Incredible Doom #4 - Behind the Scenes

Just like we did with the Issue #5 Behind the Scenes Post, here’s a peek behind the curtain of the making iss ue #4, “EVOL HOUSE”.

Aside from a few notes here and there, this post is written entirely by Jesse Holden.

Naturally, if you’ve held off on reading either of these issues, you’ll find spoilers below!.

1. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We wrote and published Issue #4 during a pretty wild month. I was unemployed. Matt’s work situation was in flux. The public release of Issue #2 had garnered our first Oregonian write-up. We got sick. Our dogs got sick. We got into some serious conversations about (eventually) publishing the Series 1 collection. Our friend and printer of our covers looked like he was going out of business. Patreon changed their billing model and then changed it back. And we cut and assembled the Issue #4 feelies in the middle of the night in a one-bed AirBNB in Vancouver, BC, where we were debuting the printed issue at VanCAF.

Throughout all of it we have been so grateful for your continued support that made it possible to see it all through to the other side.

“And Now, The Conclusion”

It seems like madness now, but the story of Issues #4 and #5 was originally planned as a single issue. But Richard’s introduction to Evol House, Tina getting upset, her arrest, Richard’s crazy plan, tagging with Billy and crew, and Richard & Tina’s reunion would have been a lot for 30 pages.

MATT: We thought about jumping back to Sam and Allison between the first and second half of the "Tina gets arrested" story, but, for reasons that will soon become clear in issue #6, we decided to stay with Richard and Tina for two issues in a row.

The First Look “Inside” EVOL BBS

We already saw the splash screen and messaging interface for EVOL BBS in Issue #2, but this was the first screen I made showing what it looks like to use the board itself; specifically the main menu.

Richard’s beloved old BBS from his old hometown, “FreeBBS”, was running on an early version of PCBoard. However, Tina, being more of a rabble-rouser, runs EVOL BBS off her Amiga using PCBoard’s bastard offshoot, an (Amiga-only) BBS server software called AmiExpress (a.k.a. “ /X ”), favored in the early 1990’s by the warez community and other dwellers of the online underworld. It also supported ANSI, a text encoding popularly used for proto-pixel-art, as seen on the “skull” login page for EVOL BBS. If you’re feeling courageous, you can still telnet to a working AmiExpress BBS server at http://www.masturbationstationbbs.com

Unlike “FreeBBS”, Tina’s EVOL BBS has been tinkered with and augmented by a number of add-ons and customizations, notably an early build of “ZippySearch”.

Here’s the original “Suddenly I was obsessed with the EVOL BBS” panel without voice boxes atop it — Richard is taking a walk on the wild side by searching the entire directory structure of the BBS for the term “anarchy”. Perhaps he’s heard tell of an oft-rumored little text file known as the “Anarchist’s Cookbook”…?

Inserts and Additions

This page was inserted into the story at the end of the process. It, Matt mentioned previously,felt necessary to transition from Malabar to Evol House, and also gave us a chance to revive the kissing and stabbing beat that had been in many earlier versions of the script.

The page above was also a late insert, but similarly one of my favorites. It was included to draw a line between “Richard’s relationship with Tina” and “Richard’s relationship with Evol House generally.”

Callbacks and Easter Eggs

Readers might recall this panel in Issue #4, and have an idea why Gerbil is picking glass out of his shoe in the beginning of Issue #5

The police officer reaching for mace here is a callback to Issue #2.

Tina’s reading The Dark Tower Book #2

MATT:

At the end of the issue back at the bus stop, of course you’ve got Ryan Francis here from Issue #2 along with his girlfriend on the left, but you've also got lots of follow Pattern backers! Several of which sent me photos of what they looked like in high school to fit into this crowd!

There are brands of spray paint preferred by high-falutin’ self-styled graffiti artisans, but Tina’s punk aesthetic is “whatever you can steal from the hardware store”. Hycote used to have some classic can designs.

Speaking of graffiti, here are some unused alternate designs for EVOL crew tag.

And an unused alternate design for Tina’s tag — dig those 90’s style bubble letters!

The Disappointments

MATT: Back in the late 90s, an of mine from high school asked me to draw my first paid illustration gig. His name was Pete Kyrou and he was in a band called the GC5. They were releasing an EP and they wanted me to draw the cover. I was flattered, and I still am. They gave the the concept and I did my best to "draw it like a dollar bill, with lots and lots of lines."

When it came time to design the cover for the cassette that Tinas friends had put out, it dawned on me that I'd already done an assignment like this before. I contacted Pete on twitter and he said it was cool to use that original artwork here. Here's the original GC5 album.

If you got a physical copy of issue 4, you'll notice that the "feelie" for that issue is the cassette tape insert for the fake album from the comic. Inside there are various song names that are references to other things.

"Lord of the Flies" by Krolikowksi was a track from my college band.

"Priest on a Motorcycle", and "PBS" are GC5 songs I still sing to this day.

"Superhorse" and Kozel are references to Keith Kozel and his band Superhorse. Keith was a big help in the creation of my comic Satellite Beach, about a drummer who falls in love with the bass player in a band.

"In A World They Never Made" was a terrible zine I made in the late 90s.

And "As the World Dies the Eyes of God Grow Bigger" is a crazy 7 minute song by Sebadoh that devolves into anarchy my friends and I were fans of in the 90s. I just love the idea of someone trying to cover that madness.

I picked the name of the band out of a list that Jesse gave me. Here were his other suggestions:

• “Lost cause”
• “Bottomfeeder”
• “Rotten thoughts”
• “Gutpunch”
• “Proletariat”
• “The Churn”
• “Slugfest”
• “Fracas”
• “Krill”
• “Blindlight”
• “Uninitiated”
• “Shut It Down”
• “Second in Command”
• “Deserter”
• “March to Nowhere”
• “Last Light”
• “Underdog Days”
• “Spiked Bat”
• “Witch Tits”
• “Culture Clash”
• “100 Coffins”
• “Pushback”

Covers

MATT: I tried two different versions of the cover before I settled on the final design. I liked these two, but they didn't fit in with the other covers in the series. It took a bit before I realized it was because all of the items on the previous covers have very little perspective. They are all shot straight on.

Tina

MATT: When I started thinking about setting a comic in the early days of the internet, I was worried that my experiences from that time would make for a trite story.

So I started interviewing folks with different backgrounds and was flooded with inspiration! Punk kids, guppy experts, trans forums, coming out, running away, just TONS of stories I so badly wanted to tell.

So we tried to come up with charters that would allow us to explore as many of the stories as possible, and Tina being queer was part of that.

The trouble is, when it came time for Tina to discuss her sexuality, my initial interviews proved not to be enough.

We were walking a bit of a tightrope. We knew Tina wasn't straight. We knew we wanted Richard to say something to put his foot in his mouth and endanger their friendship. But we also wanted both Richard and Tina to remain sympathetic.

We knew from experience what being a straight white male dope in the 90s who doesn't know how to talk about sexuality was like, but I needed folks to help me understand what would be going thru Tinas head.

So, I put out a call to anyone, asking for folks who may have had different perspectives to get in touch

Wow was it great! So many helpful people read what we had planned, and discussed what it was like for them being queer in the 90s. Coming out to your friends, d others going through the same thing through this new magical thing called the internet. My god, they Tina, and the whole seriesso much better.

It was fantastic.

I'm extremely grateful for everyones time, and insight. Those conversations informed story beats that are stillmonths away.

I don't consider the matter settled by any means. If anyone ever has any thoughts on the subject, the more I understand the better the series will be. Please send me a message.

There will be more fun comics for you to read soon!

Thanks again for reading. Back to the drawing!