For you Non-Warhammer-40,000-philes who may not know, my favorite hobby is releasing a new set of rules for my favorite army in that hobby… Good thing Rossi’s into it as well, right?

yeah, ok, so it’s my own little conceit.

Enjoy the comic and we’ll see you Monday!

Yes, it’s certainly a small milestone, but it’s an important one, to be sure. We’ve officially made it through 100 comics and not a single missed update (ok, one little glitch, but we’re not counting that… it was a technical error).

Today’s comic is a tribute to one of HHFM’s big fans, Johnny Frandsen. Cartoonists can tend to live in a vacuum, not hearing too often from fans, or only hearing from people obligated to read your comic… you know… family and friends. He was the first person to send me a fan-mail, and I was shocked when I got it. Up until then, I didn’t have any true evidence that people actually read Hell Has Found Me. Chaos Kitty was his idea, and I’ve been kicking around ideas on how to bring him in. Johnny is also the creator of the HHFM Fan Club over on Facebook, and has been a constant reminder of how great fans can be. Every time I start to feel down about the comic, or really most things, I remind myself that there are fans out there, like Johnny, who do more than tolerate my sense of humor.

Thank you Johnny, and all the rest of you fans out there. Go sign up for the facebook group, say ‘hi!’ to Johnny, and then share it (and Hell Has Found Me) with your friends!

In other news, the 44th U.S. President has been selected. I’ve tried pretty hard to keep politics out of the comic and the news posts, because I know how alienating it can be when your favorite webcomic suddenly dives into political commentary. That said, if you’re not interested, go on and skip down, because I’m going to chat for a bit.

Barack Obama is an inspiring figure, and I’ve followed the race closely over the last 2 years, not long after Clinton, Obama and Edwards (among others) announced their candidacy. This year is the first time I’ve ever seriously considered volunteering for a campaign, however: I ultimately decided against it.

I come from Republican roots. My grandparents and parents come from the so-called “bible-belt”, the Mid-western United States. I believe I have a strong moral upbringing, initially based (I feel) in some of the best ideas of the Christian faith. I’ve also come to recognize that what I value in people no longer fully matches any established Religion. In the years that I grew up and began thinking for myself, I became more and more moderate. I recognize the madness and insanity of both the far right and the far left. My beliefs and values match with some of both sides of the aisle. What scares me the most about these election cycles are the crazy, insane things that are said, the bent truths and outright lies that each party seems to be willing to perpetrate against each other.

Ultimately, I voted for Obama, not because he was Democrat, or because his campaign seemed more honest, or because he seemed more stable, cool and collected than McCain. I didn’t vote for him because he seemed to have fewer insane political zealots rooting and working for him. These were contributing factors, I assure you, but not the only reasons. I voted for Obama because he spoke to what I value. He spoke of hope, with the firm conviction that with hard work, with calm dignity, with thoughtful planning and reasoned action, we can rise above where we have been. He seems to believe that if we help our neighbors out, if we’re willing to sacrifice a little time, a little effort for each other, we will ultimately help ourselves. That if we demonstrate that something can be done, we will inspire others to do it themselves. I share that conviction, and I feel that if more people share that vision, we will make the United States the place our parents and grandparents spoke about. We will make it the land of opportunity, of prosperity and of fairness that it should be.

I’m glad that Obama has won the presidency, and I look forward to working towards a better United States of America.

That said, I’ll go ahead and remind you all to VOTE! There’s a new PDQ which went up Monday.

Thanks to all,

Aleric

Ahh Silicon. At Silicon 2007 I was still trying to find my creative outlet. I was attending, half-heartedly trying to sell some (rather poor) prints and talking with more than a few people. It was my first Con as an exhibitor, and I must say that my expectations exceeded my reality… or really, my expectations of what I thought people would want or even be interested in had little bearing on reality.

This time around, I had an absolutely wonderful time, I visited with friends, drew some pictures and comics, chatted with con goers about everything from politics to art to other cons and more. I think the difference was not so much that the CON was different as much as I was different. Silicon will always be my anniversary or birthday con, and like your first sip of liquor or your first kiss, it’s something I will always remember with fondness.

That said, I HAD A FANTASTIC TIME. I chatted briefly with Larry Niven, at length with Peter Beagle, and I moderated a panel on creating fantasy worlds with Mr. Beagle, Christy Marx, Verna McKinnon, and Diana Paxson (these are their websites, you can find all of these author’s books on Amazon. The panel went swimmingly, and quite a bit of fantastic information was shared. I was also on the What’s New in Comics panel with Ric Bretschneider, Derek McCaw, and Brian Kolm. We talked about the trends in comics, webcomics, graphic novels, and movies.

I also spent some time chatting with my buddy Chris Garcia of Drink Tank and actually promised to do a cover for him (silly me), watched a fantastic singing performance by the lovely Chase Masterson (there’s music on the front page there), where she was singing pieces from the album Songs from the Holosuite.

Of interest to HHFM, we gave away over 120 Con-exclusive comics. If you’re a new reader, WELCOME

As always, don’t forget to VOTE for HHFM. New PDQ is available NOW!

I’ve been working diligently at rebuilding my buffer this week, since it shrunk from 2 months down to 2 weeks while I was sick and dealing with other issues. No worries though, I’m back to drawing more comics than I’m posting.

I’m blame the TV.

I mean really, couldn’t they spread out all the good shows so that there’s no more than 1 or 2 per week… all year long? Instead they’ve got to fight back and forth for viewers, put up tons of shows that I have no way of being able to watch them all, even if I had a TiVo, a quantum bubble time-freeze device and an anti-aging injection. THEN they throw in this whole election thing, with the ‘must-see’ debates, the financial melt-down with the ‘must-panic’ analyses, It’s just TOO MUCH.

That said, did any of you watch the Biden-Palin debate? As much as I’d like to see one of the candidates doused in gasoline and lit on fire, I’ll refrain from talking about it… everyone knows how preachy cartoonists can get when it comes to something they care about, and no one likes preachy people. Once again, however, I’ll point you all to Factcheck.org since it does a decent job of giving an unbiased view of both sides of the fence. Everyone lies, and politicians do it more.

Isn’t it sad that we seem to be looking for the candidate that lies less? Peggy Noonan hit the nail on the head the other day on The Daily Show. Scrub forward to 19:50 and just listen to her for a few moments (you may have to sit through a mandated commercial, sorry)

Ok, enough of that. I hope you all enjoy the weekend! Don’t forget I’m at SILICON giving away another Con-Exclusive comic for freee as well as hosting a panel with Peter Beagle!

And, as always, don’t forget to VOTE

A new week, and a new story arc!

Fun fact: Aleric feels really guilty that he didn’t get ANY comics done this past week… At least I had an excellent excuse… or at least, I’m told that being sick and feverish is an excellent excuse. Either way, I’ve got a lot to get done this week in preparation for Silicon. I won’t be there Friday, but I’ll show up all day Saturday and sunday.

Not too much else to bend your ear about today, just the same-old “remember to go VOTE! There’s a new PDQ up at Buzzcomix!” and… oh yeah… I just wanted to share my work method with you for a moment. Below, you see a scan of several pages, scribbled and crossed out… that’s all the drafts I went through for the current PDQ… Yes, that’s a total of 5 pages, 4 re-writes and a layout sketch.

With the PDQ challenge, I’ve been going through the list in order. This has caused me some trouble, as I’m not always really prepared to write about the next comic.

gentle reminder: COME SEE ME AT SILICON! (Because today, I’m drawing the Con-exclusive comic for it!)

See you there!

Aleric

Well, looks like James is all better, so my guess is that this is the end of the Standins series…

I wonder what’s next…

If you want some hints, go check out the Facebook group…

Expect a big post on Monday…

(Don’t forget to give an extra vote on Top Web Comics)

A little love for my Tyranid-playing friends out there…

Okay, so it’s Wednesday and I promised to share some of the really great things from the vacation.

First one is: I’ve got a bunch of photos that I took, and will be sharing them as soon as I can get them onto my computer and resized, color-corrected, etc.

Second one is: Coming to a con… near me… Hell Has Found Me has a banner!

This happy little image is on a physical banner that I’ll be dragging along to cons to say “HI! Over HERE!!”

You also may notice the “.com” part of the banner. Yes, HHFM will be changing websites (and very likely webhosts) very shortly. This allows us to bring additional features to the comic, and offers Ben the Webmonkey fewer headaches for the coding side of things.

Don’t worry, we’ll make it as painless as possible for you.

Anyway, I’m keep other projects under wraps for now, but rest assured, there are more very cool things coming!

Aleric

P.S. I’m not bothering to participate in this “beta” that buzzComix is going through, as I said before, it would have been nice if they actually bothered to have the beta test not on their main site, but that’s just me I guess. So, another week or so of not bothering with buzzComix. Top Web Comics is still accepting votes and, as promised, I fixed the PDQ issue, so there’s a happy new PDQ for you all to read there.