Archive for July, 2004
26 items.
Since it’s been a popular device as of late, today’s incentive sketch is a continuation of today’s strip. Click here to vote for Theater Hopper at buzzComix and to get another dose of some hard facts you don’t want to hear…
Today’s comic was pulled directly from the “It Happened To Us” file. Cami and I had gone to the early matinee of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and emerged into the blinding sun to discover an advertisement affixed to the drivers side rear-view mirror of my car.
The pisses me off for a myriad of reasons. Partially because I just got out of a movie where I was held as a captive audience to commercials for Coke and Calvin Klein jeans projected on-screen before the trailers! But mostly I’m irked because finding this piece of paper on my windshield means SOMEBODY TOUCHED MY CAR!!!
You don’t touch another man’s car. That’s common knowledge.
Actually, what cheeses me off the most is that when you’re first walking out of the theater, you’re on a bit of an emotional high. If the movie was good, that is. You’re strolling into the parking lot, talking about what you just watched. Laughing at lines in the movie you found funny. Generally reflecting on the good time you had.
Then you walk up to your car and it’s… “Huh?! Lose weight now… ASK ME HOW?!”
It yanks you right out of that happy place and puts you right on doorstep of Life’s petty annoyances. The things you went to the movie theater to ESCAPE FROM! And thus, this is why – in my universe – Reality is depicted as a bitter, old man waiting for you to turn around so he can slap you square across the face.
Of course, my first reaction is to dial the number left behind on the garishly pink slip of paper and to bitch out the first person who picks up the phone.
But then cooler heads prevail and reason starts to take hold. That’s when it dawns on you that – legally – these advertisers don’t have the right to leave things on your car without the permission of the property-holder. In this case, the charming Wynnsong theater.
So now your second reaction is to storm back into the theater and cram the piece of paper into the mouth of the first manager you’re put in front of.
But then you think about all those outstanding warrants you have and decide, “Eh. Probably for the best if I don’t add another one to the list.”
Ultimately, in a subtle form of protest, you toss the piece of paper on the ground like so much litter for some overworked, underpaid 15 year-old to sweep up on a slow day.
I don’t understand why this is an acceptable way to treat your customers. It’s like they are actively trying to find new ways to put more advertising in front of us like it’s some kind of test. “How long will it take before they snap?” I swear, if I’m in the men’s room and they sneak a vinyl sticker advertising the next Hillary Duff movie under the toilet seat, you can bet I’m pissing all over it in a form of protest.
Maybe I’m taking all of this too seriously, but I view movie houses as temples. Shrine to pop culture. It upsets me to see these venues and their customers treated so shoddily. ‘Makes me long for the doe-eyed simplicity of a movie house like the one in The Majestic. One theater. One screen. Martin Landau is the projectionist that lives in an apartment above the venue and the theater is operated by a kindly cross-section of quirky individuals.
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You’re going to want to visit our new advertiser O’Deer Comics. They’ve advertised with us before. The only difference between now and the last time I mentioned them in this space is that their comic has only gotten better. Funnier and more detail in the drawings. Check it out.
Also, you only have a few hours left to bid on the hand-made Theater Hopper dolls that Cami put together. You’ll kick yourself in the morning if you let these one-of-a-kind creations go to someone else.
Lastly, I haven’t heard back from Amazing Spider-Man artist Mike Deodato. I tried sending him an e-mail, but I’m not sure if he received it. You might recall the reason why I wanted to get in touch with him if you read last Wednesday’s blog.
If anyone knows of a way to contact him directly, please let me know!
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I forgot to mention this yesterday, but a big “HUZZAH!” to Diesel Sweeties creator RStevens for reaching a staggering milestone. 1,000 comics!
While it will be another 700 strips before Theater Hopper accomplishes the same feat, we aim to follow in the footsteps of Clango and Indie Rock Pete.
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For today’s buzzComix incentive sketch, click here to view next summer’s sure-fire action blockbuster!
I hope you like today’s comic. I tried to put a little extra effort into it with the backgrounds and the rest of the art. I wanted to leave things on an up note because I will be away from the site both this Friday and next Monday.
Don’t panic just yet, kiddies. While it’s true I’ll be away on vacation, I’ll leave you in capable hands. I have some guest strips lined up. One of them in the bag is a comic by none other than Instant Classic’s creator Brian Carroll. It’s another I, Robot joke, but it’s a good one.
If there are any enterprising young artists out there that want to try their hand at a guest comic, I am currently entertaining submissions. You can e-mail them to me here. Deadline is Thursday at 11:59 P.M. Please nothing larger than 525 x 525 pixels. I know it’s a short turn around, but I didn’t want to get swamped with too many requests over the course of a week.
If I don’t use your guest strip Friday or Monday (and at this point there is still an opportunity for your work to be seen Saturday, Sunday or next Tuesday) I will definitely use whatever is left over to cover for me while I’m away at Wizard World Chicago, August 13 – 15, so don’t hesitate to show me your work.
Anyway, movie stuff.
Is anyone excited to see I, Robot? No one I’ve talked to has. From the looks of it, the film completely distorts Isaac Asimov’s vision. I’m sure there will be nods to his 3 Laws of Robotics here and there, but for the most part, this looks like a mindless summer blow-em-up. Not exactly the kind of description you would expect to see in reference to Asimov.
Not to explain the joke in today’s comic, but the trailers for I, Robot make what I’ve suggested in the strip somewhat feasible. Only Hollywood would assume Asimov was a Victorian and drop him into a story 50 year’s beyond his death. Average audiences eat that sort of convoluted tripe by the trough-full.
Remember when Will Smith used to “own” the Fourth of July weekend? How the mighty have fallen. This film looks like such a dud to me, I doubt it will even trump the huge amounts of positive buzz Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has accumulated since it’s opening last week.
I, Robot is dead in the water.
In other news, still no word from Mike Deodato and his inclusion of a Theater Hopper poster in Amazing Spider-Man #509. I e-mailed him, but have received no reply. I’m thinking about posting a message to him publicly in a forum he’s known to frequent. I might give that a try later today.
Speaking of comics, be sure to keep an eye on the site in the next couple of days. I plan on posting information about where you can find me at Wizard World Chicago next month. If you haven’t already, start booking hotel rooms! I want to see as many of you in attendance as possible!
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Today’s buzzComix incentive sketch features a much more plausible choice for Green Lantern. Click here to reveal the obvious.
Today’s comic comes from an honest-to-goodness report that Ain’t It Cool News published. According to them, they sat on the news for quite a while waiting for it to be verified by Warner Bros. (the studio that is producing it). Sure enough, it came to pass.
I am particularly disturbed by the claim that the first modern version of the Green Lantern character to be brought to the silver screen will be done so as a “zany comedy a la The Mask.” Apparently some suit at Warner Bros. was sitting around trying to think of other green comic book characters that made the leap to film. Since Hulk was done only two years ago, aping the style of the decade-old Mask was a safer bet.
This has “BAD IDEA” stamped all over it in big, red letters. If there is any truth to it, I find it unfortunate that DC cannot seem to weigh in with how they want their properties to be expressed in different mediums.
Personally, I’m not putting a lot of stock in it. It sounds too outlandish to be true and I can’t imagine DC rolling over on this – EVEN IF their corporate parent tied their hands.
But then again, who thought Jack Black would land the role of Carl Denham in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake? All I can say is that he has one hell of an agent working for him.
Our vacation to Memphis was a real hoot. The 12 hour drive was kind of brutal, but we made it there and back okay. I plan on providing more details of my trip along with photos in the THorum, but only in the Donaters’ Only area. How do you get access to this content – this little window into my private life? Easy! Just donate! Even if you can only spare a penny, you’ll still get access to this area of the THorum.
It’s a good deal. Donating also provides you access to the collected incentive sketches. All of them are represented there.
I’m starting to shift my focus to Wizard World Chicago on August 13 through 15. I’ve even dedicated a page of the site to the event. It houses all the information you need to know about my attendance. Where you can find me. What I’ll be selling. Will anyone else be with me? All those questions and more answered here.
Not much else to report. Still getting my head straight after all that time on the road. I still feel like I’m moving. It’s weird to think that it’s Wednesday.
Thanks again to all of the artists and writers that provided guest comics while I was gone. I’ll be pulling their work out of the archives soon, but their efforts will find a permanent home in the Bonus Materials area of the site. I’ll be sure to leave a note when that occurs.
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Oh! Don’t forget to check out our latest sponsor Ripeville. It’s a web comic about talking vegetables, but they’re way cooler than those damn Veggie Tales. These sprouts have FLAVOR!
Yea, I know. Lame pun. 40 lashes with a wet noodle for me.
Check out the comic, though. It’s much funnier than my lame attempt at promoting them!
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For today’s incentive sketch, I tried to draw the poster for The Bourne Supremacy from memory. It didn’t turn out very well. The perspective is off and I’ve got some kind of contortionist thing going on with the way I have the character holding the stock of the gun.
Now the question is, are you going to vote to support Theater Hopper, or are you going to vote to see how badly I screwed up? 😉
I’m excited to see The Bourne Supremacy. The trailer released months ago sold me on it. I like the idea of a man on the run taking it straight to the front step of his pursuers. The whole “Where is he?” “Right next to you.” moment is a great cliffhanger. I’d pay the price of admission just to watch the five minutes after that revelation.
So I’m already amped to see Matt Damon portray Jason Bourne again, but I think I raised the bar a little when Cami and I decided to rent The Bourne Identity earlier this week. Can you believe we hadn’t seen this film up until now?
I guess when I looked at Identity, I saw all of these European locations and immediate thought of that OTHER Matt Damon identity/trashing about Europe flick, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I knew one film had nothing to do with the other, but I didn’t much care for Ripley and I think that’s what was keeping me away.
Still, if Supremacy is even half as good as Identity, I think we’re in for a treat. It’s like a James Bond movie without all the gimmicks. Bond is a comic book character. Bourne is rooted more in reality.
I have some other thoughts that I’ll be back with soon, but in the meantime, please visit our newest advertiser Hejhox. You gotta give points to a comic as creatively titled as that. Plus it’s funny! Tell them I sent you.
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You may not have noticed, but I’ve been quietly going back through the archives and updating all the old comics with their corresponding blogs.
Readers that have been with us longer might remember that I used to have a separate HTML page for each comic. When we switched over to archiving the comics and blogs with PHP, a lot of the blogs were dropped from the site. I had to re-enter them to get them back on the site. Over 100 comics were missing blogs.
Well, I’ve finally finished this task and it’s like a HUGE weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
I’m almost positive no one cares what I thought about Al Pacino’s performance in Simone from over a year ago. Frankly, I re-read a lot of the stuff I said when I was first starting out and laugh.
But for me, it was important to get these blogs back in action because otherwise, things just felt half-assed. I hate that feeling.
Of course, the true irony of this is after I’ve completed all this hard work, I will likely have to reformat several aspects of the blogs when I eventually switch the site design to a structure utilizing more CSS and XHTML. The PHP archives will stay in place, but XHTML gets picky when it comes to some of the tags that can be found in the behind-the-scenes scripting.
:: SWITCHING GEARS ::
Time for a little “Toot My Own Horn” moment. I learned this week that Theater Hopper was the proud winner of the “Best Environment” award as handed out by the good folks over the buzzAwards.
Basically it means that of the nominated comics, they felt Theater Hopper was the best at promoting a community atmosphere, had an easy to navigate structure and that I as the creator was accessible and accommodating.
That’s a pretty big validation. My thanks to the judges.
I think that’s about it for now. You’re probably wondering why I’ve made no mention of Catwoman yet.
Honestly, people. Why kick an Oscar winner when she’s down? That move had wavy stink lines emanating from it way back when it was still in production.
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No comic for Monday but (hopefully) you can expect one tomorrow. Where did the site go this weekend? Well, that’s a long story which I will also save for tomorrow.
In the meantime, the THorum will be disabled while I try to make order of the house. It’s nothing serious, so don’t panic. All will be revealed in time.
Thanks for your patience.
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Jul27
Sorry for the delay with the blog. Life has been pummeling this poor l’il web cartoonist as of late. I feel like Li’l Brudder!
Incidentally, I completed a new incentive sketch for buzzComix. Click here if you want to see Cami in the Catwoman costume!
What can I say about Catwoman. Not much. I haven’t seen it nor do I plan on ever seeing it. All I can say is that I have never seen so much negativity surround a film prior to, during or after production. The reviews that were handed out on this trash heap were brutal!
It’s been quite an adventure bringing Catwoman to the silver screen. Ever since they released photos of Halle Berry in that infamous S&M outfit, the fan boys have been gunning for her.
Remember back in April when they released a teaser trailer and it looked like a giant, campy joke. Then the studio came out and said it WAS a big April Fool’s Joke! Well, so much for that. The movie pretty much follows that trailer’s lead for an hour and a half.
You know, there’s a conspiracy theory going around that Warner Bros. may have INTENTIALLY tried to make a dud – SPECIFICALLY to appeal to the “so bad, it’s good” crowd mentioned in today’s comic. They had a first-time French director who previous worked in special effects, a go-nowhere plot… why not try to make it as bad as possible?
It sounds outlandish, I know. But with the V.I.P. edition of Showgirls coming out next week and VH1’s Best Week Ever celebrating the one-year anniversary of Gigli, one can help but wonder if “bad” has become the new “good”!
Well, enough about Catwoman. Time to talk about more pressing matters. Like how Theater Hopper was down for 3 days.
What happened? Well, the site was intentionally suspended sometime Saturday afternoon and it came back online about mid-morning yesterday.
Why was the site down? Still no official word from the hosting company. UNofficially, they said the THorum was taxing server resources due to all the calls it was making to the MySQL database. It was frustrating getting THAT much information from them.
My current hosting provider is undergoing some kind of internal shift and because of that, their service has really fallen behind. I don’t blame them for it. Basically, they’ve grown too big to take on all the little problems that crop up in a small business.
I can empathize to a degree, because the same thing has happened to Theater Hopper. Essentially, our THorum became so popular, we broke their server! As a result, we’ve been forced to find a new place to play.
Fortunately, one of the THorum moderators – Brian – owns a server and graciously offered to host the site for free. Can’t beat that! Brian is a really good guy, an IT professional and I totally trust him. I think after everything is settled, we can take Theater Hopper to the next evolutionary step.
So where are things now? Well, the THorum has been temporarily closed. Partially because Theater Hopper is still being hosted by my old company and we don’t want to tax the server any more than we have to. The other reason is so that I could create a full back up and transplant the community onto the NEW server without missing a beat. So that means once we’re established on Brian’s sever, THorumites will experience no lost data.
The really good news is that we’ve already moved the entire site onto Brian’s server. The site works. The archive works. The THorum works and even the advertisements work!
The really bad news is that we have to wait for my current hosting provider to transfer the DNS so it points away from their server and toward Brian’s server. Even if they took care of it today, there is still potentially a 24 to 72 period where we would wait for it to take effect. As things stand with the current hosting provider’s service backlog, it could take even longer. I’m trying to figure out a way around that, so please stick with me.
Until then, you can still expect fresh comics, blogs and incentive sketches. In fact, we’ll be back with all those goodies tomorrow. Of course, if you have any questions, you can always e-mail them to me here.
Thanks again for your patience and understanding. Things will be back to normal soon.
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