I have internet for more than five minutes at a time.

So anyway, this is the first page of Hell, Inc. When I wrote this page I expected it would be really easy, and that I could knock it out in an hour (since that’s kind of the point of 24 Hour Comic Day). It only took an hour and a half, which is relatively fast considering I drew this book in a larger format than I usually work with. The fact that it took an hour and a half also pointed out that even with a completely pre-designed script and style alterations for speed, it was STILL too complex to fit down into an hour. I don’t think any of the 24 pages actually only took an hour (there were a fair number of hour-and-a-halfs, though). Over the weekend I managed to set a personal best of 4 pages in 2 days.

This page also taught me that I’m bad at minimalizing details. The original drawings of the characters weren’t very big (probably about two or three inches high and an inch across), so there wasn’t a lot of space for detail. When I tried to mimic that style on the pages, it really only worked in panels where the characters weren’t all that big. In larger panels the abundant negative space bugged me enough that I filled in more detail (like the skin creases, leg hair, muscle definition, etc.).

Hell, Inc. started as the project I intended to work on for 24 Hour Comic Day, but my immune system crapped out on me and I ended up with the flu instead. I tinkered with the art style for the project in an attempt to make it something that I could draw really quickly, but over the course of working on it I realized that there were a lot of pages that took WAY longer than I had anticipated. Another thing I didn’t anticipate was that there were A LOT of talking heads, and trying to keep that visually fresh is probably one of the toughest things in comic art. I remember showing my work to an editor at Dark Horse and one of her main comments was that I was using a lot of the same angles over and over again, and since then I’ve made a conscious effort to address that. I now have Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work sitting next to my drawing table in case I get stuck while looking for some variety.

The character designs also lost some of their cartooniness at some point during the art process. I’d been reading collections of old Spy Vs. Spy comics around the time I started designing the cast, and there was a lot of that kind of simplicity in them. B.L. Zebub is the only character who didn’t get much detail added to him, since he’s mostly a giant black blob. Doug got a lot more detail touches to him, like shirt wrinkles and and stuff.

Tomorrow I shall endeavour to post some art, which I haven’t gotten started scanning yet. I was going to do it tonight, but I forgot that I had a dodgeball game.

End of the arc! Oh bribery, you make everything better.

Weird aside: The title of this arc is a play on “Room With A View” which is the title of… something? I’m not even sure what it’s a reference to, to be honest, and I’m too tired to bother looking it up right now. Anyway, I just realized that “with a view” can also be used to refer to the mushroom hallucinations that Waller has for the majority of this arc. And by explaining that just now, I’ve ruined the joke and made myself seem like a dink. Woo!

In non-Rent-A-Thug news, Hell, Inc. page 11 is currently half-penciled. I’m hoping to be finished up to the end of page 15 by Thursday. Incidentally, since we’re at the end of a story arc here, I’m going to be taking next week off to get as much done on Hell, Inc. as possible to make sure that it’s ready in time for release in December (Indie Week, yo!).

This one was another really fast one. Which is good, because it leaves me more time to work on Hell, Inc. I’m currently penciling page 9. I’ll have to speed things up a little bit to get it done in time for Indie Week, but it seems doable. I think I may try busting out some of Wally Wood’s famous “22 Panels That Always Work”, since there are a lot of talking heads in it. And later, an epic battle with a copy machine.

I attended a Western Hockey League game for the first time on Sunday, which was super fun. The Edmonton Oil Kings hosted the Everett Silvertips in an afternoon game. The Kings dropped a 2-1 shootout decision, but it was fast-paced and fun to watch. At one point my friend an I started cheering in Russian accents for “the local sports franchise to manufacture goal-points for scoring board.” I’m not sure why. It was also nice to see a team giving 100% effort the entire game, unlike another oil-monikered hockey team who shall remain nameless. CoughOilersCough. They shit the bed so hard against the New York Islanders that it voided MY bowels.

Thanks for reading, see you Friday!