Week 108! (Patreon)

This panel comes from the comic 220 - Unkie Skunkie, posted on October 11, 2010, at the very start of the twelfth arc where Kale and company all go to a museum for a field trip, but this scene doesn't really have anything to do with that specifically and more with general plot and intrigue stuff.

So this scene was the first one to show off Hugo beyond his first appearance at the end of the sixth arc talking to Max on the phone, and this appearance with Kale's father Cyrus further cements the three as not only definitely working together, but also being familiar enough with each other to be casual and friendly. Scene also goes on to establish what Hugo was to the rest of the family prior to, well, the stuff that happens in the fourteenth arc, as well as some other things. Pretty important in general.

I'm fairly sure I've already gone in-depth on Hugo's character design and stuff somewhere, probably an earlier Patreon update, but I'll reiterate that Hugo's design and general attitude was inspired heavily by Godot from the third Ace Attorney game. His design was supposed to look somewhat normal, but also once you read his dialogue and watched him do more things, become more noticeably sleazy and darker, like the bags under his eyes, his posture, his expressions, etc. Cigarette smoke was also a pretty important thing for him, both in terms of him always seeming to smoke and his mindscape abilities being directly linked to using said smoke. I dunno if I ever said anywhere, I probably did, but Hugo's weapon was originally going to be a gigantic battle ax, but by the time Hugo actually started appearing, giving him something like that felt too silly, unwieldy, and... well, anime. Fox Kale throwing around that giant sword is enough, and he at least has the excuse of having been a really angsty, fairly anime-esque kind of character from the get-go, so it fits more with his personality and presence.

I'll go into Hugo's motivations and stuff in the last update for the month, which unlike his design I don't think I've talked about yet.