Posts Tagged ‘escape’
9 items.
Feb14
I realize today’s comic isn’t fall down funny, but I needed a way to set the scene back to the present so everyone knew Cami and Charlie were still stuck in the bathroom.
We’re nearing the home stretch, folks. Expect to see Cami and Charlie free from their water house prison by the end of the week. Give me another week for a little recap and we’re onto more topical humor!
Incidentally, I got a lot of positive feedback for last Friday’s comic. People really seem to like it when I bash Ben Affleck around. Is it possible that I may actually start feeling sorry for the guy? I mean, he gets beat up A LOT in this comic.
…
NAH!
Truthfully, I should do a comic where Ben Affleck gets beat up in new an imaginative ways each week and have that be the concept. For as much positive feedback I get when I do it, I gather it would be the most popular thing on the web.
At any rate, this is a good opportunity to mention that the artwork that was used in that splash panel of last Friday’s comic is actually up for auction. So if you ever wanted to own an original piece of artwork by yours truly, here’s your chance.
The auction ends on Friday, so step up to the plate now and blow away the competition with an awesome bid that will leave the competition to cry to Mommy.
Cami and I saw Hitch this weekend. Normally, I have a very low tolerance for Will Smith movies. ESPECIALLY when he’s in action hero mode. I didn’t like him in Independence Day or I, Robot pretty much for the same reason I didn’t enjoy Bruce Willis as an action hero in the early Die Hard days. Too glib. Too cocky. I couldn’t relate.
That aside, romantic-comedy Will Smith is one charming bastard. Despite a little too much monloguing about love and the effects there-of, I found myself really enjoying the film. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they filmed in a lot of “off-the-beaten-path” locales in New York City. Watching the movie made me want to go back there in the worst way. I love that town.
And speaking of New York City, did you know there is a really excellent web comic about life in that fair metropolis? It’s a little obtuse in and of the fact that it stars an Alien and Predator action figure, so you think it’s going to be about one thing, when it’s really about another. But what is irrefutable is that the comic is drop-down hilarious and altogether brilliant. It’s Alien Loves Predator and you need to check it out.
Actually, the thrid panel of today’s comic kind of reminded me of something I did a while ago, and I thought that was really cool. I think Bernie did it better.
Now how’s THAT for a seuge way?!
I still haven’t had a chance to color in that Constantine artwork I did for a February’s desktop wallpaper. Which means since I haven’t replaced the Elektra wallpaper that I can’t do the raffle to see who walks home with the original art. I don’t know when I can get to it, but hopefully soon.
Anyway, I just want to remind people that I’m composing these original works as incentive for you to buy stuff, donate or advertise with us. Anyone who gives Theater Hopper money for ANYTHING in the course of a given month will have their name put into a raffle to win some original artwork. All the details are at the bottom of the Walk of Fame page if you want the skinny. At the end of the year, I’m going to take all of the artwork and pull it together for a great 2006 calendar. Cool, eh?
I was going to talk a little bit about how I’ve been dreaming about redesigning the site. The layout would remain pretty similar, but I’m getting tired of the dark grey color scheme. I’m thinking of something brighter and, frankly, something where the elements fit a little better together. I’ve been practicing my skills in cascading style sheets and sketching out rough ideas, so maybe someday soon you’ll come back to the site and it will have a whole new paint job!
I think I’m going to end with that. I’m a little tired of typing now. Ta!
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I floated the concept of this comic to Cami late last night and her response – her exact words were, “So, the premise of the comic is that you would rather fly to Korea than see a movie with your wife?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “Yeah.”
So I’ll be sleeping on the couch for a month…
Naw, I kid. Cami takes this stuff in stride. Although, I always feel a little dodgey representing our relationship in the comic as duplicitous or cruel. We kid around, naturally. But we don’t make it a habit of lying to one another.
Comedic license and all that. I’m sure you guys understand!
After nearly 4 years since her last movie (an eternity in Hollywood years) Jennifer Lopez has returned with The Back-Up Plan. If you don’t know the plot, it centers around a women in her 40’s (Lopez) who can’t find “The One” (uhhh, sure) and who conceives twins through artificial insemination.
Later, she meets the man of her dreams and the film explores the stages of a relationship as they develop completely out of sequence.
I pretty much checked-out on the concept of this movie after viewing the trailer. In which, there is a scene where Lopez walks with her knees locked together, presumably after visiting the insemination clinic, to keep the business from falling out.
As a dude, I don’t know how everything works down there, ladies. But I’m pretty much 99.9% sure you wouldn’t have to walk like that after having the procedure. Maybe the reason Lopez’s character hasn’t met “The One” yet is because she is an out-and-out moron.
I asked Cami if she was at all interested in seeing this movie and she thinks it looks stupid. Instead, we’re going to take Henry to see Disney’s Oceans and see how that goes over instead. We saw Disney’s Earth last year and even though it was put together from recycled footage from The Discovery Channel’s series Planet Earth, it was still a marvel to see on the big screen.
Henry is very funny about movies when we suggest them to him. If we ask him if he wants to see a movie or watch a DVD, he automatically says “No. I hate movies.” As you can imagine, this breaks my heart. But, you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. Henry is a very determined little child and doesn’t entertain distractions very well.
Say, for example, Henry wants to go outside. It doesn’t matter if you asked him if he wanted a piece of candy instead of going outside. He’d still turn you down and say he hated candy because he is so focused on that ONE THING he wants.
He’ll be fine once we plop him down in the theater. We’ve taken him to a few films now and he never has a problem sitting through them. We’re looking forward to it.
At some point, I’m need to see Kick-Ass. I didn’t get a chance to check it out when I was in Chicago last weekend for C2E2. I’ve talked to some friends that were over the moon for it and I’ve talked to some friends that say the third act pretty much betrays the concept established by the first two-thirds of the movie. I think my expectations are in check, but I still want to see it.
Not much news, otherwise. Settling into a groove since coming back from the show. I’m slowly putting all of my shirts and books back into storage.
I have a plan for updating the Theater Hopper store in the near future either using the Magento or Open Cart shopping cart interface. I haven’t decided which. Once that happens, you should be able to buy a few new items including Theater Hopper: Year Three, a new shirt and a set of five 1″ buttons that I designed for the show. All good stuff.
Of course, this can only happen once I’ve shipped off everything for the people who preordered Year Three. They’re my priority right now. All the envelopes are addressed and packed up. Some are ready to be shipped. Some still need custom artwork. I need to develop a schedule for that so I can get those books out the door. I’m about a month behind where I want to be with that. Not good.
But, yeah. That’s my life right now. Thanks for swinging by the site today. Does anyone have aspirations to see The Back-Up Plan this weekend? If so, you’re braver than I. Lemme know your thoughts and feelings in the comments section and I will catch up with you soon!
Cheers!
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Cardboard Thor! I bet you didn’t see THAT ONE coming, didja?
Well, maybe you did. You guys are a pretty perceptive lot.
Although I’m sure some of you are wondering why Jared didn’t got with Tom and Cami to see The Avengers at the same time. I actually thought up a reason for that. I was going to make a comic about it, but then I realized it wasn’t funny.
Basically, it involved confusion about what time they were supposed to me. Tom said 7:15 and Jared thought it was 8:15. Y’see? Not really funny? Besides, I got the whole “casual conversation inside a burning building joke” done with this comic. No need to drag it out.
I have to apologize for there not being a new comic from me last week. It’s inexcusable, but allow me to explain.
Cami and I went on a little vacation the week before last to Chicago. We got back last Tuesday. Then last Wednesday was July 4. Then I pretty much spent the rest of last week getting caught up on work and life. So, no comic.
I’m starting to wonder if I’m self-sabotaging a little bit. I’ve been producing Theater Hopper almost 10 years and for 98% of that time, I never missed deadlines. If I did, I always made it up with an extra comic or at least a better explanation than “We went on vacation! Hurrr!”
Now that the comic is supposed to be ending in a month, I’m blowing deadlines left and right. It’s not acceptable and it’s not the way I want to go out.
I’ve been trying to hit a Monday deadline each week and that hasn’t been working out so great. The comic ends in a month and I think I have WAY more than 4 comics left in me in order to bring this last story across the finish line.
So here’s the thing: I’m throwing the Monday “deadline” out the window and I’m going to try and update as often as I can leading up to August 6. If I make it to August 6 with the story completely told, that’s great. All’s well that ends well. But if I go a little long… well, there are worse things that can happen, right?
The point is, from today forward, be sure to check the site frequently. With any luck, updates are going to be coming a lot faster. And don’t forget the guest strips I’ll be tossing in from time to time!
By the way, if you still want to get in on that action, I’m still accepting guest strips. Feel free to e-mail me what you’ve got to theaterhopper@hotmail.com and help me send Theater Hopper out in style!
In the meantime, make sure you don’t miss an update by following me on Twitter or Facebook. I know that sounds a little counter-intuitive since I’m ending the comic soon, but I intend to keep updating those accounts.
The Twitter account is my “main” Twitter account anyway and I’m pretty likely to continue sharing movie news, thoughts and reactions on the Facebook page.
That’s it for now. Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoyed the comic!
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Thor has a big hammer, right? Breaking a giant pane of glass shouldn’t be a problem for the God of Thunder.
We’ll see.
I don’t know why, but I’m still amused by people in cardboard costumes having a casual conversation while a roaring blaze nearly engulfs them. It’s basically the height of hubris. The “we’ve got this” attitude Tom is wearing right now… I dunno. I’m just really enjoying it.
I’m going to try and get another comic done this week, but I’ve been lousy about holding up my promises so far. So let’s just say if I get it done, everyone will be pleasantly surprised.
SIDEBAR: I received an e-mail from Amazon last week notifying me that they were closing my vendor account due to “inactivity.”
My vendor account is what I used to put my books up for sale through Amazon. Right now I have two copies of Theater Hopper: Year One and Theater Hopper: Year Two in their warehouses.
In their e-mail, they said I could either request to have my books sent back to me (at my expense) or they would destroy them. They were really black and white about it and it kind of bummed me out.
I was flirting with the idea of having them be destroyed. Mostly because I’m cheap and I didn’t want to pay the shipping. But also because it kind of felt like a failure to send your books to Amazon and for them to say “Yeah, we don’t want these anymore.”
Of course, in the end, I opted to have my books sent back to me. I don’t know what the cost will be yet, but it’s the right thing to do. I’m not big on destroying books – especially books I put my heart and soul into.
Selling my books on Amazon was never really a moneymaker for me, anyway. It was more a point of pride – a way for me to look at the accomplishment of self-publishing and saying “See?! SEE?! It’s in a store.”
Okay, yeah. An online store. But still a store.
It doesn’t matter. I always sold more books through my store and at conventions anyway.
Anyway, long story short… we all know the comic is ending soon and I’m still sitting on, like… A LOT of inventory.
I have mostly odds and ends when it comes to the shirts, but I’d like to get rid of everything, if I can. I have many more books to get rid of, though. And, frankly, they take up way more space.
I don’t have inventory numbers right now on the books. I’m hoping to count them out sometime this weekend. I can say that of the three books, I probably have less than 100 of Theater Hopper: Year One. Maybe less than 75. If you want one, now’s the time to get it.
Don’t forget that I’m offering a BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE promotion. That applies to books, shirts and books and shirts together. Buy a Spoiler shirt, Theater Hopper: Year One and get a third item of your choice absolutely free!
Get your holiday shopping done early this year. You’ll be helping out a struggling artist and you’ll look very sharp and ahead of the game at the same time.
I’ll leave it at that for now. Just wanted to remind you guys that this merch was out there.
Again, thanks for your support and I’ll follow up with you soon!
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Yeah, so it looks like Jared’s Mjölnir wasn’t forged from Uru metal after all.
Pity about that.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Theater Hopper can’t end on August 6 like I originally anticipated. That’s okay. You’re probably okay with it, too. At least, I assume you’re okay with it?
Maybe I shouldn’t assume…
The point being that I have a handful of comics I need to produce to get Tom, Cami and Jared out of the theater before I do the final coda and there’s no way I can get there before August 6.
Incidentally, WHY HASN’T TOM AND JARED’S COSTUMES CAUGHT ON FIRE YET?
Movie magic, folks!
Switching gears, I (like many of you) saw The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend. Actually, I took Friday afternoon off from work so I could avoid the crowds and catch it in IMAX – something I rarely ever do.
I was talking to someone about the urgency I felt to see The Dark Knight Rises. For example, it didn’t bother me that I saw The Amazing Spider-Man a week after it came out. But I was gonna be damned if anyone was going to spoil The Dark Knight Rises for me!
Of course it’s nearly impossible to talk about The Dark Knight Rises at this point without mentioning the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. Pundits have been crawling all over the aftermath of the senseless violence committed by James Holmes.
What upsets me most about it is that – to me – a movie theater is a sacred place. Quite honestly, it’s as close as I get to religion. It’s a safe place. An ensconce from the horrors of the real world. Like a lot of people, I go to the movies to get out of my head for a few hours, to put the rest of the world behind me. The victims of Aurora were punished for this. For watching a movie. It’s senseless and cruel under any circumstance. But it hits especially close to home for me.
I had a few people express concern about me going to see the movie in light of the tragedy. They feared copycat crimes. It’s a reasonable concern, I suppose. But I also felt determined not to let one lunatic with a gun dictate the terms of my life. So I went.
I’m glad I did. The Dark Knight Rises is a fantastic movie, richly layered, dense and rewarding. It doesn’t feel as long as its 165 minute run time would lead you to believe. It moves along at a solid clip.
At times I almost felt like the movie could have been split into two chapters to help flesh out some of the plot contrivances. Without getting into spoilers, characters show up at the most serendipitous times for the most implausible reasons. I can suspend disbelief, but leaning too heavily on “Because he’s Batman!” doesn’t always ring true – especially within the down-to-Earth environment Christopher Nolan has established in his films.
In the aggregate, however, I think Nolan’s three films work beautifully together. There are callbacks to the previous two films inside The Dark Knight Rises that reward those who have paid attention without winking or clubbing the audience over the head with “Hey, remember this? You liked this in the last movie, didn’t you?”
Long story short – if you’ve invested any time or thought in the previous two Batman films, you owe it to yourself to check out The Dark Knight Rises. Ultimately I think it’s one of the great movie trilogies. These films, their independent themes and the overarching themes are going to be discussed and dissected for years to come.
The Dark Knight Rises is a movie that sticks with you. I’m still thinking about it five days later – the hallmark of any good film. Having seen it in IMAX, I’m eager to see it again on a regular movie screen. As impressive as the movie was in that format, I think seeing it a second time will give me an opportunity to pick up on more of the nuances. And – call me optimistic – but I think it’ll play better the second time around, too.
That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned as the next few comics detail the final escape from the burning theater!
See you soon!
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Well, here it is. The comic I spent the better part of last week working on in fits and starts. DO YOU LOVE IT? IS IT EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED?
I fall into these unusual traps. Sometime I spend a lot of time working on a comic and while I’m in the middle of it think, “This is great! This is excellent!” I’m liking the poses, I’m liking the line work, I’m liking the shading and the coloring…
Then I lay down the dialogue, take a step back and think, “So that’s it, then? That’s all?”
Artists are their own worst critics, so I’m certain this is not a unique phenomenon. It just kind of sucks when you invest a large chunk of time into something, maintaining a certain level of excitement throughout the process and the minute you have a moment to step back from it, the end product isn’t exactly what you envisioned.
I don’t know. I think it’s still a great panel. But it just kind of sits there. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself.
At any rate, I’m very much looking forward not to include fire effects in these comics again anytime soon. And I have a joke in mind for next week’s comic – a nice visual gag. I’m confident it will work.
Thanks for being patient, guys. We’re zeroing in on the end now.
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After several weeks, Tom, Cami and Jared have finally escaped the burning theater. It looks kind of bad, doesn’t it? That’s a lot of fire.
One thing that I enjoyed most about this part of the store is that Jared and Tom are walking around in a building ENGULFED by fire, wearing cardboard boxes and being completely casual about it.
The truth of the matter was, having the costumes catch on fire during those strips seemed like an unnecessary pit stop. I thought it would be funnier if I used it to punctuate their escape.
Tom has a pretty poor record record when it comes to maintaining these cardboard costumes of him. So far he’s three for three. You think he’d pick a better construction material.
Things are starting to wind down now. We’ll deal with the ramifications of the theater fire in the next few strips. After that, who knows?
Sorry for these persistent delays. I keep trying to add more to the comics and they’re taking longer and longer for me to do. As I noted on Twitter earlier in the week, if this comic was in black and white, you would have had it on Monday! Funny, right?
As it is, I stayed up until 2:00 am last night putting the finishing touches on this strip. The shading, the lighting, the effects. I had to figure out what the outside of the theater looked like for a background shot that will never be used again.
Efficiency at it’s finest!
More comics to come. Thanks for your patience!
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You want to know how long I’ve been writing this storyline? It started before The Avengers was in theaters and continues now that The Avengers has come out on Blu-ray. That’s a long time!
I received my copy of The Avengers in the mail yesterday and I was pretty psyched about it. I haven’t watched it yet partially because I was still working on this comic. But also because Cami has been eager to rewatch it and this week has just been hell.
Do you ever have one of those weeks where your professional commitments keep you from seeing your spouse or loved ones? Yeah, that’s the kind of week we’re having. Cami had two events she had to go to on Monday and Tuesday night, I have an event I have to go to this evening. At this point, we’re tasking the kids with relaying messages to one another like carrier pigeons.
Looking over the 4-disc copy of The Avengers I got, I was pretty impressed with all of the extras. Not only do you get the Blu-ray, but you get the 3D Blu-ray, DVD and digital version. If you go online and register a code, you can also download the soundtrack for free, get a copy of a digital comic and send away for a free 18 x 24″ poster.
This is what the poster looks like, by the way:
And people are complaining about Marvel getting into bed with Disney??
At the time Amazon was offering preorders, they were charging $30 for the whole thing. But I found a coupon online that shaved $5 off the price. I thought I was pretty smart grabbing the whole thing for $25. I mean, that’s a lot of content!
Although yesterday evening I saw that Amazon was now selling the 4-disc set for $19.99 and that pissed me off a little bit. Heard from a reader, though, that Amazon was going to refund the difference under the lowest price preorder guarantee, or whatever.
Look, I’m just saying that for $20, you could do a hell of a lot worse. If you haven’t ordered your copy of The Avengers yet, use my link. I get a kickback. 😉
It took me way too long to produce this comic, I realize. I spoke about it on Monday when I published Indigo’s guest strip. Basically, the details I’m trying to force into this arc are killing me. I literally spent an hour last night trying to figure out what the wall Victor broke through was going to look like. I was getting so desperate, I was considering buying a stock photo. Finding reference shots for this kind of stuff is HARD.
In the end, I untangled the knot of Christmas tree lights in my head and produced a solution. Although, in hindsight, I don’t think all of that fussing necessarily produced the best result. But, hey! I’m trying, right?
So, is Victor alive? Is he dead? Did he use his last ounce of brute strength to break through a cinder block wall to escape the fire? Find out soon in the next exciting episode of… THEATER HOPPER!
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You probably didn’t think it was going to happen did you? The updates are getting farther and farther apart, I know.
I feel like the last couple of weeks have been moving so quickly. Illness, public speaking, lots of distractions. But I’ve already penciled the comic after this one. I keep trying to make up ground.
As you can see, we’ve skipped ahead three months into the final arc of the comic. In a way, I’m relieved that I can go back to drawing “talking heads” against their usual backdrops, wearing their usual costumes without having to add layers and layers of smoke, fire and lighting effects.
In another way, I’m profoundly sad – and I think you know why.
I probably have about 5 or 6 comics left in me. That doesn’t sound like much. But as things have been going, that probably puts me on pace to wrap things up by the end of the year.
I know I said I’d end the comic on August 6. That didn’t happen. But wrapping things up in December feels okay to me, too. I tend to put a lot of personal emphasis on the end of the year and the sea change emotionally it seems to conjure in me. So the sense that I’m closing a chapter in the Book of My Life will likely feel more profound.
So anyway, that’s all I have for now. More comics on the horizons. A few more jokes to tell. Oh, and before it’s all over, you’ll find out where Charlie and Jimmy end up.
Thanks again for your patience. Happy Halloween!
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