Apologies for the cut and paste job on today’s comic. But to be completely truthful, I spent most of the day in front of my computer writing my final paper for my Master’s research class. In fact, I took the day off from work to do it. By the time I was supposed to start working on the comic, I had a little trouble with the thought of sitting there for too much longer.

I don’t know how that’s any different than me sitting in front of a computer monitor at work for 8 hours and then coming home to do a comic. But maybe it has something to do with the location. Too much time in a tiny room ends up with you approaching Jack Torrence levels of crazy.

To make it up to you, I drew a pretty picture of Tom firing a phaser from Star Trek. To see it, vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics. And in case you’re not catching the reference Tom is making to the slinky dress and the green body paint, that was a sexual escapade introduced in last Friday’s comic.

Incidentally, regarding my research project, you guys knocked it out of the park when you came to bat for me by filling out those surveys. When all was said and done, almost 700 of you completed the survey! To keep that in perspective, during a round table discussion our class had about our research projects, many people were coming back with about 10 to 20 respondents for their surveys. You guys blew them out of the water. Even my professor was impressed!

So, at this point, I have to wait and see if she finds the paper that explains the research compelling. I felt like I wrote a pretty good paper. 9 pages, 3,000 words… respectable. Cami read it and she thought it made sense. Of course, by that point, it was due in an hour. I wasn’t going to be making any changes then!

I think what I found most interesting in the results is that the overwhelming majority of you – 82% – did not believe a background in film or journalism was a requirement to be a “legitimate” film critic. 81% of you felt that online reviews were no more or less credible than their print counter parts. In fact, nearly 8% of you felt that online reviews were MORE credible than print reviews.

That’s good news for me, but it makes me think about the traditional film critics who complain that online film criticism has devalued the art form. Turns out, education or background isn’t something the audience cares about.

The battle between traditional and online critics, to me, is very similar to the battle between syndicated cartoonists and web cartoonists. There’s all this finger pointing going on. One side says the other is devaluing the art form and if they had and “real” talent, they would have been able to make a name for themselves through traditional, “legitimate” print media. The other side points fingers back saying those in traditional media are behind the times and are clutching too tightly to their meal ticket instead of figuring out a way to monetize their talents in new media.

Less face it: Print is on it’s last legs right now. But of all the people losing their jobs, I would think film critics would have the easiest time cultivating an audience online. They’re afraid of starting over. That’s justifiable. But if their position is that only “legitimate” critics are good enough to make it in the world of print, let’s throw them into the global melting pot that is the internet and see the cream rise to the top.

Either you’re very talented and can attract your own audience or you’re a big fish in a little pond screaming bloody murder when the pond starts drying up. Better swim downstream into bigger waters before you get caught at the bottom of a dried up pond. That’s my advice.

Is there any interest from you guys in reading “The Value of Film Criticism Compared to the Decline of Print and the Rise of Online Publishing?” If so, let me know in the comments. Maybe I can upload it to the server later tonight and you guys can look it over for fun. That is, if your idea of reading a research paper is “fun.”

Not much else for discussion today. I pretty much exhausted all there was to say about Star Trek on Monday’s The Triple Feature.

In case you didn’t have a chance to listen to the show, I strongly encourage you to download it. We had a really good conversation about Star Trek as well as the teaser trailer for District 9 that was floating around last week. We didn’t completely see eye-to-eye on Star Trek, but I thought we got some interesting discussion out of it.

Just as a reminder, you can subscribe to The Triple Feature through iTunes. You can either search for us by name on through the iTunes store, or you can use this link. You can also subscribe to The Triple Feature’s RSS feed.

Just making things easier for you!

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you here again on Friday!