I believe this is the earliest-ever drawing of Hades. It was a strange struggle both in determining how the character should look (I think his outfit was just supposed to be a filler costume until I could think of something better, and it just stuck.) and in creating a visual style to use for the comic. I was already drawing cartoons, and I wanted something highly stylized, but I wanted a step up from the very squat, ball-and-rubber-hose characters I was working with, so this was a big step in the development of my cartooning style in general. The big change was to create a character that was tall enough to have something resembling actual human proportions, and also to have some structural definition beyond basic tubes for arms and legs. In this, I was influenced by the illustrator Pat Binder for how to go about it.
You can also see some early ideas for logos, that were rejected.
