Reign of the Hypno-Sis #1: Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Hello, my lovely Virtue Fanclub! Today we're talking about Reign of the Hypno-Sis #1. For ease of communication, I'll abbreviate it to RotHS or Reign whenever I mention it from here on. With that out of the way, let's dig in.

This is going to be a two-parter BTS post, with the second part coming after issue #2 of RotHS. Part 1 focuses on setting the table for the crossover, Part 2 will focus on the actual comic and what went into making it.

SECRET ORIGINSI've been working on RotHS for a while. The idea came to me pretty soon after I made my first superhero comics in 2021. Between Mr. Supreme in The Horny Devil and the Hypno-Sis transformed heroes like Wonderbuns, The Finder, and Dolly Maid, I knew I had to make a crossover eventually. This is a superhero universe after all.

So with that in mind, I focused on building out my universe to be a place full of potential plot threads and hooks.

HOUSE OF IDEAS

My first big step towards a unified setting was 2022's Lair of the Hypno-Sis. In that comic I introduced the concept of the Virtue Force and continued laying the groundwork for Hypno-Sis's sinister plot that was established in The Finder. Essentially, HS is trying different methods of feminization out on the heroes of Metro City. She always has a plan and she always gets the last laugh. To what end? Read issue 2 of RotHS to find out ;)

Lair was a lot of fun to work on and one of my more successful comics, especially at the time. In 2023, I added a few more characters to the universe like The Bee and FeMail.

FeMail was my highest page count comic when it came out. It was a lot of hard work and it put me off of working on superhero comics for a while. That being said, I still am quite fond of that book and it became an important element of the universe I was building.

MR ACTION

Outside of the actual comics, I was also producing plenty of illustrations about Mr. Supreme's buddy, Jamie Owens. He's an obvious riff on Jimmy Olsen from DC Comics, of course. Jimmy Olsen is constantly getting transformed into things and pulled into strange situations he couldn't have foreseen. If you mix in some feminization, you get a whole new set of stories to play with. And so Jamie Owens was born.

With all of these elements in play, I knew a crossover was inevitable. I just wasn't confident enough in my art to commit to it in 2024 like I had originally planned. I believe that was the right decision, seeing now how my style has improved over those two years.

VIRTUE AND VICE

The name Vice Squad came up when my collaborator Estel and I were emailing back and forth in 2024. It was actually Estel's concept originally. What if the Virtue Force turned evil and called themselves the Vice Squad. So clever! I had to put it in the story.

Of course including the Virtue Force in Reign meant that I had to do some design work. I didn't want Black Eagle to be a Batman/Blue Falcon anymore. I wanted him to be more like Hawkman, Falcon, or Angel. Wings first, everything else second. So I changed him from his original design in Lair. In-universe, Black Eagle II is actually Black Eagle's I sidekick, Birdy, who is a man now and has taken on the mantle.

NEXT TIME...

That's all for now! Next time we'll get into the process of making RotHS, including the Virtue Fortress's design and how an 8-issue Jack Kirby comic inspired a major format shift.

Thank you for reading my work and supporting me. I really appreciate that you want to see more of the process. I will try to post more sketches and WIPs for you all soon.

If you have any questions about Metro City or its many heroes and villains, leave them in the comments.

-Jo