Enjoy Cubes? Visit my other site, SeaLeft Studios, to see what else is going on in my creative world!

-Richard Hoover

Hot Dog and the Cubes - Issue 1
The End
 

It's late summer of 2005 and I'm starting to pull together the ideas that would become the Cubes comic. At that point I had only produced two other comics: Hot Dog Issue 1 and the Hot Dog Weekly Strip. Initially, the Cubes comic was going to take place in its own "storyverse" separate from Hot Dog and not use anthropomorphized characters at all.

Then the idea occurred to set Cubes in the Hot Dog world.

It was a fun idea because it meant that I'd be able to have Hot Dog himself -- or at least his alter ego, Frank Retruf -- appear in the new comic. That in turn suggested other ideas, including one where Hot Dog's nemesis F.L.Ine of Ine Industries would acquire the company at which all the Cubes characters worked and bring it to rack and ruin.

Fast forward about two and a half years. Cubes is now well into Year 3 with new character Honey Klim stirring the pot in the SeaLeft Software offices. Meanwhile, Ralph Black, the owner of SeaLeft, is looking for an exit path to retirement. As year 3 proceeds, that idea from way back at the start of Cubes -- of F.L.Ine acquiring SeaLeft -- re-emerges and finds a home in the comic. The first discussion for an acquisition begins between Ine and Black but isn't finalized until the following year.

There followed a period of several years where the F.L.Ine connection fell into the background. Year 3 of Cubes kicked off various other storylines that were more important to deal with at the time (the Cubes gang gets a remodelled office, Ralph semi-retires then fully retires, Veronica takes over from Ralph then goes on a singing sensation tour, Karen finds a boyfriend and eventual husband, Hope Calers joins the team, Honey Klim returns to the fold, Christie graduates university, and Hot Dog has a couple more adventures of his own).

Coming off the high of Karen's wedding at the end of Year 7 of the Cubes, I wanted to really shake things right to the core for the Cubes characters. In the summer of 2012, I sat down to plan the next couple years of the Cubes comic strip. With a sprinkling of inspiration from the 2008 global recession, I formalized my ideas from 2005 through 2007 and mapped out Year 8 and Year 9 of Cubes. These two years would mark the return of F.L.Ine, at a distance, and his minion Sly Filcher.

Through two years, Sly has whittled away at the morale and staffing levels of SeaLeft Software. Everything was planned from the outset in broad strokes: the slow decay of SeaLeft, the austerity measures introduced, and, yes, the firing and resigning of so many characters. The final details, including the drafting of the comic you are about to read, were worked by the fall of 2013, just as Year 9 was starting.

Now, the journey that began nearly a decase ago is about to enter its final leg. As the Cubes characters are poised to begin their tenth year, many questions arise that only this special Hot Dog and the Cubes team up can answer. Will our heroes overcome the spectre of Sly Filcher and F.L.Ine? Will SeaLeft emerge battered but unbeaten? Will Cubes Year 10 actually happen? What's the correct spelling for anthropomorphized? And, most importantly, is this...

...The End?