Hubris Comics (Fallout 3)

Hubris Comics is a location in Fallout 3, the offices of the company of the same name.

Location
Hubris Comics is located in the north end of Mason District, next to the Falls Church/Mason Dst Metro tunnels. It can be reached from Falls Church via those tunnels, and from the other end of Mason District via the Flooded Metro tunnels.

It's probably easiest to get to Hubris Comics via the Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels, that can be entered via a sewer grate at the edge of the water just northwest of Wilhelm's Wharf, next to the outhouse.

The Building
If you plan on making a visit, be sure to bring lots of firepower - in my case (Broken Steel Add-On, High Level) I encountered 1 Super Mutant Overlord, 4 Super Mutant Masters, 3 Super Mutant Brutes, and 2 Super Mutants guarding 4 wasteland captives right outside of the building, however if you enter from the tunnels north of Wilhelm's Wharf, you won't encounter the Super Mutants unless you exit out of the front main doors - it is very difficult for followers to live, so you may want to leave them behind but Fawkes and Paladin Cross could survive.

If you are coming from the Flooded Metro, you can easily snipe the Mutants from a great distance from the building in the south where you find a Sniper Rifle and a Guns and Bullets.

The complex consists of Hubris Comics Publishing, Hubris Comics Printing and Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels. The buildings are infested with feral ghouls. There are also many traps set up throughout Hubris Comics Publishing and Hubris Comics Printing.

In Hubris Comics Printing is the apparent source of all the traps; a hostile Wastelander named Mad Johnny Wes, who is holed up in the fortified foreman's office overlooking the printing area, mowing down the assorted feral ghouls, and even a Feral Ghoul Reaver if you are a high level and have the Broken Steel DLC, who wander the printing room floor. He is armed with a minigun, and has very high health on par with that of a Super Mutant Master. He is also protected by 2 automated turrets and a number of frag mines. However, his Wastelander Outfit is extremely poor armor, and he can be taken out with 5 or 6 hunting rifle head shots. You can shoot out the targeting sensors on his turrets to get them to attack him, but this is of limited usefulness since he destroys them before they can do much damage to him. There is also a fire extinguisher to the right of him that explodes when it's shot. This can contribute some damage.

A 'pre-war printing press' is also located in this area but breaks down as soon as it's activated. There is a terminal on the second floor landing that indicates when hacked that the press is short on red ink. Or, the cause could be be a corpse blocking the machinery, which cannot be dislodged. The smoke that rises from the printing press as it breaks down obscures the vision of the turrets, causing them to stop firing.

A terminal in the "beta testing" area of the Publishing building runs a mini-text-adventure "Reign of Grelok (beta)".

The AntAgonizer
A letter to the editor, readable from the receptionist terminal, reveals that there was a Hubris Comics character called the AntAgonizer, an "orphaned girl raised by ants and instilled with a bitter hatred of humanity", who was a villain in the Grognak the Barbarian comics. The letter complains that the current run of comics, written by a Mr. Neptura, treats the AntAgonizer as a two-dimensional villain, and demands the return of a Mr. Moorellis (most likely a portmanteau of comic writers Alan Moore and Warren Ellis), so it seems that The AntAgonizer found inspiration for her persona from an issue of Grognak the Barbarian.

Hubris Comics Publishing

 * 1 Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor; Hubris Comics Publishing, Hubris Comics
 * Located in the first room upon entering from the Mason District. It is on a mounted bookshelf above a "trap" terminal.
 * 1 Pre-War Book; Hubris Comics Publishing, Hubris Comics
 * Located in the first room upon entering from the Mason District. It is laying on a small-sized wooden shelf making up the barricade leading north.

Hubris Comics Printing

 * 1 Grognak the Barbarian; Hubris Comics Printing, Hubris Comics
 * Located atop a desk beside a locked terminal (Average) along the western wall. The area is guarded by Mad Johnny Wes, who is equipped with a Minigun and 2 automated Turrets.
 * 1 Nuka-Cola Quantum; Hubris Comics Printing, Hubris Comics
 * Located atop a desk beside a locked terminal (Average) along the western wall. The area is guarded by Mad Johnny Wes, who is equipped with a Minigun and 2 automated Turrets.
 * 1 Pre-War Book; Hubris Comics Printing, Hubris Comics
 * Located on a medium-sized shelf along the eastern wall of a room in the southeastern corner. The room can be found by following a hall leading east.
 * 1 Scoped .44 Magnum; Hubris Comics Printing, Hubris Comics
 * Located on the floor of the sub-level underneath a flight of stairs in the northeastern corner of the room. The weapon is accompanied by 2 ammunition boxes, 1 first aid box, and a skeleton.

Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels

 * 1 Dean's Electronics; Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels, Hubris Comics
 * Located atop a desk along the eastern wall of the last room before exiting the Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels. When reaching a 4-way intersection, turn north, and then turn west to reach the room.
 * 1 Stealth Boy; Hubris Comics Utility Tunnels, Hubris Comics
 * Located on the floor along the northern wall of the northern room. When reaching a 4-way intersection, turn north, and then turn east to reach the room.

The Capital Wasteland (surrounding area)

 * 1 Dean's Electronics; Mason District, east of Hubris Comics
 * Located on the floor of a Pulowski Preservation Shelter. The Pulowski Preservation Shelter is just outside the entrance to the Hubris Comics Publishing.
 * 1 Guns and Bullets; Mason District, south of Hubris Comics
 * Located atop a desk on the second level of a destroyed building along the northern wall. The building is the last on the corner.
 * 1 Sniper Rifle; Mason District, south of Hubris Comics
 * Located on the floor on the second level of a destroyed building. The building is the last on the corner.

Glitches

 * In the foreman's office where Mad Johnny Wes is located, the door of the office merges with the set of filing cabinets against the wall, but will close normally (confirmed on PC, PS3 and Xbox).
 * If the Mad Johnny Wes' turrets are deactivated by the terminals in the foreman's office, and the printing press is activated then shut down, the turrets will turn back on and fire at the player.
 * The feral ghouls occasionally appear friendly and will not fight.
 * In the foreman's office the door can send a Nuka-Cola Quantum back behind the filing cabinets. (confirmed on Xbox 360)

Behind the scenes

 * The Grelok computer game is a homage to text-based adventure games first made popular the 1980s on the Commodore 64 (among others): They were text-only parsers, where the user typed in commands to perform actions. They were extensive in scale, requiring the the user to create detailed 'pen and paper' maps. The best known were published by Infocom: The Zork series, Planetfall, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. These evolved into "Multi-User Dungeon" games now known as MUDs.
 * Mr. Moorellis is a portmanteau of the names of the famous comic book writers Alan Moore and Warren Ellis.
 * The hack writer Neptura is a reference to hack writer Marto Neptura in issue 6 of Alan Moore's comic Promethea.
 * The terminal in the reception area lists the release date for a "Drake Tungsten, Chrono-Cowboy" comic. Drake Tungsten is a reference to a host segment from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Hercules Against the Moon Men".