Doorstep Darkened

If you are confused by the incident Joel is referring to in panel 3, feast your head-orbs over yonder. Despite that comic being Pre-Continuity (PC) in the HEniverse, let’s just go ahead and assume it happened in a little pocket universe of canon. Hows about a little Evil Fox Executive primer? Whether the events in these comics end up sticking in the Post-Continuity (PC… wait, fuck) HEniverse remains to be seen.

The EFE has his own reasons for hating sci-fi. He is able to cancel far more than just TV shows. He occasionally consults with coworkers on corporate strategies. He has an uncommon appetite. He has a shared history with Joss Whedon (which directly contradicts his previous origin story AND the one in this blog post). He’s a bit of a Grinch, and his secretary has to deal with a lot of bullshit.

Major thanks to all of you Fancy Bastards that have started donation subscriptions since I added the new $2, $3 and $4 monthly levels. There is a now a premium RSS feed just for subscribers that has the full comic in the feed.

I am have a lot of fun expanding the comic from single gags to a tiny world. I am finding myself thinking 3 and 4 and 10 strips ahead, something that was never possible with HijiNKS Ensue before. It’s still very early into this new experiment, but I like how things are going and I’m quite enthusiastic about what’s to come. I hope you are digging it as well. So this is what world-building feels like, huh? Weird.

HEY! I started a Facebook group for Fancy Bastards to share ideas, get support and be a community of geeks and weirdos. Godspeed, You Fancy Bastards!

PHOENIX COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! 

HijiNKS ENSUE At Phoenix Comicon

I will be at booth 707/806 with Blind Ferret.
More info HERE.

COMMENTERS: Has an enemy or at least someone who was a total jerk to you ever turned to you for a favor? What did you do? I used to work (at a real job) with this unbelievable shrew of a cunt. She hated my insides so hard with her eyes that they eventually caught fire and I died coughing up smoke and burning guts. It was quite an ordeal. Then she needed me to fix her computer. I thought this a good opportunity to decrease my workplace misery so I obliged. The entire time I was at her place she talked on the phone like I wasn’t there. The next day she went right back to treating me like garbage. The moral? DESTROY YOUR ENEMIES! NO MERCY! NO WEAKNESS! NO FIXING OF THEIR DELL DESKTOPS!

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56 Comments

  1. AAARRRGH! you mentioned MTS. You CANNOT mention that bilious monstrosity ever again. It was so bad I almost wanted to rip my eyeballs out so I would not have to endure the misery any more. That is the only time in my life that a friend has ever apologised for persuading me to see a film against my better judgement.

    • Meet The Spartans is one of those things I know all decent people hate and that I should hate it as well. But just like hobo fighting and kitten catapulting it is a guilty pleasure.

      • I honestly enjoyed meet the spartans… Though admittedly I did put it into the DVD player for the sole purpose of reveling in just how far Kevin Sorbo's career had fallen.

  2. Killlll him Joel, killll him with fire!!!! Plunge you fist into his heart, rip it out, and yell 'CRITICAL HIT!'
    The geeks have demanded it so!
    By which I mean me. And probably Wil Wheaton, because he IS the geek, but I also don't want to speak for him.

  3. This is all a ruse, by feigning a moment of vulnerability, the Evil Fox Executive hopes to appeal to your humanity. But be forewarned, any feelings or acts of empathy, whether it stems from compassion, kindness, or even pity and disdain, is a conduit with which the Evil Fox Executive may use to expand its power.

    The Evil Fox Executive's dark influence can worm through even the most infinitesimal of connections that it makes with you, slithering into the deepest recesses of your mind and festering in your unconscious. It will be a toxic blight upon all your thoughts and your desires, forever corrupting your hopes, your dreams, and all that you can ever imagine or conceive.

  4. I prefer the old look of the Fox Executive, he now appears to be a devilish version of Joel…or is that on purpose? Is he your dark shadow? The Anti-Joel?

      • Ah, but emo bangs are the new goatee for indicating evil. So I'm not sure what cartoony flip-up bangs and goatee+5 o'clock shadow are supposed to represent. Maybe former evil that used to be evil but is now so worthless and miserable that it can't even muster up a decent evil? Like the kind of used-to-be-evil that's standing on a metaphorical cliff thinking about jumping, and if you just gave it a little nudge it would fall right off without even the satisfaction of having actually chosen its own fate? OMG, Joel! Don't invite it in, just give it a bag of razor blades, Valium and booze!

    • You're the first person to ever catch that.

      I'm not 100% sure on his character model yet. Still playing around with things.

    • I suspect the EFE is trying to look more and more like Joel with the plan to eventually kill (or just lock him in the basement) and replace him.

  5. I've not commented before, and rarely do on any of the comics in my RSS reader, but just thought I'd say I'm liking the addition of the continuity. I'm also impressed with how well you seem to have handled critics… nice job 🙂

  6. Ah, so the EFE is a vampire? That explains a lot. He's probably been trampling on the hopes and dreams of geeks for decades, if not centuries. Irwin Allen, Nikola Tesla, Galileo, Archimedes – they've all stared into those dark, dead eyes and shuddered as he's said, "Just a quick word about your work …"

    Or he's just a real stickler for ceremony.

      • i'm actually surprised that the EFE doesn't want to go live under a bridge somewhere feasting on the souls of innocent……well innocent anything really

      • wait no, is he some sort of real world FALMER

        IOW a thing that was once innocent and wholesome(ish) and has now become twisted and vile by years of dwelling in the darkness (in this case corporate television)

  7. I love the continuity. Also call-backs for me always feel like the writer is saying "thank you for watching. Here's a nugget for you!" Aaaaand I can't believe I've been reading (and apparently retaining) long enough to get the reference without help. 🙂

  8. I gotta say, I'm already really enjoying the start of the story arcs. Keep up the good work, sir!

  9. "I'm also impressed with how well you seem to have handled critics… nice job :)"

    I appreciate that, but you have NO IDEA how NOT well i've handled some of the criticism. I opened the flood gates, so it's my own fault.

  10. I actually quite enjoyed Meet The Spartans! Especially the little quip "I'm gonna go Hercules on your ass!" from Mr. Sorbo. I don't know why you would hate it so… Oh Wait. That's right. I'm a teenager and you despise us evil creatures. And if the Enemy of you enemy is your friend…
    Damn it Joel! By some twist of Cosmic law you make me like bad movies!!!! Now the EFE would probably end of being my BFF. He'd be the EFEBFF

  11. I had a girl during culinary school who talked shit about me and then would repeatedly send me friend requests on Facebook. And when I say repeatedly, she'd send them to me, I'd ignore her, she'd send them again and I'd be nice enough to at least say yes and put the privacy up. THEN apparently she'd unfriend me and try to refriend me a couple months later. By that time, I was just done.

  12. When I was 16 my mum ran away with my best friends father and then they eventually moved into a house across the street from my dad (I had issues growing up!). I never liked the guy she ran off with, but when he simultaneously broke up both my parents, and ditched my best friend like he was a used prophylactic he became one of my least favourite people ever.
    Eventually he turned into an abusive drunk who regularly got arrested by the cops for drunk and disorderly behavour. Meanwhile I turned into a defence lawyer who looks after people who get arrested (can you see where this is going?) For years I would get late night phone calls from my mum calling me up in tears saying he'd been arrested and asking me to help him; I would then bite my tongue, swallow the things I wanted to say and go help him – even though what I really wanted to do was leave him to rot.
    At the begining of May I found out that he'd tried to strangle my mum, and that this was the fourth time he'd taken his hands to her. He was arrested, and my mum was asking me to talk to the police – not to get him out, but to make sure he didn't come back. I finally got to use my skills against him, ensuring that everything was in place to make an air tight case against him and getting a restraining order in place to protect my mum.
    I guess what I take from all this is that justice comes to everyone, eventually – you just have to be patient.

    • What a horrifying story, I can't imagine dealing with such a monster. Hope he stays far away, and eventually rots in jail.

  13. Frighteningly related… a Real-Life FOX Executive disappeared three weeks ago and now a local (to me, I'm 200 miles up the coast from L.A. in San Luis Obispo County) website reports that he was seen at a Morro Bay restaurant. http://calcoastnews.com/2012/05/missing-fox-execu
    You may want to use this for future reference as to what Real FOX Executives look like… blonde, surferish-ly tan, vacant stare… if he were female, he'd be an anchor on FoxNews.

  14. I'm very excited for the HEniverse. I suppose this will make the EFE sorta like Spike. Just please don't fornicate with him in an abandoned building. I don't think I could handle that.

    Also I recently worked with a girl (is there a trend here?) who would constantly call me and say she couldn't come in to work (to be fair, she didn't have a car and was relying on her neighbors for rides) and then if I said no she would call the management and tell them I said yes. Then I'd get a call from management to confirm and I wasn't left with a choice because either way she wasn't showing up and they were gonna call me in anyway. I reported it several times but nothing could be done. She just got transferred out but we still get calls from her bill collectors. At work. At closing time.

  15. Y'know, I don't feel like any of those backstories are necessarily contradictory.

    First, obviously came the devastating interplanetary war, in which the EFE and Joss Whedon were exchanged. The future EFE was eventually rescued from the Terror Orphanage by an overly-friendly astronaut who liked giving small children Moon Wine as a reward for keeping Super Space Secrets, and he started working for Fox not long after arriving on Earth with all his deep emotional scarring.

    I like to think he started really young. Seems like child labor law violations wouldn't be above the network whose executives must have hate-filled pineapples installed in place of their hearts, and I kinda love the image of a young, goateed EFE shoveling adorable kittens and pitches for brilliant Sci-Fi shows into the Engine of Evil.

  16. One of my school 'mates' spiked a drink and then threatened to kill me while I was unconscious. A year later I was in Oxford St with my sister & she stopped me in the street like we were friends. Blank stare, keep walking. Last month she sent me a friend request on Facebook. Ignore.

    (In the meantime, she became a crack addict & got deported to Australia, so at least I'll never have to see her again!)

    • Are we still deporting criminals to Australia? It never fails to amaze me how people send friend requests on Facebook despite the fact that it's fairly obvious you don't have any desire to connect with them. I've had people from school send requests that I had actually forgot existed until that moment. If I managed to live the last 10 years without knowing that they now live in Wigan and have three alsatians, why do they think I need to know it now?

      • It's where her mum was from, and I think her mum had returned there, so when she did whatever crime I guess they just sent her back.

  17. DON'T LET HIM IN! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get rid of a Fox infestation?! You have to replace ALL your carpets and insulation. And burn the house to the ground.

  18. I have been truly enjoying HE and have "just one more"'d myself into the wee hours of the morning more than once. Keep up the great work, Joel and best of luck to you in this new Experiment. I'll be here reading along and coming back for more.

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