Archive for ‘Blog’
644 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!
[ No Comments ]
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!
[ 1 Comment ]
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!
[ No Comments ]
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!
[ 6 Comments ]
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!
[ No Comments ]
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…
[ 1 Comment ]
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!
[ No Comments ]
Oh, and before my mailbox fills up with e-mails on the subject, I’m already keenly aware of the first official photo to emerge from the set of Iron Man 2. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
You’ve got to hand it to Paramount releasing this image on the same day Fox is going to theaters with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Way to undercut ’em, boys.
Man, waiting another year for this movie is going to be torture.
[ 4 Comments ]
Something I wanted to mention in my review, but couldn’t find a way to fit in was the opening credit sequence and first 20 minutes of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This was the best part of the movie.
In a credit sequence that shows Wolverine and Sabertooth fighting in nearly every war from the last 100 years, we get a sense of their camaraderie as well as Wolverine’s concern and condemnation of Sabretooth’s growing blood lust and violence. Fast forward a few years to when the two are part of William Stryker’s elite mutant black ops team, they’ve done a good job of setting the stage for conflict while succinctly introducing a lot of supporting characters.
It should be mentioned that Ryan Reynolds steals the show in these opening scenes and it’s positively criminal he wasn’t given more to do.
At any rate, before I de-evolve into more criticism, I wanted to make mention of the curious phenomenon going on with 20th Century Fox’s super hero movies. It seems like they’re able to knock it out of the part in the first 20 minutes, but totally lose traction after that. Exhibit B? Watchmen.
Another film with a brilliant opening credit sequence and strong opening scenes. Then, a handful of screwed up details later and you’re left with a big steaming pile of “Oh, well.”
What’s going on over at Fox that creates this? Are the executives so busy they only have time to watch the first 20 minutes of their films and the crew knows they can phone it in after that? Or maybe the just have EXTREMELY unfocused editors who only have enough stamina to maintain the narrative in the first reel? In any case, I thought it was worth mentioning.
Something else worth mentioning is The Triple Feature, the movie podcast I host with Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex.
There’s no doubt we’ll be talking about X-Men Origins: Wolverine tonight. But we’ll also be talking about something else…
Joe issued an interesting challenge last week – To predict the Top 10 Box Office earners between now and the end of August. The victor will be judged not only by how many correct movies he has on his list, but by how many movies he correctly places within the Top 10.
All three of us have put together our lists and will be sharing them on the show tonight. So be sure to tune in at 9PM CST so you can listen live and chat with us in real time.
If you need a reminder, follow my Twitter account. I usually send out a notice 15 minutes before we start recording.
Be there!
[ 3 Comments ]
Something I’ve found very interesting since instituting it last week are the comic ranking results that are being returned for the individual strips.
I know a lot of comic creators who don’t feel comfortable opening up their work to this kind of scrutiny, but I appreciate it because it let’s me know how you guys feel in an environment where you might otherwise be uncomfortable telling me directly.
For instance, Monday’s comic about how they changed Cyclops’s optic blasts in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It’s the highest ranked comic on the site with the 3rd largest number of votes. That tells me a lot, so I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been voting.
Incidentally, if Monday’s comic was something you enjoyed, feel free to share it with others by using the ShareThis application that’s linked directly above the voting tool.
And if you’re interested to see how some of the other comics stack up, I’ve created a ratings page that shows you the 25 most popular comics, the 10 least popular comics and the 10 comics with the most votes.
If you think a comic is being represented either fairly or unfairly, feel free to vote and change things! The more people who vote, the more valuable the ratings become!
Thanks again!
[ No Comments ]
