| |
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Back in 1997, a group of guys found ourselves working at a call-center for a large internet company. Though none of us knew each other before this job, we eventually became good friends. To pass the time doing our somewhat tedious jobs of supporting customers via email and/or phone, we started coming up with ideas for comics. These comics usually "starred" various co-workers who were sometimes let in on the joke. Most of the time (but not always) they felt honored to be a part of the stories. The comics were never much more than hand drawing on paper and circulated around the call center by photocopy to entertain their friends and co-workers.
Eventually, we came up with the idea to base a whole series around "Company X" and that's how the Pod Dwellers series was born. It started out with Daryn drawing most of the first issue while Wes contributed some of the frames and doing all of the coloring in Photoshop. A lot of the ideas came from Cory, Wes, Daryn and other friends that they worked with. Companies this large often have a diverse employee base and it wasn't too hard to find inspiration for characters or story lines. The first issue was based on a guy named Mike who led an interesting life and (of course) it was exaggerated it to it's full potential. Like the characters, the Pod Dwellers issues usually started out in reality but became completely bloated in fantasy before a few pages were done.
This time the comics were circulated online as Cory and Wes put together a fine website to display all of our hard work. While mostly popular with our co-workers, the proverbial shit hit the fan when Wes's brainchild issue #7 "A Gigantor Issue" was released. The inspiration for the star of this issue had no sense of humor about the whole deal and attempted to get us fired. I don't recall all of the details, but out of good faith, we decided not to put the issue on the website.
Eventually, we all moved on from Company X and found new jobs while the comics just became fond memories. Wes has always had the issues up on his personal website, but they haven't had a home of their own for quite some time. We've talked about getting them online and I've had several people from the "Company X days" who were fans of the project then ask me if we were going to get them back up. The current plan is to start another series that takes place after Pod Dwellers... seems like no matter where you work, there are people who are a gold mine of inspiration. Cory has a lot of good ideas to a "final issue" of Pod Dwellers, our only limit is time so you never know what we'll come up with. |
|
| |
| |
 |
 |
|
