On Thursday, June 25th, 2009, the very first Super Haters strip debuted on the AudioShocker!
Super Haters was born out of a combination of two different stories I wanted to tell in early 2009. The first was a romantic sequel to my tasteless Spider-Man and Captain America parody comics I posted on the AudioShocker. I was going to use stills of Rogue and Gambit from X-Men: The Animated Series and add irreverent dialogue to them. The second story was an original creation called Supervillainy* and it featured three loser supervillains living in the same apartment.
But as I prepared to go into production on both of those comics, I hit a snag. First off, I didn't want to put all my hard work into a comic utilizing recycled images that I had no legal right** to use in the first place. Second, I wanted to spend my time focusing on writing jokes, not on drawing. Basically, I wanted to recycle the character art... but I wanted it to be my recycled art.
Everything gelled on the weekend of the Pittsburgh Podcast Crossover*** when my friend Neal came to town. I told him the name for my new comic idea -- Super Haters -- and he dug it. While we were walking around Pittsburgh, we came up with the Super Haters theme song and performed it on the PGH Podcast Crossover. And thus the Haters were born. (Of course, there's A LOT more to it than that... but I'll keep it to this for today.)
As you well know by now, I've been using the same drawings of Destruct-O-Tron and Mind's Eye from the beginning. But I also drew solo shots of the main characters and intended to use them almost every week!
Look, let's be honest -- those front-facing drawings are pretty grotesque. In fact, I've even edited them out of the revised version of Super Haters #1 here on the blog. And they only time they ever appeared was in the debut of the Super Haters exactly two years ago today!!!
*After years of stops and starts, Supervillainy is finally in production! Of course, anything can happen and there's a chance that it could still fall apart... but hopefully I'll be back in a few months sharing a link to the very first Supervillainy story! Granted, it might go through a name change before its debut, but the core concept I described above remains the same.
**Speaking of which, over in the comments on the latest A Podcast with Ross and Nick, we're discussing issues related to fan art and fan fic, and I think that a lot of my opinions on the topic can be traced directly to my decision to scuttle the Rogue and Gambit romance comic and create Super Haters instead.
***Coincidentally, next week will see the second crossover between the AudioShocker and the Yamagato Industries Business Report. Make sure to give it a listen! Also, check out the kickass Yamagato webcomic, created by the hosts of the podcast and their listeners.
Super Haters was born out of a combination of two different stories I wanted to tell in early 2009. The first was a romantic sequel to my tasteless Spider-Man and Captain America parody comics I posted on the AudioShocker. I was going to use stills of Rogue and Gambit from X-Men: The Animated Series and add irreverent dialogue to them. The second story was an original creation called Supervillainy* and it featured three loser supervillains living in the same apartment.
But as I prepared to go into production on both of those comics, I hit a snag. First off, I didn't want to put all my hard work into a comic utilizing recycled images that I had no legal right** to use in the first place. Second, I wanted to spend my time focusing on writing jokes, not on drawing. Basically, I wanted to recycle the character art... but I wanted it to be my recycled art.
Everything gelled on the weekend of the Pittsburgh Podcast Crossover*** when my friend Neal came to town. I told him the name for my new comic idea -- Super Haters -- and he dug it. While we were walking around Pittsburgh, we came up with the Super Haters theme song and performed it on the PGH Podcast Crossover. And thus the Haters were born. (Of course, there's A LOT more to it than that... but I'll keep it to this for today.)
As you well know by now, I've been using the same drawings of Destruct-O-Tron and Mind's Eye from the beginning. But I also drew solo shots of the main characters and intended to use them almost every week!
Look, let's be honest -- those front-facing drawings are pretty grotesque. In fact, I've even edited them out of the revised version of Super Haters #1 here on the blog. And they only time they ever appeared was in the debut of the Super Haters exactly two years ago today!!!
*After years of stops and starts, Supervillainy is finally in production! Of course, anything can happen and there's a chance that it could still fall apart... but hopefully I'll be back in a few months sharing a link to the very first Supervillainy story! Granted, it might go through a name change before its debut, but the core concept I described above remains the same.
**Speaking of which, over in the comments on the latest A Podcast with Ross and Nick, we're discussing issues related to fan art and fan fic, and I think that a lot of my opinions on the topic can be traced directly to my decision to scuttle the Rogue and Gambit romance comic and create Super Haters instead.
***Coincidentally, next week will see the second crossover between the AudioShocker and the Yamagato Industries Business Report. Make sure to give it a listen! Also, check out the kickass Yamagato webcomic, created by the hosts of the podcast and their listeners.
those front shots are great!!! love the D-Tron one especially, his eyes are awesome.
i wonder if that Rogue/Gambit comic could've fallen under fair use. that would've been pretty hilarious if just because the animated X-Men screen caps are always funny.
I had four or five screen caps that I found on Google image search, and I was all ready to use them. I did font tests and everything. Like the original Haters art up above, the caps I had were one of Gambit, one of Rogue, and then a few different ones of them together in profile (I think I had one of them kissing).
I thought about making Super Haters a romance... in fact, I wanted it to be a supervillain romance at first. But I didn't want to draw them kissing, so I ditched the romance.
I also Googled some screen caps from the Iron Man show because I thought about trying an Iron Man/War Machine parody strip too. The lettering style I chose for Super Haters came directly out of my lettering tests I did with those pics. War Machine had grey balloons like Destruct-O-Tron did in the beginning, and Iron Man was tough because red looked wrong but yellow was too light.