US Extruders found a powerful way to promote its business.

The Westerly, Rhode Island-based machinery company created Captain Extruder, a superhero character that appeared in the company's advertisements. US Extruders recently expanded this idea by publishing a digital comic story starring the character on its website.

In the story, the extruder captain fights Process Monster, a spherical green creature that seeps from the extrusion line, and workers scramble to avoid it. The good captain threw a screw at the beast-shouting "The correct screw design will tame this monster!"-smiled on the monster's face. The monster said "Thank you Captain Extruder!" That day was saved.

"I think superheroes are an interesting way to represent our company and what we can do for our customers," said marketing manager Eric Adair.

Adair himself is also a fan of comics, and he collaborated with artist Gavin Guidry on character design.

"Then we ran some ads and people seemed to really like it, so we decided to take it a step further and start telling some stories through comics that would be fun," Adair said.

Guidry drew and wrote this story for the American Extruder Company, which was named to Plastic News’ best workplace list for the third consecutive year in 2021.

Yadell adds color to the story. "It's very interesting, and I'm very excited about where it is going," he said.

Guidry said via email that after receiving Adair's one-page idea, he "furnished it further and expanded it into a more classic rhythmic beat instead of the four pages it currently reads."

Guidry said he did comic work for other companies—including a 24-page comic for a medical technology company—but US Extruders was the first manufacturer he worked with.

"They always have a bit of fun challenges," said Guidry, who lives in the New Orleans area. "They are built around products or company entities. The heroes represented by these heroes face some of the overly dramatic problems they usually encounter in their daily work."

He added that the interesting element of the American extruder comics is that "it makes sense to have a huge monster, and frankly, you can never really go wrong."

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