Hmm, makes me wonder what’s in store for me when I get there. Probably an ipod grafted to my ears playing nothing but U2 while being forced to watch “Glitter” on a continuous loop. WR’s version would undoubtedly be similar, substituting Nickelback and the complete movie catalogues of Michael Bay and McG. See you there!
Im impressed how well you can draw a person from head to toe and have them look well proportioned. Phil Specter’s Hell or California State Prison? Pope Bones vs how does hell earn money?
Some weeks ago, when I first saw your strips in cracked, I was taken by the link to your site, where I was struck by the Hewlittesque character renderings that remain so close to my heart as to be somewhat stuck since the 80s. I say this only because the human brain has a tendency, nay *need* to find patterns in order to (as I understand it or make it up) make neurosynaptic links and thus not freak-the-fuck-out by encountering something new and iconoclastically impressive.
To thereafter spend a good many hours wolfing your archive, wishing I had it on paper in a big-big book that I could lay on my belly with drinks and snacks in the sun and get lost in your art, counts as a [hang on, I don’t speak like this in real life, why write so hmm?] fucking excellent way to go on.
I don’t have an in-depth on framing or characterisation or colour to offer, past a compliment that it’s just entirely delicious to see someone Write as well as they Art. And that it’s wonderfully sating to see a passion well broadcast.
Your textwalls are glorious. I’ve recently done some retrospective commenttrawling which makes me wonder how you cope with:
1) Setting such a mountainous standard that any perceived dip is seized upon by ardent long-term fans to a point where their comments may be perceived as glitchpicking nonsensicalities by a newcomer such as myself.
2) The awe that you surely inspire in your daily life.
—
I guess, just thanks for taking the time to do what you do. A side note though: I do value the work that PennyArcade’s writer does for words. I’ve often wondered how many people have a dictionary at hand to follow the lexical tutelage he demands through his posts. Were there a mantra that both you and he share, I’d say that you both ‘make words work.’ But you marry it visually, which is a rare fucking skill.
Aaand cracked’s often funny. Oooh:
3) The sesquipedelian tendency for verbiage from wordfreaks bent on outwalling you without realising too late that the only person likely to read their overlong comments is the person writing it.
Great strip. Only please stop drawing such h-o-t HOT demons, or I might well deliberately damn myself in the belief that I’d get some eye-candy in the afterlife.
That is, I would if I actually believed there was a hell, or heaven as an alternative, and such.
Yeah, saying the past and current leaders of my religion are in hell, that’s not offensive at all. You know, I liked this comic initially because it was unique, but this is the last time I’ll be visiting. You’d do better to increase your readership if you weren’t so condescending.
peace.
Hey I recognized some of those guitars. Or I think I do, anyway. An Albert Lee sig and something with Jackson shark fins (on every fret?) Nice comic, great art, I like those two from Hell.
And Jess, lighten up. People have opinions. I thought Christianity was about tolerance? People seem to be very selective when it comes to applying that concept, it seems.
GerryB: Hey, thanks! I should mention, though, that I definitely have yet to inspire awe in my daily life, to say the least.
Michael Ezra: Well, exactly.
Jess: Sorry to lose you. I wish you wouldn’t feel unwelcome just because we disagree about something, because i certainly would prefer that people of opposing viewpoints stuck around. It’s too bad that you feel you have to leave.
And I’m sorry, but when someone with the ear of millions says that condoms help spread the AIDS virus (now THAT’S offensive) then, hey, he deserves at the very least to be harmlessly lampooned in an overly-verbose webcomic that 0.000000000000000000000000000000000003% of the world’s population reads (don’t quote me on that figure, it might be lower).
So sexy demon girl pops by a fringe or counter couture guy and lets slip that conservatives who sin ( by the lefts definition of sin ) end up in hell … “but don’t tell anyone” … it kinda makes be wonder what she is letting slip while she is doing business with the establishment.
Didn’t micro$oft use the same trick? Since everybody who leased M$ ‘s OS had to sign a non-discloser agreement none of them could compare prices paid for the OS and no one knew if they where getting a good deal or not.
If we are going to send a bunch of popes to hell ( and justly so i might add! ) who else will be there as well? most of the people i know ( and i include myself ) no better than the last 2 popes!
Meh, I don’t think popes belong in hell (again, assuming there were such a place) just for opposing birth control. Better (worse?) candidates would be those pontiffs like the Borgias and others one reads about in The Books of Lists and such. You know, the ones that violated young virgins and committed murder and such. Merely holding opinions, though, everyone has the right to do that, and that goes equally for Benedict XVI and Winston Rowntree.
4) The fact that the fame from which you seem to be hiding seems so purposefully elusive. Get me right, I’m avid; in 1986 I was party to the following, being
A conversation between a pink-garbed gaptoothly beguiling selfdelusionary girlteen and
A shy boyteen telling the story of his having a fully upper-arm-covering tattoo of an inkline anchor,
the consequence of which was teengirl pink spouting this:
“Oh John don’t ever change!”
None of which comes to relevance I realise. Some thing about pink as a hobby and ink as devotion maybe. But when you get famous, can you at least denigrate us vomitously?
KthanksBye: (I won’t do the wordsplurge from now, thanks for the patience)
I mean “why aren’t you famous because your stuff so good and I don’t want to help because when I saw The Smiths in Belfast and spread it, suddenly I’m not the only one with a bunch of sphinxes hanging out my pocket and an NHS smile.”
Mr Rowntree, your mindgravies need to be on T-shirts.
You want a list of some heaven and hellbound popes, here it is. I just so happen to have complete access to the knowledge of who’s in heaven and hell. The List is incomplete because there have been a shit ton of popes throughout history.
Popes in Heaven
John XXIII and Paul VI for the Vatican II.
John Paul II, for being so charming and forgiving the guy who shot him, as well as clearly defining what being pro life is.
Benedict XV, for working for peace in WWI.
Pius XI, for making the Vatican City a sovereign state.
Popes in Hell
Urban II for the crusades, spends the rest of his days having limbs removed and re-graphed while Saddam Hussein is forced to lick his ass.
Urban VIII for trying Galileo, thrown into the center of a sewer system head first.
Pope presumably hellbound
Benedict XVI, for that fucking cardinal, and condom policy.
Jess: no one asked you not to be offended, but you might find life to be a lot more fun if you would just let these things go, and choose not to be offended. After all, we all have a right to our opinions.
Not that you’re going to read this anyway.
Winston: that figure is definitely way too low. Love your comix! (Oh, and this one. I liked this one too. But that’s opinion. And I have a right to them.)
Since no one but me has commented on the demon’s resemblance to another character, here’s a link. Fair warning, it dumps you in the middle of the story, though it’s a low-spoiler page.
Tell me your traffic, and I will tell you the percent of the world’s population that reads your comic! It can’t be more than 23.8%, because that’s all of the people with internet access.
I’d like to see proof. And as much as I don’t like guys who hurt women, that’s not reason enough. A better punishment would be to kick their ass so they see what it feels like.
Great stuff:
1- the nipple-nob t-shirt.
2- Hot devil woman. I agree with 98% of the other randy smeggers here. Stop drawing them so sexy! Or at least, draw me some pin-ups!
3- Thatcher milky torture!!!
Notsogreat stuff:
1- stripping down to the bones? Not terrible enough a torture for Nazinger. Besides it just reminds me of that Robbie Williams music video.
2- more screen time for Eddie! LOAD POD! LOAD POD!!!!
What strikes me about your hell comics is how much fun it would be to work in hell. Such astonishingly creative punishments, and even carrying them out and setting up could be quite fun. Putting together an ass raping machine and putting it on rails would be a blast. plus, you’re punishing people who deserve it, so some major job satisfaction. That just might be my dream job, to work in hell. I wonder if I’d be allowed to live in heaven and work in hell. That might be heaven for me.
You make great comics, but you’re horrible at math. If that were the percentage of people who read your comic, you would have less than a big toe as your audience.
I don’t get what is the problem with Sean Connery… You have to have a good reason for him to be in hell, if he is a bad actor (I haven’t seen that much films of him) that’s not a good reason.
You know, Pius XII never excommunicated dissenters (nor communists, for that matter, although they clearly deserved it; you dropped the ball there, Pius), and contrary to popular belief, he was an outspoken critic of Nazism even when other leaders in the free world were reluctant to condemn it. He saved more Jews than any other single person, to the extent that Albert f***ing Einstein commended him. Just so you know…
I’m annoyed that I’m only exploring your stuff now, ten+ years after you created it. Your art is amazing, and the content is so on point. Hope your life is good.
Virus Comix News 
April 28, 2009 at 1:12 am
Haha, I love the t-shirt!
April 28, 2009 at 1:48 am
That’s one foxy green devil!
April 28, 2009 at 3:00 am
Hmm, makes me wonder what’s in store for me when I get there. Probably an ipod grafted to my ears playing nothing but U2 while being forced to watch “Glitter” on a continuous loop. WR’s version would undoubtedly be similar, substituting Nickelback and the complete movie catalogues of Michael Bay and McG. See you there!
April 28, 2009 at 3:08 am
Jeremy apparently went to hell. 😦
I like the smoke from the cigarette and what the cash is wrapped in. The punchline was well worth it, though I had a little trouble reading it.
April 28, 2009 at 3:22 am
Too manyh words you should try editing things
April 28, 2009 at 3:26 am
hell sure has some great looking staff! i wonder if the girl with the snake hair and the green lady are buddies?
April 28, 2009 at 3:49 am
Hey, Sir Sean Connery will never go to hell.
April 28, 2009 at 5:15 am
t shirt, want.
April 28, 2009 at 8:14 am
hey, that’s actually a pretty good bandname!
April 28, 2009 at 8:43 am
^^I hope Leonardo is being ironic or something…
Anyway, loved the Margaret Thatcher milk bit!
April 28, 2009 at 9:33 am
“I hope Leonardo is being ironic or something…”
It’s a joke, check out last week’s comments: https://viruscomix.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/break-over/
April 28, 2009 at 9:46 am
Now that’s the kind of universe I want to live in. I look forward to watching AIDS-Pope stripping off his skin when I get to hell.
April 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Besides the fact that your comics are funny and topical, you know what I love the most? Even when you draw hell-chicks, they’re pretty hot!
April 28, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Im impressed how well you can draw a person from head to toe and have them look well proportioned. Phil Specter’s Hell or California State Prison? Pope Bones vs how does hell earn money?
April 28, 2009 at 4:23 pm
very funny one, but for some reason i found the layout confusing despite the clear gutters… still wanted to read left to right y’know…
April 28, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Ha! Thatcher! F**KING MILK SNATCHER!
April 28, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Mr Rowntree,
Some weeks ago, when I first saw your strips in cracked, I was taken by the link to your site, where I was struck by the Hewlittesque character renderings that remain so close to my heart as to be somewhat stuck since the 80s. I say this only because the human brain has a tendency, nay *need* to find patterns in order to (as I understand it or make it up) make neurosynaptic links and thus not freak-the-fuck-out by encountering something new and iconoclastically impressive.
To thereafter spend a good many hours wolfing your archive, wishing I had it on paper in a big-big book that I could lay on my belly with drinks and snacks in the sun and get lost in your art, counts as a [hang on, I don’t speak like this in real life, why write so hmm?] fucking excellent way to go on.
I don’t have an in-depth on framing or characterisation or colour to offer, past a compliment that it’s just entirely delicious to see someone Write as well as they Art. And that it’s wonderfully sating to see a passion well broadcast.
Your textwalls are glorious. I’ve recently done some retrospective commenttrawling which makes me wonder how you cope with:
1) Setting such a mountainous standard that any perceived dip is seized upon by ardent long-term fans to a point where their comments may be perceived as glitchpicking nonsensicalities by a newcomer such as myself.
2) The awe that you surely inspire in your daily life.
—
I guess, just thanks for taking the time to do what you do. A side note though: I do value the work that PennyArcade’s writer does for words. I’ve often wondered how many people have a dictionary at hand to follow the lexical tutelage he demands through his posts. Were there a mantra that both you and he share, I’d say that you both ‘make words work.’ But you marry it visually, which is a rare fucking skill.
Aaand cracked’s often funny. Oooh:
3) The sesquipedelian tendency for verbiage from wordfreaks bent on outwalling you without realising too late that the only person likely to read their overlong comments is the person writing it.
April 28, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Oh all right then. Sesquipedalian. Something you’re not, as it happens.
April 28, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Great strip. Only please stop drawing such h-o-t HOT demons, or I might well deliberately damn myself in the belief that I’d get some eye-candy in the afterlife.
That is, I would if I actually believed there was a hell, or heaven as an alternative, and such.
April 28, 2009 at 7:35 pm
So they have a British accent in Hell then?
April 28, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Yeah, saying the past and current leaders of my religion are in hell, that’s not offensive at all. You know, I liked this comic initially because it was unique, but this is the last time I’ll be visiting. You’d do better to increase your readership if you weren’t so condescending.
peace.
November 30, 2011 at 3:37 am
Oh, fuck you jess. If you stop reading everything that insults christianity you’ll never finish anything.
April 28, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Lol, “anything under 300 bucks is crap”, so true xD
Guitars are way too expensive. >>
Another good one, Rowntree, it’s rare to see such great drawings with this type of spot on abstract humor.
April 28, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I thought the ‘pope poker’ was going to be something much more unholy…
The Thatcher part was genius. I now believe in Hell (just so I can imagine that).
April 28, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Hey I recognized some of those guitars. Or I think I do, anyway. An Albert Lee sig and something with Jackson shark fins (on every fret?) Nice comic, great art, I like those two from Hell.
And Jess, lighten up. People have opinions. I thought Christianity was about tolerance? People seem to be very selective when it comes to applying that concept, it seems.
November 30, 2011 at 3:39 am
You thought christianity was about tolerance? Seriously?
April 28, 2009 at 9:31 pm
GerryB: Hey, thanks! I should mention, though, that I definitely have yet to inspire awe in my daily life, to say the least.
Michael Ezra: Well, exactly.
Jess: Sorry to lose you. I wish you wouldn’t feel unwelcome just because we disagree about something, because i certainly would prefer that people of opposing viewpoints stuck around. It’s too bad that you feel you have to leave.
And I’m sorry, but when someone with the ear of millions says that condoms help spread the AIDS virus (now THAT’S offensive) then, hey, he deserves at the very least to be harmlessly lampooned in an overly-verbose webcomic that 0.000000000000000000000000000000000003% of the world’s population reads (don’t quote me on that figure, it might be lower).
April 28, 2009 at 9:44 pm
So sexy demon girl pops by a fringe or counter couture guy and lets slip that conservatives who sin ( by the lefts definition of sin ) end up in hell … “but don’t tell anyone” … it kinda makes be wonder what she is letting slip while she is doing business with the establishment.
Didn’t micro$oft use the same trick? Since everybody who leased M$ ‘s OS had to sign a non-discloser agreement none of them could compare prices paid for the OS and no one knew if they where getting a good deal or not.
If we are going to send a bunch of popes to hell ( and justly so i might add! ) who else will be there as well? most of the people i know ( and i include myself ) no better than the last 2 popes!
April 28, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Meh, I don’t think popes belong in hell (again, assuming there were such a place) just for opposing birth control. Better (worse?) candidates would be those pontiffs like the Borgias and others one reads about in The Books of Lists and such. You know, the ones that violated young virgins and committed murder and such. Merely holding opinions, though, everyone has the right to do that, and that goes equally for Benedict XVI and Winston Rowntree.
April 28, 2009 at 10:09 pm
4) The fact that the fame from which you seem to be hiding seems so purposefully elusive. Get me right, I’m avid; in 1986 I was party to the following, being
A conversation between a pink-garbed gaptoothly beguiling selfdelusionary girlteen and
A shy boyteen telling the story of his having a fully upper-arm-covering tattoo of an inkline anchor,
the consequence of which was teengirl pink spouting this:
“Oh John don’t ever change!”
None of which comes to relevance I realise. Some thing about pink as a hobby and ink as devotion maybe. But when you get famous, can you at least denigrate us vomitously?
KthanksBye: (I won’t do the wordsplurge from now, thanks for the patience)
April 28, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I mean “why aren’t you famous because your stuff so good and I don’t want to help because when I saw The Smiths in Belfast and spread it, suddenly I’m not the only one with a bunch of sphinxes hanging out my pocket and an NHS smile.”
Mr Rowntree, your mindgravies need to be on T-shirts.
April 28, 2009 at 11:39 pm
You want a list of some heaven and hellbound popes, here it is. I just so happen to have complete access to the knowledge of who’s in heaven and hell. The List is incomplete because there have been a shit ton of popes throughout history.
Popes in Heaven
John XXIII and Paul VI for the Vatican II.
John Paul II, for being so charming and forgiving the guy who shot him, as well as clearly defining what being pro life is.
Benedict XV, for working for peace in WWI.
Pius XI, for making the Vatican City a sovereign state.
Popes in Hell
Urban II for the crusades, spends the rest of his days having limbs removed and re-graphed while Saddam Hussein is forced to lick his ass.
Urban VIII for trying Galileo, thrown into the center of a sewer system head first.
Pope presumably hellbound
Benedict XVI, for that fucking cardinal, and condom policy.
April 29, 2009 at 12:47 am
Jess: no one asked you not to be offended, but you might find life to be a lot more fun if you would just let these things go, and choose not to be offended. After all, we all have a right to our opinions.
Not that you’re going to read this anyway.
Winston: that figure is definitely way too low. Love your comix! (Oh, and this one. I liked this one too. But that’s opinion. And I have a right to them.)
April 29, 2009 at 2:26 am
I enjoyed the comic. Plus, I will try to recruit at least two more readers to make up for what appears to be a lost one.
April 29, 2009 at 3:08 am
You got a new one! (It’s me.)
I’ll, uh, look into spreading the word. With links.
April 29, 2009 at 4:17 am
Since no one but me has commented on the demon’s resemblance to another character, here’s a link. Fair warning, it dumps you in the middle of the story, though it’s a low-spoiler page.
http://www.viruscomix.com/estartwo19.html
April 29, 2009 at 11:39 am
Pope poker is a glorious idea and this is an excellent comic! Thanks for it, I love your comics on hell 🙂
April 29, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Tell me your traffic, and I will tell you the percent of the world’s population that reads your comic! It can’t be more than 23.8%, because that’s all of the people with internet access.
April 29, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Margaret Thatcher, sure. The popes, why not? But Sean Connery?!? What did he do?
April 30, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Sean Connery’s a wife beater.
December 25, 2012 at 1:43 am
I’d like to see proof. And as much as I don’t like guys who hurt women, that’s not reason enough. A better punishment would be to kick their ass so they see what it feels like.
April 30, 2009 at 5:30 pm
He made James Bond cool.
November 30, 2011 at 3:43 am
James Bond made James Bond cool.
May 1, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Man, your girls are cute! Especially the ones with green skin and horns.
I love the idea of hell just walking in to random stores on earth to buy torture material.
May 1, 2009 at 10:13 pm
WR, seems like the Sphinx are very popular in web comics these days…
http://partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1601
May 2, 2009 at 1:15 am
O RLY? 😀
http://www.wapsisquare.com/d/20061110.html
np: Can – Halleluwah (Anthology (Disc 1))
May 2, 2009 at 8:02 am
Let’s cut the bullshit:
Great stuff:
1- the nipple-nob t-shirt.
2- Hot devil woman. I agree with 98% of the other randy smeggers here. Stop drawing them so sexy! Or at least, draw me some pin-ups!
3- Thatcher milky torture!!!
Notsogreat stuff:
1- stripping down to the bones? Not terrible enough a torture for Nazinger. Besides it just reminds me of that Robbie Williams music video.
2- more screen time for Eddie! LOAD POD! LOAD POD!!!!
love ya, Wins.
May 2, 2009 at 6:56 pm
The green daemon is so cute. I may have to be very bad in order to go to hell to meet her. OMG i am so so sad. I think i may need a life.
May 3, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Fumus: That was cute.
Doesn’t measure up to Subnormality, but I laughed.
May 7, 2009 at 4:35 pm
“Imagine a cactus combined with a paint shaker and you’ve got the general idea”.
Thank you 😀
June 1, 2009 at 2:33 pm
“Hey, who’s that hairy, vibrating old guy?”
Genius.
August 25, 2009 at 4:37 pm
This is my favorite Subnormality ever.
PAIN
October 13, 2009 at 5:50 am
What strikes me about your hell comics is how much fun it would be to work in hell. Such astonishingly creative punishments, and even carrying them out and setting up could be quite fun. Putting together an ass raping machine and putting it on rails would be a blast. plus, you’re punishing people who deserve it, so some major job satisfaction. That just might be my dream job, to work in hell. I wonder if I’d be allowed to live in heaven and work in hell. That might be heaven for me.
November 18, 2009 at 4:46 am
I love your hell gags, I think you could get away with a comic just about hell.
December 13, 2009 at 10:38 am
You make great comics, but you’re horrible at math. If that were the percentage of people who read your comic, you would have less than a big toe as your audience.
June 3, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I don’t get what is the problem with Sean Connery… You have to have a good reason for him to be in hell, if he is a bad actor (I haven’t seen that much films of him) that’s not a good reason.
June 8, 2011 at 8:14 am
Hmm, other than popes it’s all Brits (Specter, Thatacher, Connery) hell bound. Is it too late to repent?
July 28, 2011 at 1:14 pm
You know, Pius XII never excommunicated dissenters (nor communists, for that matter, although they clearly deserved it; you dropped the ball there, Pius), and contrary to popular belief, he was an outspoken critic of Nazism even when other leaders in the free world were reluctant to condemn it. He saved more Jews than any other single person, to the extent that Albert f***ing Einstein commended him. Just so you know…
December 2, 2013 at 4:42 pm
I don’t see why Devil #76 has to be any different from Princess Washburn in that “creative” things like “Nazi Pope Skeleton” are inspired by them.
December 28, 2021 at 6:10 pm
I’m annoyed that I’m only exploring your stuff now, ten+ years after you created it. Your art is amazing, and the content is so on point. Hope your life is good.