Archive for April, 2009
30 items.
Just wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day to pre-order our new shirt Spoiler Alert! After today, I’ll be sending the order to the printer. Pre-ordering now helps me to determine how large the order should be and what sizes will be most popular. So if you’re thinking about picking this up, now would be the best time!
Incidentally, I’m trying to add as many bundling options as I can for those of you who want to take advantage of a deal by ordering more than one item. There’s some pretty significant savings going on, so you might want to check out the bundled offers before placing your order!
Thanks!
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You’d think for as much as our 2 year-old son makes us watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I’d have a better idea of how to draw Mickey Mouse. I guess I was in a rush. To see Mickey as the leader of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics.
Under the branch of their new Disneynature studio, the planetary documentary Earth comes out today. I’m actually very excited to see it despite the fact that it was originally released internationally 2 years ago as an accompanying cinematic experience to the popular television series Planet Earth The series, which was shot by the BBC, aired on The Discovery Channel during that time as well.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a sucker for for animals. Maybe I fell in love the minute they played “Hoppípolla” from Sigur Ros in the trailer. Either way, it looks great. A fantastic cinematic experience.
Disney is catching a little guff from critics, believe it or not. Jesse Ellison from Newsweek suggests that the film is too harsh to be rated G because it implies (but doesn’t show) the death of a few animals at the hands at of the elements.
On the other hand, Jeffery Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere suggests that the film doesn’t go far enough and obscuring the harsh reality of nature coddles children too much.
I guess I fall somewhere in the middle. Certainly I don’t derive much entertainment value from watching wild animals die on screen. I wouldn’t seek it out. As the parent of a young child, I can see how such scenes could be upsetting.
But at the same time, I agree with Wells that you can’t shield children from everything. The challenge of being a parent isn’t measured by your ability to protect them from everything that might upset their limited world view. Rather, I feel it’s my responsibility to arm my kids with information in context so they can make sense of their own feelings and opinions to interact properly with the world at large.
But I shouldn’t presume to tell anyone how to raise their kids. Fundamentally, you have to be aware of what you think your kid can and can’t tolerate and be prepared to help them make sense of things if it’s too intense for them.
At least, that’s what my common sense tells me.
Is anyone else excited to see Earth this weekend or do you think it’s redundant 2 years after Planet Earth aired on The Discovery Channel? Are you concerned about the realities of nature being toned down or “Disney-fied” to meet the standards of being a family friendly film?
Leave your comments below!
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I almost forgot, but I wanted to give partial credit the joke in today’s comic to Steve Napierski from Dueling Analogs. I’d promise I’d give him credit and a link and didn’t want to leave him hanging.
Last night I was facing a little writer’s block and mentioned it on my Twitter page. A lot of people wrote back with great ideas, but Steve suggested “A Mickey Mousetatorship” and that got the wheels turning.
So thanks to Steve and all the other Twitter followers who helped me dislodge my writers block! The instant feedback was very helpful!
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Sometimes I like to draw things for the incentive images that are a little too risque for the regular comic. I’m particularly proud of this one! If you want to know what the fuss is about, vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics and find out!
Fatal Attraction 2: Jungle Fever, er… I mean, Obsessed was number one at the box office this weekend. In a way I’m not surprised, but I’m also kind of depressed.
If you look at the box office this weekend, you’ll notice the top 3 films – Obsessed, 17 Again and Fighting – were critical duds. Meanwhile, critically lauded films like The Soloist and Earth languish with less than $10 million.
Not that I think critics have the final say on what’s entertaining. But I think anyone with two eyes could see Obsessed looks like a Lifetime Original Movie with about $200,000 extra in it’s budget.
Cami and I saw Earth this weekend and I enjoyed it, but I also left the theater feeling slightly hoodwinked. I was aware that the film was based around the footage of the BBC documentary mini-series Planet Earth. But I guess I didn’t anticipate how much of it I would recognize from the show.
The events of the movie are somewhat re-contextualized by the narration of James Earl Jones and it was interesting to see how Disney presented the life and death struggle of the wild through the filter of the deep bond between Mother and child.
But watching the film was like experiencing some kind of echo or a dream in the back of your mind swirling around like an itch you can’t scratch.
Certainly the film is beautiful and compelling to watch. Planet Earth is credited for leading the way in the transition to high definition home entertainment. Similar to how The Matrix was credited in the advancement of DVD players in the home, if people wanted to show off their hi-def kit, Planet Earth were the go-to discs.
In that context, imagine those images on the big screen in a proper theater. It’s an impressive sight and a welcome one. In the future, I sincerely hope Disney continues to pursue large-scale nature films like this in theaters. Despite the ways in which our world becomes smaller every day, there are still unexplored corners that need to be shared. I only hope that, next time, their hard work doesn’t leave you with that deja vu feeling.
We’ll be talking about Earth, Obsessed and more tonight on The Triple Feature. We’re recording live at 9:00 PM CST at Talkshoe.com. Please join us won’t you?
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It was brought to my attention that there was an error on the Store > Bundle page. People trying to order the One Book, One Shirt bundle were being charged for One Book and TWO Shirts! Not cool on my part. My sincere apologies.
I wanted to let everyone know that the error has been fixed and you can now place an order for One Book and One Shirt at a discounted price of $25.00. That’s $5.00 off!
Thanks!
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If you’re at all familiar with the real-time schadenfreude generator FMyLife.com, you’ll know that they’ve recently started accepting artist submissions for illustrated versions of some of their most famous tales of woe.
I noticed the boys from Cyanide and Happiness threw their hat into the ring with their contribution and I could stay my hand no longer!
I wrote to F My Life and offered my services and it looks like I’m clear for take off! They’ll be publishing my comic sometime in mid-May.
The only thing I have to do now is pick a story to illustrate. Obviously, one about movies would be the initial choice. But I was curious if anyone here keeps up with the site and if they might be willing to suggest one of their favorites?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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I’ve gone a little blog crazy today. Sorry about that. But I wanted to tell you about a new/old feature I’ve added back to the site. I say “old,” because this is something we had before we brought the site into WordPress earlier in the year. I’ve been shopping around for just the right plugin and I think I’ve found it.
What am I talking about? Why, comic ranking of course!
Now you can let us know how you feel about any comic in the archive by ranking it on a handy scale of 1 to 10. Some of my web comic buddies told me “Tom, you’re nuts! You should never let your readers pass judgment on you in this way!”
But I say “Hooey!” We did it once before and it worked out great! Were there a few comics that I liked that were poorly ranked? Sure! But it didn’t diminish the reasons *I* found them funny. And besides, why shouldn’t you have a say?
The previous ranking application bore unexpected fruit. It helped me to pick which comics to put into our Top 25 Sampler Booklet which is something I use to introduce people to Theater Hopper at conventions every year!
By the way, did you know you can now purchase a copy of the booklet? I put it up in the store a few weeks ago and it’s only $3.00! It’s a great way to introduce new readers to the comic and it includes a brief paragraph with commentary for each strip – just to frame it in context a little.
Who knows… Now that we have the ranking system back, I might have to do a second edition of the booklet!
If you’ve got nothing better going on, take a little time to comb through the archives and pick out your favorite strips. Rank them to get the ball rolling. The search bar is returning more robust results every day. Just type in a few search terms to find your favorite strips!
Enjoy!
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Hey, guys. If you have a minute or two, swing over to Juanmanimation – a really cool animation blog that belongs to Juan Manuel. Juan left a comment on Monday’s comic and that’s how I got clued in to it.
Juan has a very entertaining retro style and he’s thrown in a few movie references in his work I’m sure you guys will love. I was especially enamored with this one:
That’s the kind of idea I would have killed to come up with. Brilliant.
Sometimes I regret not going to animation school…
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Not to start things on a down note, but I have a couple of problems with X-Men Origins: Wolverine and this issue that Cami brings up in today’s comic is probably the least radioactive among them.
As someone who firmly believes that too many mutants spoiled the broth on X-Men 3, it doesn’t please me to see so many mutants in what is supposed to be a Wolverine origin story.
Granted, Marvel has woven our favorite sawed-off runt into some of the biggest historical events of the last 100 years and he always seems to be running into someone we know from the larger comic universe.
But I think there is potential for overkill when you try to cram all of these relationships into a two hour movie and not over the course of months or years of storytelling like they do in the comics.
Wolverine’s history is complicated enough. Why complicated it further by distracting us with characters we don’t care about?
I think it makes sense to include Sabretooth in Logan’s past and I think it’s smart to include Deadpool as well. But Gambit’s just in there because they couldn’t squeeze him into X-3. And The Blob? Seriously? The Blob? What does he have to do with any of this? Combine this with cameos from younger versions of Cyclops and Emma Frost and it becomes a mutated mess.
Lastly, put whoever cast Will.I.Am in this movie on the phone right now. They’re fired.
Now it’s very possible that these characters won’t be featured prominently and their impact on the overall story will be insignificant.
But if that’s the case, why is Fox cutting TV spots for nearly every last one of them?…
Was there anyone on the fence about this movie who said to themselves, “Yeah, I don’t know if I want to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But know that I know Fred J. Dukes is in it, I HAVE to go!”
To me, it’s symbolic of Fox’s wasteful, over-saturated marketing strategy. Between those 8 spots, I already feel like I’ve already seen the whole damn movie! How about leaving something for the theater, Fox?
I could probably go on – and on Friday, it’s likely that I will – but I want to leave it at that for now. By the way, if you noticed the series of 10-star graphics in the sidebar on the way down, that’s the list of Top 10 comics here on the site as voted by you, the readers. I added a new ranking plugin on Monday and a few of you have been going through the archives ranking your favorite comics. Don’t agree with the list? Rank a few comics of your own!
In the meantime, how are you feeling about X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Are you excited for it or do you think it has been over-hyped? Do you think anyone will even remember this movie after the reboot of Star Trek comes out next week? Does it matter so long as you get to see Hugh Jackman without his shirt on in a couple of scenes?
Leave your comments below!
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It occurred to me that I forgot to upload the incentive image I normally use to bribe you into voting for me over at Top Web Comics. So it makes sense that I should maybe get on that. I’ve uploaded the image and you can view it when you vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics.
For those of you who felt hoodwinked by Monday’s incentive “surprise,” you’ll be pleased to know that Wednesday’s incentive image is just a straight-up action shot of Wolverine. Scout’s Honor.
I’ve created an image to go with the blog that will help the link to Top Web Comics stand out more. The idea will be to change the image behind the check mark for each new incentive sketch so you get a little preview when it updates.
Top Web Comics has an option to use a text link that displays the comic ranking. You can see I’ve made room for it on the image but I haven’t figured out how to code that in just yet. Here’s the link if anyone is interested: http://topwebcomics.com/rankimages/plaintext.aspx?comicid=6537 I’m trying to figure out if size, color and placement of the rank number can be controlled with CSS. If anyone has any bright ideas, leave your comments below!
Thanks!
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