PREVIOUSLY: BOSS FROM HELL by J.R. LeMar and Celina Hernandez

As I said before the first two comic strips I created,  Djinnx with Samax and Boss From Hell with Celina, where going to be my only strips. And the plan was to switch the two strips each Monday. So, somewhere along the line I thought it would be cool to connect the two strips somehow. To establish that they exist within the same world. Surely a world where a genies exist could be the same world where demons (and talking plants) exists? I could start a story in one strip and then continue it in the next one.

The trick is to the crossover in such a way that each strip stands on its own. Even though both strips would premier on the same site, I wanted to make sure that even if a reader only saw one of them, it would still feel like a complete strip. It took me a couple of weeks to think of something, and then it hit me, and seemed obvious: introduce a new Boss From Hell character in a Djinnx strip first!

At the time I had my three regular employees in the Boss From Hell strip, two women and one man, so I knew I wanted to add another man to the strip. And they were all POC, so I wanted to make the new character White (Affirmative Action!). And I figured that could be a punchline for a Djinnx strip, have someone wish for a job, and then we see him working for the devil. But I had to think of a reason why someone would think to wish for job (instead of wishing for a billion dollars or something). So I decided to make him an older man, as I know it can be difficult for people over 50 to find good jobs. So I imagined that this was an older man who’d been laid off for months and had been desperately looking for a new job, thus when Djinnx appears before him, that’s what he immediately wishes for. And then in the following Boss From Hell strip, I show that man on his first day at the job. I figured the boss needed a secretary, so that would be a good fit for this character.

And here we go:

I think both came out very well, if I do say so myself. I’ll also note that they were actually completed in reverse. Samax was still working on a previous Djinnx strip when Celina had an opening, so I sent her the idea first, and when she completed her strip I then sent that to Samax, so he could draw his. The man’s name is WALTER GILBERT. Sort of an in-joke for myself, as I admit that a large inspiration for BOSS FROM HELL is Scott Adams’ DILBERT comic strip. I’m doing the same type of “workplace humor.” So Walter in homage to the Dilbert character Wally, and Gilbert for Dilbert.

I plan to do more such crossovers in the future, both with these and other strips.

As I said, both DJINNX and BOSS FROM HELL are temporarily on hiatus as me and each artist are working on some new ones. My next ongoing strip with Samax will premier next month. While one of two new ongoing strips I’m doing with Celina premiers TODAY! That’s right, head on over to MY COMIC STRIP CLUB to check out the first installment of…THE FRIENDS ZONE.

Thanks for reading!