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Hard Underbelly is a story about vampires, humans,
and various things in between. Other than that, I'll let the plot
speak for itself. Also, like most of my work, Hard Underbelly is a
finite story, and not an ongoing series like, say, Superman. Hard
Underbelly is not exactly a gag-a-day comic, but more of a plot and character
driven story. That is not to say that there won't be humor in it.
Some strips will have a punch line of some kind or another, but it's
not really that kind of comic. More specific character information can be found on the Character Pages. Also, Hard Underbelly is intended for mature readers. And by mature I mean mature, not over 18. I've always been a firm believer in the concept that maturity is not always a function of age. So I leave it up to the reader to decide if they are mature enough. Just remember, there will be adult language, violence, sex and sexuality, and nudity. So if you don't like something you see, don't say I didn't warn you. Because I did. I also feel the need to mention that it's not an erotic comic, but that sex plays a part in it, just like real life. Hard Underbelly is no more an erotic comic than American Beauty is a porno. There are also a few conventions to talk about. Hard Underbelly is produced at a standard size in black and white, with occasional color for effect. The comics will be put up three times a week on, roughly, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I say roughly because I haven't got complete control of this auto-updating thing, so if I don't get it in until 12:01 on Wednesday morning, it will show up on Thursday. But things like that shouldn't interrupt the rest of the schedule, so a new comic should then appear on Friday. Hmm. here's some other info: I draw the comics by hand with pencil, then ink them, then scan them, then clean them up, then add text. The computer stuff is done on an iMac with Adobe Photoshop 7, everyone's favorite graphics tool. The font for dialogue in Hard Underbelly is Digital Strip by Blambot Fonts, maker of some of the coolest comic book fonts out there. The web pages themselves are based on the template provided by Keenspace, with a little jiggery-poking done in Netscape's web page composer. I do not use Netscape because I don't know html, which I actually do, I just use Netscape becasue I am a lazy fucker. Hard Underbelly is produced on a computer with a 1024 x 768 resolution, so I guess that's what it's best viewed at. The background is black and the text is white, not because I hate you and want your eyes to bleed, but because this is a comic about creatures of the night, so black seemed like a logical color choice. This intro to Hard Underbelly is clearly not being written in any rational order. I've also noticed that my choice of where the paragraphs begin and end is particularly careless. What else? If you read Hard Underbelly with any regularity and you have a web page, I would be eternally greatful to those of you who decide to link to me. Every new person who visits my site takes me closer and closer to making money off of this, which would be just great, seeing as I, like most web cartoonists, am starving to death. While we're on that subject, please, if you like Hard Underbelly, and have friends that are into the whole web comic thing, please turn them onto my site. Many thanks. A little info about me: My name is Tristan Davis. I live near Seattle, Washington. I've been writing comics since before I was old enough to realize my writing and drawing aren't any good. My first regular comic strip was called Mr. Stick-Man, and was the graphic depiction of a stick-man being crushed by anvils and falling off of cliffs. My friends in the fifth grade liked it. After that I stopped writing comics in any form until high school. Now I've got a regular comic strip in a small independent newspaper on Vashon Island. It's called Not All There, and it comes out twice a month in the Vashon-Maury Ticket. I've been doing that since 1999. In my spare time I come up with numerous comic book ideas, so when Hard Underbelly comes to a conclusion, I'll just fire up a new story idea with different characters and start from there. Okay, I guess that's all I need to say right now. Should people start asking me questions, a FAQ will be added here. |