The Xcentrikz - Interactive Comic

December 2, 2009

Interview with Maciek and Bartek of Hell Hotel

(Click on the image to visit the site!)

Myself and the funny guys behind Hell Hotel sat down for a gab and they have some fun insights. This hilarious comic with a hilarious premise, is all about son of Satan who becomes a hotel manager, and the hilarity that ensues. (Some of the humor isn't family-appropriate.) Enjoy the comic and the interview!

THE XCENTRIKZ: Hi guys! So! How did you get started in doing comics?

Maciek: I got hooked in pretty early, in pre school, when my grandma got me an issue of Spider-Man. Around that time I sort of did my first comic - it was called "Ways to fly" and was inspired by cartoons like Road Runner. I did the illustrations and dictated the words to my grandma, who wrote them down, 'cause i still couldn't write back then. It was a different grandma, by the way.

Bartek: I, on the other hand, started 20 some years later when I met Maciek in college. We were both doing graphic design course. We got along pretty well, had similar sense of humor and some day we decided to "do something" together. And only one year later we launched our first webcomic called Bug City. Since then we are some sort of dynamic duo. I never made any comic on my own. I kinda can't draw which could be a little barrier. But I'm ok in vector illustration and think about doing something in that style some day. Also I have the beginning of a script for an epic comic tale which I will never finish.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Is there anything special that got your imagination going, in the beginning of Hell Hotel? Did you suddenly go, "Hey let's make a comic about Damian, son of Satan, if he worked at a hotel..." (Wildly funny premise by the way, hee hee!) Or was the process more methodical?

B: After shutting down our previous webcomic and taking a short break we wanted to come back with something providing us with subjects for few years worth of comics. So we thought hard and didn't come up with anything satisfying. And then, one day Maciek came to my place and said he thought of this cool name "Hell Hotel" but wasn't sure if anything "was there". I really liked the idea of a hotel because of guests who could bring ideas for new episodes. Then we started brainstorming about how to plot Satan in the whole thing and all the pieces started slowly falling into place.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Have you ever put a real-life event, that you experienced, into the comic?

B: In the episode "Reasonable complaints" the guest character is based on our neighbor from the apartment below. Reaaally annoying guy coming up complaining about that "the bass is too low" and he can hear us talking. And the part about flushing the toilet is also true. Apart from that there were loads of heard quotes or observed situations which inspired some episodes.

M: Also, Damian's fear of washing machines is based on my own.

B: Hahaha! I forgot about that.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Heehe. Cool. What inspired your characters? Are any of them inspired by real people?

M: I think Damian shares a lot with both mine and Bartek's personalities. And once we knew a crow that was almost like the one in the comic.

B: We wanted to diverse the characters so we could be able to create interesting situations. Hot maid was a must of course. Dr. Stein's look was partly inspired by Dr. Emmet Brown from "Back to the Future". Well, that with a little sparkle of a pervert. Funny fact, his name was inspired by Albert Einstein's, of course, but was suppose to be Zweistein. After all we decided it would be funny only once and I'm glad we didn't use it.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What reactions did Hell Hotel get early on? Were viewers generally excited, critical, something else...?

B: To be honest I'm not really sure. We didn't have a forum back then, we also didn't get a lot of emails. But we also didn't get many hate mails. There were some voices from Bug City fans that we will never be able to top it. But I guess this is normal when an artist decides to do something completely different. You lose some fans but you gain other. All in all I think everything is going in the good direction. The audience is getting bigger and we get props from Polish authors along abroad ones which always means a lot.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What's something that really challenges you in doing Hell Hotel?

M: Keeping up with the schedule and delivering the episodes on time can be pretty challenging. Nobody believed we'd be able to update three times a week. Bo far we haven't missed an update. There were tight situations when we had like an hour to come up with an episode and another hour to draw it, though. But sometimes you wouldn't even notice - working under pressure may enhance the creativity.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Yea. In your opinion, what's one of the coolest things about the comic?

B: It's hilarious! No, seriously, it's actually pretty obvious. It has Satan in it. And he's handsome too.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Hehe, true. How about disapproval Hell Hotel has gotten? Did you think the comments were justified?

B: Some people said it's not funny. Well, you can't really argue with that. I always laugh while brainstorming the episode and if I do it means there are other people out there that will too. If the joke isn't funny for you it simply means you're in a wrong place. Also you don't know what's good humor.

M: Heath Ledger episodes 'caused a wave of furious criticism on this one movie forum. Some Heath Ledger groupies, or should I say believers, thought we were being disrespectful to their god. This buffled me, as I'm a huge Ledger fan myself and I simply loved his performance in Dark Knight. I was happy to be able to draw him and thought of the whole thing as a tribute. I guess some people disagreed. I thought they were being too sensitive.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How's it been promoting Hell Hotel? What publicity opportunities have worked the best for you?

B: We are still in the constant process of promoting our comic. While it's a little simpler in Poland where the comic industry is significantly smaller than in United States or France or any other country, it can be tricky abroad. Some authors say that during first few years of comic existence you don't see much traffic and you should focus on delivering quality strips. And I think this is what we try to do in the first place. Other than that we plan to do some guest comics which apart from being fun should direct some clicks our way.

M: My favourite form of promotion so far was putting stickers with printed strips over urinals at one con. But I'm not sure it has earned us many new readers. Anyway, we're pretty satisfied with our popularity in Poland right now, but we definitely need to get our lazy asses to work on some promotion abroad, where we still remain pretty unknown.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How about some fun personal questions... If you had a super sci-fi gadget for one day, what would it be, and what would you do with it?

M: It would totally be a teleporting device for me. And I'd use it to, well, teleport myself. There are places I'd love to be, but often I'm just too lazy to get there.

B: This one took me a while. At first I was intensely debating between x-ray vision to see under women clothes and invisibility cloak to observe women take bath but I think I just'll go with some sort of money creating device.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How would you describe yourself in five words?

M: Handsome, strong, brave, fast and modest.
B: Same.

THE XCENTRIKZ: HA!! Great, guys. Okay. What were you like in highschool? Did you like comics back then, too?

M: Actually, high school was the part of my life when I was least interested in comics. I was hard into this whole hip hop culture, you know, wore baggy clothes, went to a lot of concerts and parties and stuff. But I read comics now and then and was still drawing a lot, especially naked chicks in my exercise books. But all the love for comics came back when I was finishing high school, so it's all good. In the hood. Word.

B: I guess pretty the same as now, just stupider. I've met great people during that time who are still my best friends and the passion for music and art started to crystallize. As for comics, I think I didn't mention it before, I never was big comic reader. Of course I've read and still read something from time to time but not that often. It bugged me once. I asked myself, wasn't it weird that I create comics but don't really read them? Just after that I've learned that there are other authors in the same way. Phew, I'm not alone, I thought to myself. But don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against comics, they're ok.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Heh. Do you consider yourself part of any sub-culture? If so which one?

M: I have some geek features: I love comics, video games and movies, but I'm not hardcore enough to know every race in Star Wars or speak Klingon fluently. I'm also pretty bad at math.

B: I've never considered myself as part of any subculture. I don't think I'm geek... maybe music geek. This must be my biggest passion, can't imagine life without music. The other big thing for me is graphic design, can't live without it either. If someone asked me if I rather be deaf or blind I couldn't decide. I'd just rather die than be one of these. No, just kidding, I don't want to die.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How do you feel about life as a web-comic creator? The pros, the cons, the costs of time and resources. What makes it worth it to you, at the end of the day?

B: This could be pretty demanding, it's always couple of hours per episode. And there are times you have to deny yourself some pleasures like going to a party. But at the end of the day it's all worth it. You get the satisfaction and the readers get the laughs. Of course there are days you just don't feel like doing anything but I think it always pays up to do an extra effort. The thing about doing a webcomic with someone else is that if you fail you're not only failing yourself but the other person too. And this works the other way round, the other person motivates you and vice versa.

M: It is time consuming, but it seems like the more we do it the more tricks we develop to pull it off more efficiently. Of course we still hit the creativity wall occasionally and need to crap out an episode which gets frustrating, but as Bartek said, working together usually helps to overcome that. I can't imagine doing the strip alone. As for rewards, readers feedback is one thing that keeps me going, I read all of it. Also, the guests strips we've received to celebrate our 100th episode, that was a big moment for me. Some of my favorite Polish artists did Hell Hotel episodes and I was honored by that. I imagine earning bajillion dollars off of making a webcomic could also be considered a reward, but we've yet to reach that point. As for now, at least the comic earns enough to pay for itself and get us some pizza and beer money, so I'm not complaining.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Heh heh. Anything else to share? How about a clue as to what'll happen next in Hell Hotel?

B: We have lots of exciting stuff coming up. We're really looking forward to developing Damian's story and we will also reveal some secrets about Mr. Shell. For now there is material for a couple of months of episodes and that's only story lines.

M: In the last episode Damian turns out to be a ghost, but don't tell anyone.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Hah! Thanks guys, looking forward to it.

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