Posts Tagged ‘theater’
17 items.
If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you probably caught my announcement yesterday about celebrating my 10th wedding anniversary with Cami. And, if you didn’t, well… you are now!
It’s difficult for me to talk about the anniversary without sounding like I’m bragging or too proud. But, darn it… I’m proud! 10 years is a big deal and worth celebrating. I think it’s cool that I’m able to share it with so many people.
Cami and I have actually been together a lot longer than 10 years. The wedding anniversary is just the celebration of a legal document. In fact, we’ve been together for 15 years – almost half our lives. We were high school sweethearts and we married 5 years to the day of our first date. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s cool.
But, of course, I love it when dates and stuff like that line up neatly. I think it’s awesome that Cami and I got married in 2000. Not only because of symbolism of starting a new life together in a new millennium. But it means I can always do some simple math if I ever forget how many years we’ve been together when I’m old and senile. “Lessee… It’s 2056 and we were married in 2000… So that means we’ve been married… 56 YEARS!”
I’m telling you, fellas, it’s a bulletproof plan. Maybe I’m a closeted numerologist, or something. More likely, I suck at math and need all the help I can get!
To celebrate our anniversary last night, Cami and I recruited my parents to babysit Henry and Pearl and we had a very nice meal at a restaurant we love. We had the best time just talking, eating and sharing a bottle of wine. Afterwords, we ran an errand at Target and got a car wash. We joked about it. “What did you do on your 10th wedding anniversary?” “Oh, we got a car wash.”
We we were younger, we used to fantasize about our 10th wedding anniversary. We vaguely planned to go to Hawaii to celebrate. Of course, we had kids and I lost my job last summer. Then our oven crapped out on us last month, so we decided to buy a new oven and count that as our anniversary present for each other.
It sounds unglamorous on paper, but it’s not. It’s representational of how we’ve built a life together, how sometimes plans change and you go with the flow as best you can. How you grow, adjust and learn. If you’re lucky and you’ve picked the right person, hard times are never really hard. And you become a better person because you have someone to share these things with.
Cami makes me a better person and I’m having a blast being married to her.
Happy 10th anniversary, Cami. Here’s to 10 more… and 10 more after that… and 10 more after that.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of eager to get Tom, Jared and Cami out of that burning theater. Not just because they’re my characters, or whatever. But because I’m sick to death of fire, smoke and lighting effects! I takes a fortnight to put these comics together!
I’m not kidding, people. I’ve been working on this comic in fits and starts since Thursday. I hope it shows, but I honestly can’t tell anymore.
I’ve had a few people ask me if we’d get another chance to see Truman again before the comic ended. This comic is my response to that.
Is it unreasonable to assume that a dog can dress himself in a Hawkeye costume, learn archery and saves three people? No less unreasonable than a dog who can fly a bi-plane.
That Truman. He’s full of secret talents.
After today, things will start winding down for the comic in earnest. I’ve got the last few strips plotted out. Maybe 5 or 6 left. Depends how desperately I cling to them. Next week was SUPPOSED to be the last comic. That’s not happening because I didn’t plan things out right. But that’s okay. Consider it bonus material.
I just thoroughly bummed myself out. I think I’m going to leave it there.
But, hey! Dog in a Hawkeye costume! Nothing more adorable than that!
See you in a week or so!
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Better late than never, right? That should become Theater Hopper’s official motto at this point.
Last week I was out of town attending a conference in Portland. So first let me say this: Portlandia? I totally get it now.
More germaine to the conversation however, is that I’ve been trying to catch up with my life all off this week. My wife, the kids, work, social obligations, taped episodes of Big Brother – all of it. It’s been a very hectic week. Basically penciled one night, inked the next night, colored a third night and did shading and lettering last night. UGH. I suck.
I don’t have much to say about the comic other that it was important to establish what happened to Jimmy. Soon we’ll find out what happened to Victor. The chess pieces are being moved into place. Checkmate is inevitable. In less than a few comics, we’ll be dealing with the aftermath and that’ll be it it – all she wrote.
Help me out and share this comic with your friends. Y’know… on account of the lateness. If you could tell them “Hey, Theater Hopper’s ending soon. Better get in on the action before it’s took late!” that would be awesome.
Thanks again to everyone for their patience. These last few months have been a long, hard slog for me. I really don’t want to let go. It’s painful, but it has to be done.
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So, last week, there was no comic. And this week is more than half way over and… well, here’s the comic.
Uggggh.
I’m sorry, you guys. I really am. When I set out to wrap the comic up, I vowed to myself I wasn’t going to become “that guy.” You know the guy. The guy who does 3 comics a week for 8 years, then once a week for a couple of years and then updates comics on a “whenever” basis. I hate that guy and I’m slowly becoming him.
I hate it.
Part of the delay has been life stuff. Things I just can’t get around anymore. Part of it is the complexity of the comics I’m putting together in the home stretch. It’s just not talking heads anymore. And with all the texturing and effects… it’s taking a lot of time.
But I thought of something else this week – something lurking in my subconscious – that I failed to recognize until now.
I’m starting to think that the closer I get to the end of the comic – and believe me, we’re getting very close now – something in my subconscious is making me put things off. I talked about it a little bit on Twitter and a few people wrote me to say “Then don’t end it!” But that’s not the real issue. The comic has to end. I’m just making excuses and getting in my own way.
At any rate, the next comic is a large single panel and will likely be the last appearance of Victor. Having realized the damage that he’s done, Victor is now on the run. Get your hankies out. I’m a little bit sad thinking about it.
Hopefully, it won’t take me nearly two weeks to produce.
Thanks again for your patience, everyone. We’re almost to the finish line.
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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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I didn’t post a new comic last week and I feel bad about that. But I’m also actually kind of glad I didn’t.
Something interesting happened this week and I don’t know if you saw it, but it was certainly relevant to the situation I find myself in, as we head into the home stretch toward Theater Hopper’s conclusion.
I’m not certain how much of our audience overlaps, but this week Tim Buckley decided to reboot his long-running gaming comic Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Tim and I started roughly the same time. We socialized a little at the beginning, but it wasn’t long after that his comic took off.
Tim’s kind of an odd cat in webcomics. He has an enormous following, but he’s a bit of a pariah among creators. I’ve never had a personal problem with the guy, but I’ve heard the stories about him and they’re kind of hard to ignore. So on Tuesday when Scott Kurtz, Dave Kellet, Brad Guigar and Kris Straub reassembled to produce a new episode of Webcomics Weekly to discuss Tim’s decision, the armchair analysis and schadenfreude were in full bloom.
I can’t quite articulate what it was about their recording that hit home for me, but a lot of what they expressed was immediately recognizable to me. There was a lot of talk about being burnt out, about maturing, about moving beyond the gag-a-day format and shedding the pursuit of persistent updates to generate revenue from advertising networks that don’t really pay out anymore.
I was listening and nodding my head the entire time.
I don’t know what’s going on right now, but I’m detecting this weird sea change in regards to web comics. Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I’m in the middle of it, but I’m hearing a lot of talk about ditching the traditional models, about moving into new territories.
I kind of consider myself to have caught the tail end of the “First Wave” of webcomics. Most of the big name web comics established themselves between 1998 and 2000 by people that wanted to be cartoonists but couldn’t get the time of day from the syndicates. Theater Hopper came along in 2002. So basically, I’m one of those people who looked at webcomics and said “I’ve never submitted to a syndicate, but I’ve always enjoyed cartooning and this looks viable.”
I don’t know. Maybe I’m Second Wave. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All I know is that 10 years in the game is a long time and it was comforting to know that other creators have struggled with the same issues, have the same thoughts and are afraid about throwing away the brand they’ve built up over the course of the “career.”
Now Tim didn’t exactly throw his comic away. His stripped it down. He got rid of what he thought wasn’t working and says he’s going to go back to more gag-a-day style comics about gaming. Some people have asked me why I don’t do the same thing with Theater Hopper – dump the stuff that I don’t think is working or is too time-intensive.
I know that I’ve expressed it before, but I never wanted to leave Theater Hopper in a “less than” position. In other words, having elevated the comic to a certain level from a time-investment standpoint and being unable to keep pace with it any longer, stripping things away from it for the sake of efficiency doesn’t feel fair to me. Fair for the audience, I mean.
For me – as much as it hurts to do it – letting Theater Hopper go is the best thing for it. That’s why it was important for me to communicate my goals for the last year of the comic – so that you guys knew what was going on and understood. More than anything else with these last few comics, I want to convey the idea that these characters will “be okay.” It’s as much for you as it is for me. Because I’ll be sorry to leave them behind.
I don’t know how successful I’ve been at communicating what I gleaned from Tim’s reboot or the Webcomics Weekly podcast this week. All I know is that it made me feel a little less haunted about the decision I made to end the comic.
Thanks for your understanding. Cheers.
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It’s not common for Tom to show this much responsibility, forethought and restraint. But when it comes to ceremony and tradition, he’s a total pro.
Hey. Funny story! Remember last week when I was all “Hey, guys! I have seven comics left to produce to wrap up Theater Hopper by the end of the year, so there are going to be weeks with double comics?”
So I made that announcement and then my hosting provider decided, “Nope.” The site was down for three and a half days.
I never really got a good reason as to why the site was down, which was frustrating. But I’m not sure if I would have understood anyway. All I cared was getting it back up in time to get these comics published.
When I shared news of the site being down on Facebook, one of my readers suggested it was the universe’s way of telling me not to end the comic. I mean, how do you contend with THAT?
WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, UNIVERSE!?
At any rate, here’s the first comic of the week. I have another comic inked and will hopefully have it posted tomorrow or Wednesday. I have a third comic that’s been penciled, but not inked that I want to have out there by Friday.
After that… I’m a little afraid. Friday is my birthday. I work on Saturday from 11 to 6. I have social commitments on Sunday. Then there’s Christmas and Christmas Eve. That means there won’t be a lot of time to prepare the two comics I hope to publish next week. One of them in particular I want to post on Christmas. It would be a nice bit of synchronicity. But we’ll have to see if I can carve out some time to do it.
We’re racing toward the finish line, folks. Thanks for your patience after last week’s downtime. Keep a close eye on the site for the next few weeks. LOTS happening!
See you again soon!
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