Making the Comics - A Peek Into Super Cute

Even though we don't talk about it too often, David and I continue to operate Hideous Energy exactly as it was operated the day it began. Our love of comics has never waned, and we are the right kind of obsessive to ensure that it won't. It was only natural that after so long of loving something so completely we would decide to create our own, an object of adoration that would be born from and exist within the ruby-tinted love we huddle around every week when we record the Hideous Energy podcast.

What all of that means is we started a webcomic called Super Cute. There's some information on that site under the "About" tab which touches on this briefly, and gives a little insight into how things came about. The even shorter version is that we found Brent Hibbard, our artist, and things seriously fell into line pretty easily after that. I've been struggling with getting comics made for some time now. I only write them (although right now I'm working on "drawing" one too), so no matter how much time I've put into a project, seeing it come to fruition has always relied on someone else. Super Cute is officially the first comic I've been involved in making, because it's the first that has not only been started, but completed. Which means I've had a lot of starts and stops over the years. Something happened with this one though, something different. Once Hibbard sent us his art, and David and I both saw he was awesome, he started working to become the artist of this project and he never stopped. His commitment was never in doubt because it was on display in every image he sent us. It is sort of laughable how much everything worked exactly like it should in the run-up to this webcomic being published, once we found our artist.

The first official strip is up on the website. Here's the strip that was originally going to be published first, strip #000. It didn't rehash any information we'd already published through the "Characters" tab on the site, but it did give readers another week to wait until the actual stories about these two characters (Bronson and Leonard) began. So we don't feel like we asked Brent to draw something only to file it in a drawer, here is the finished strip, entitled "#000 - Diagnostics," along with a breakdown of the process on the road to a completed strip. Thanks to Brent for being dedicated and awesome! Go check out the webcomic.