Tag: comic

alexdecampi:

Hell’s Kitchen Movie Club #2: Silent Running

This was just supposed to be a dumb
strip about bad action movies, obscure band t-shirts, and the
peculiar rhythms of male friendship. Then as I wrote it, these two
assholes starting having emotional arcs and longer, interconnected
storylines about loss and PTSD, and *throws up hands* why can’t I
just make stupid things?

Then the Last Vegas shootings happened.
Dave and his wife did a lot of the graphic design for that concert;
they had many friends in the audience. And suddenly a lot of the
casual conversations in bars we’d been having about these
characters and their larger presence in the American cultural
landscape got very real.

Look, I’ll go to my grave swearing
that artists have a duty to be irresponsible. You try for
responsibility in art – giving the audience what they expect –
and you end up with Soviet Realism, or WPA murals. They’re pleasant
enough in their way, but they don’t really make you feel
anything, do they?

The act of
creation is, at heart, wildly irresponsible. So, sure. Be daring.
Tweak noses. Astonish and anger your audience. But remember there is
first a far more fundamental rule, the numero uno, the bedrock
law of existence in civilised society:

Don’t be evil.

And don’t enable the use of your
creations for evil by others.

This is true from your very first
story. It’s even more true when you are the brief caretaker of a
multi-million-dollar corporate character, especially one that
represents disenfranchised white male working-class rage, or a
yellow-haired man wrapped up in red, white and blue who represents
“America”, whatever that is.

Because make no mistake: evil is abroad
in this land. It visits itself daily in violence on innocent bodies
based on the color of their skin or the name they call God. And
nobody does anything. It visited itself on hundreds of innocent music
fans in Las Vegas. And nobody’s doing much of anything to stop it
happening again.

I’m not saying you have to do
anything. You don’t have to be a hero.

Just don’t be evil.

And if you’re lucky enough to write
heroes, don’t do it in a way which allows the hateful to use them
as symbols for evil.

If you want to do something, consider
giving a little money to the Las Vegas victims’ fund (Team Frank)
or Stop Soldier Suicide (Team Bucky). Or, y’know, maybe both.

Yours always (or at least until the
inevitable Cease & Desist),

Alex

PS love to my volunteer co-creators, @dave-acosta (line art) and @deecunniffe (colour art), please follow them. We’ll be releasing a colour version of HKMC #1 tomorrow.

alexdecampi:

HELLS KITCHEN MOVIE CLUB #6: BAD BOYS 2! Legit one of my favourite movies. Art by @felipesobreiro!

As always we are unable legally to make money off these strips, but please consider chucking a few dollars at the nice folks at Stop Soldier Suicide instead.

Also, I have a prose novel that’s crowdfunding at the moment and you like action and murder and cliffhangers and knights, hello, maybe you might like The Scottish Boy.

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

alexdecampi:

Reposting Hells Kitchen Movie Club #5 (Death Wish) in a bigger, more legible image size ahead of posting #6 in a few minutes! This episode features guest artist @meredithmcclaren, who did one of my fave stories in our Twisted Romance anthology (out now from @ImageComics.) 

If you love #hkmc or we’ve brought you joy, please consider donating $5 to your fave veterans charity. We dig Stop Soldier Suicide: 

https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/donate/

Don’t feel bad if you can’t donate, we do this comic for fun and will keep doing it, it’s just cool if it can do some good for the world at the same time.

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

alexdecampi:

Hell’s Kitchen Movie Club #2: Silent Running

This was just supposed to be a dumb
strip about bad action movies, obscure band t-shirts, and the
peculiar rhythms of male friendship. Then as I wrote it, these two
assholes starting having emotional arcs and longer, interconnected
storylines about loss and PTSD, and *throws up hands* why can’t I
just make stupid things?

Then the Last Vegas shootings happened.
Dave and his wife did a lot of the graphic design for that concert;
they had many friends in the audience. And suddenly a lot of the
casual conversations in bars we’d been having about these
characters and their larger presence in the American cultural
landscape got very real.

Look, I’ll go to my grave swearing
that artists have a duty to be irresponsible. You try for
responsibility in art – giving the audience what they expect –
and you end up with Soviet Realism, or WPA murals. They’re pleasant
enough in their way, but they don’t really make you feel
anything, do they?

The act of
creation is, at heart, wildly irresponsible. So, sure. Be daring.
Tweak noses. Astonish and anger your audience. But remember there is
first a far more fundamental rule, the numero uno, the bedrock
law of existence in civilised society:

Don’t be evil.

And don’t enable the use of your
creations for evil by others.

This is true from your very first
story. It’s even more true when you are the brief caretaker of a
multi-million-dollar corporate character, especially one that
represents disenfranchised white male working-class rage, or a
yellow-haired man wrapped up in red, white and blue who represents
“America”, whatever that is.

Because make no mistake: evil is abroad
in this land. It visits itself daily in violence on innocent bodies
based on the color of their skin or the name they call God. And
nobody does anything. It visited itself on hundreds of innocent music
fans in Las Vegas. And nobody’s doing much of anything to stop it
happening again.

I’m not saying you have to do
anything. You don’t have to be a hero.

Just don’t be evil.

And if you’re lucky enough to write
heroes, don’t do it in a way which allows the hateful to use them
as symbols for evil.

If you want to do something, consider
giving a little money to the Las Vegas victims’ fund (Team Frank)
or Stop Soldier Suicide (Team Bucky). Or, y’know, maybe both.

Yours always (or at least until the
inevitable Cease & Desist),

Alex

PS love to my volunteer co-creators, @dave-acosta (line art) and @deecunniffe (colour art), please follow them. 

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

alexdecampi:

Hells Kitchen Movie Club #1: Origin Story

Here’s a reissue of HKMC #1 with @deecunniffe‘s gorgeous colours! Line art by @dave-acosta. Follow them! You can go read HKMC #2 right here. We’ll be doing about one of these a month, our schedules permitting – I’ve got about a dozen episodes written. Dave summed the strip up best: “sometimes it’s funny; sometimes it’s sad. It’s about coping, and finding a pack.” 

(I mean, it’s also about my terrible taste in movies and gratuitous synthwave references, too.)

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

alexdecampi:

Hells Kitchen Movie Club #3: Hell Comes to Frogtown

A light one this time, because even though these two are ~not okay~, not every day is about the struggle. Sometimes it’s just about Roddy Piper, and losing stupid bets with your friends.

Previously in Hell: 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta

We’ll be throwing this up on my twitter tomorrow and my insta on Tues, but thought we’d sneak it out a day early to our tumblr family. As ever, huge thanks to my collaborators, line artist @dave-acosta and colour artist @deecunniffe, they are amazing, follow them.

Previously in Hell: cover image // 01 // 02 // 03 // Xmas // 04 // 05 // 06 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up // twitter // insta