Today’s guest strip comes courtesy of Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex. You might not immediately recognize his style in this piece since it was hand drawn. Gordon puts together Multiplex completely in Adobe Illustrator. Personally, I get a real kick out of his hand drawn style. It shows Gordon has the artistic fundamentals that make the vector output of Multiplex that much more satisfying.

If you haven’t read Multiplex, now is a good time. I know you guys would love it. Just as Theater Hopper focuses on the fan experience of going to the movies, Multiplex covers things from the other side of the concessions counter by focusing on the employees of a movie theater. Gordon deftly juggles several characters and their complicated relationships, providing a clear voice for each one.

Incidentally, Gordon (along with Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies) is one of the co-hosts of The Triple Feature talkcast broadcast live every Monday at 9:00 p.m. CST over at TalkShoe. I wasn’t able to participate in this week’s show since I needed to make myself available to Cami and Henry after putting in an 8-hour work day, but I’ve downloaded a copy of the broadcast from iTunes and it was a really good show. Joe called in from a bar! The lush!

Today will be the last guest strip before I return to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the work submitted by the guest artists. It’s been a crazy month! There will be a new comic from me on Friday and then it’s back to the grind.

I’ve been trying to prepare for my re-insertion back into the site. I’m working ahead and I already have next Monday’s comic done. I’m half way through with Wednesday’s comic. It’s colored and now I’m working on shading. I was lucky last night that we were able to put Henry down for a nap after feeding him and he slept for about 3 hours. You can really get a lot of work done when you don’t know when your kid is about to wake up from a nap! A great motivator! Hopefully I can stay ahead of the curve and produce comics in advance of their deadline so I’m not stressed out during the week. This is a new method of working for me. Typically I produce a comic the day before it’s posted on the site. After nearly 5 years, it’s taking some getting used to working a full week in advance!

All I know is that I hope I can continue to do comics in color. I was tempted to do them in black and white until I got back into the swing of things, but I always think about the books I hope to produce with these comics and how disappointed I would be in myself if I printed up a book that was part color and part black and white. It would be like it was unfinished, or something!

Speaking of which, I’m going to start early chipping away at “Theater Hopper: Year Three.” My plan is to have it finished by Wizard World Chicago in August, so I’m giving myself a lot of rope! By the way, one of those navigation links at the top of the page is finally working. It’s the TOUR page. If you guys want to see what conventions I’ll be attending this year, click here. I’ve got four on my plate for 2007.

One last bit of site news, today is the last day to pre-order the Junkie t-shirt. So if you want to make sure I have your size in stock, order today!

Keep in mind that all bundle discounts apply to this pre-order, so if you’re thinking about getting one of our two books, you can take advantage of that as well.

Anyway, gotta go. See you Friday!