Zinc ion hybrid supercapacitors (ZIHSCs) can have their energy density raised by coupling high-capacity molecules with porous carbon, as demonstrated by research. However, few studies on the effect of introduction strategies of these molecules have been conducted on ZIHSC performance. Herein, sodium anthraquinone-2-sulfonate (AQS) are introduced into porous carbon (TAC) by one-step hydrothermal strategy to prepare the composites (TAC/AQS (W)). TAC/AQS (M) composites synthesized by physical mixing method as control samples. When used as the cathode material for aqueous ZIHSCs, TAC/AQS-1 (W) with the best mass ratio of AQS and TAC has a high specific capacitance of 310.89 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 and retains 89.17 % of its capacity after 20,000 cycles of the charge and discharge test, while those of TAC/AQS-0.5 (M) is 284.60 mAh g−1 and 10.09 %. Furthermore, TAC/AQS-1 (W) can achieve energy density of 295.35 Wh kg−1 and that of TAC/AQS-0.5 (M) is only 256.14 Wh kg−1. These results demonstrate that the way of introducing AQS affect the electrochemical properties of ZIHSC. The main reason for the difference in performance of two approaches is that the hydrothermal method makes AQS and TAC combine into a single solid phase with π-π non-covalent bonds, while the physical method is only a simple mechanical mixing of two phases.