What Happened To The Official Hazbin Hotel Prequel Comics?
I’ve been wanting to talk about this for awhile. To get straight to the point, y’all remember the Hazbin prequel comics right? The official ones? The CANON ones that were written by Viv? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, Viv was never really vocal on this.
For those who don’t know, Viv had revealed that there were official Hazbin comics in the works, with her first mentioning them the day before the pilot, October 27, 2019. I don’t have the tweet of course cause I ain’t looking that far back, but that was when Hazbin itself got its official website: https://www.hazbinhotel.com/
The hub for Hazbin Hotel web comics. Read the new comic, "A Day in the After Life," now as well as the first prequel comic.
During that day, it was when the first 7 pages of an Angel Dust prequel comic was released, introducing what happened before the pilot with him, and how he met Charlie and Vaggie. Maybe I’ll review it sometime, but for now, this is what happened at that time, with Viv promising the rest of the comic to come, “soon”. Spoiler Alert, it was A LOOONG wait. I don’t know what the hell happened behind the scenes, but the comic kept getting ridiculously delayed. I remember how impatient I was getting at the time, because I myself wanted to see the rest, but I’m not here to rant about that.
Anyway, before the rest of the comic came out, at the time of the pilot’s release, Viv uploaded an update video. https://youtu.be/s4RKc83V19E
In this video, she explains how she planned on continuing Hazbin’s story in the form of comics. There were sure to be more after Angel’s comic, as they existed so we could be entertained while we wait for the actual show. Now this of course, was the time when Helluva Boss’s pilot was in the works, but at the time, it was almost done. Another thing to note is that the official Alastor comic was confirmed on the surprise Q and A video shortly after the HH pilot’s release, literally BEFORE the full Angel comic was out.
Angel’s comic then literally went into DEVELOPMENT HELL, because Christ, it was a lot, I remember when fans were constantly asking where the rest was everywhere, and yeah, it was a ridiculously long time. That’s when Faustisse comes in.
Faustisse was a person who worked on the HH pilot, (specifically the detailed portraits in the background) and worked on the inking for both Angel and Alastor’s comic. The person who DREW the Alastor comic is also important, they went by the name “RiplaeChills”. While fans waited, faust would do livestreams and answer questions. They’re the one known for giving us comic content more than Viv did lmao.
Soon of course, the rest of the Angel comic FINALLY came out, on July 7th, 2020. So yeah, LONG ass wait. Unfortunately, Alastor’s comic went through the SAME development hell the Angel comic did, with fans asking Faust where it was, and Viv as well.
The funny thing was that when Faust said the comic was done at the time, the comic DIDN’T come out the next month, it took WAY longer. But of course, Al’s comic did come out EVENTUALLY so the fandom was happy.
However, now that I’ve talked about the Angel and Al comic, everyone seems to forget the CHARLIE prequel comic. You see, if you followed Faust around at the time, you’ll notice how she made livestreams working on ANOTHER upcoming Hazbin Hotel canon prequel comic that was written by Viv, one about Charlie.
In their livestream, they confirmed that the comic was going to take place before the pilot, and Lucifer himself was going to appear. Not only that, but Charlie’s comic would include a flashback to her high school years in Hell, where she was in a relationship with Seviathen Von Eldritch, a member of the royal family that appeared in two of the portraits in the hotel background of the pilot. His sister Helsa (the woman Charlie called a loser in the pilot during her rainbow song) was also going to be in the comic, as she was a bully, and this was also going to be where Charlie and Vaggie met. RiplaeChills was ALSO going to be doing the drawing for this comic as well, as over the months, Faust continued to do livestreams working on the comic. They also posted progress as well, so this was certainly a comic that WAS in the works. They said sketching was going great, and progress was being made. Here are the images they released from her Twitter. The images might be blurry, so I apologize. Damn storage!
I also found the comic layout in the background of one of her streams:
And then of course the image of the Von Eldritch table, another panel from the comic.
So yeah, the Charlie comic certainly wasn’t something that was planned to release and they hadn’t gotten anywhere yet, there was CLEARLY lots of progress made, with Faust at the time saying the comic was slated to release in October. Of....2020. So....yeah, something happened. If y’all didn’t know, Faust decided to work on other things, so they left the project altogether.
And yeah...the whole “people will see soon” by Viv never came so this aged like MILK lol. After that, the Charlie comic seemed to vanish out of existence, with no trace of it, nor anything from Viv, so obviously no, it never came out.
Now we don’t know what happened, but my theory is that after Faust left, Viv decided to just scrap the comic completely and focus on helluva, because at the time, she had been working on season 1 for the show. Hell, it was once revealed that Viv left Faust in charge of handling the comics, (which btw, was during the time Faust’s MOTHER DIED) so it was clear she couldn’t work on it by herself, and with Faust gone....I guess she couldn’t get other people? That or she just lost passion, it always felt like she cared for helluva more than Hazbin, especially since she described it as her number one priority yet decided to work on a spin-off.
Personally for me, I was very upset. At the time I was SO excited for the Charlie comic, especially since....ya know, it’s a HUGE part of the story, with Lucifer appearing and Charlie and Vaggie meeting ect, only for everything to seemingly get thrown away. And it’s strange, Viv sounded so passionate in that update video I posted above when it came to the comics, and I feel like she just lost interest like she did with Zoophobia and decided to work on Helluva. As months and months passed and NO talk of the Charlie comic, low and behold, she soon said something in her Twitter thread on the subject of her “dropping” projects.
Dear god. When I first saw this, I got so pissed. Ever since the beginning, the comics were handled so poorly. Not only did both of them get ridiculously delayed and took forever to come out despite promises of certain dates, but most of the fandom at the time didn’t even know the comics EXISTED simply because of viv’s poor communication skills, hell, if this is the first time you’ve even HEARD of Charlie’s prequel comic, I don’t blame you. Viv had promised her fans Hazbin comics, even on her Patreon (when I was subscribed to her at the time) she promised to post peeks and updates, saying there was going to be a three chapter comic about Vaggie, Charlie, and Alastor, as well as an “Overlord comic”. We all know Viv has a history of promising certain things that never happened, and in this tweet she mentions them nonchalantly, saying their “not her world”, which....is funny, again, she sounded so passionate in that update video, so what the hell happened?
And before you go “BUT SHOWTOON, SHE WAS WORKING ON HELLUVA AND ITS HARD TO JUGGLE SO MUCH STUFF” yeah I know, and I hate to say this but...who’s fault is that? Viv has NEVER leaned her lesson when it came to juggling more than one project to this DAY. In the past, she was freaking working on Allison, Zoophobia’s reboot, the new Jay Jay animated music video, AND Hazbin ALL at the same time. Then, after she lost passion for Zoophobia to work on Hazbin, she THEN decided to do more by creating a spin-off. She should have KNOWN this was too much to handle, and she should have known NOT to promise her fans Hazbin content when she couldn’t provide it. She’s a grown woman and has been in this situation countless times before, and after all that promising, for her to just call the comics “not her world” anymore really hits a nerve. And since this tweet was freaking February of LAST year, I think it’s safe to say the Charlie comic is gone, and not just her comic, the Hazbin comics as a WHOLE. Now you might go “Oh, well maybe she scrapped the story of Charlie’s comic to explore it in the show instead!” Yeah, but if THAT’S the case, what about all of freaking Faustisse’s and Ripale’s WORK? All the stuff I showed above is the work they did, and for Viv to just throw it all away would be off, even for her. But...again, what I’ve been saying when it comes to the comics is all speculation. We don’t know if they’re still in the works, but since it’s been 2 years since Charlie’s comic was SUPPOSED to come out, and Viv is clearly working on Season 2 of Helluva right now, I think that’s a sign.
The reason I decided to make this post is because nobody EVER talks about the comics lmao, and since they were something I was genuinely excited for, only to be thrown away and forgotten about ticked me off, so I had to say something. Maybe the Charlie comic will come, who knows, but for now, it’s clear Viv is more passionate for Helluva right now, and the fact that Faust and RiplaeChills’s work hasn’t been shown to the public is just sad. It’s also disappointing, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to be excited for the comics, only to watch them just slowly die. This was once a big deal, but now the comics are just forgotten.
