I wish I could figure out what you guys found so endlessly fascinating about Hillbilly Jeff. If I could bottle it up and sell it, I would! You guys encouraged me to take what was otherwise a throw away character and devote an entire week to his development. I don’t know that we’ve learned anything more about Jeff, exactly. Well, except that he appears to live in an outhouse. But it was a fun journey all the same, wasn’t it? I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. It was a real treat to read your comments this week and egg me on with your theories about Jeff’s activities and Tom’s dependency on them. Since there’s not much movie-wise to talk about this weekend, it was a nice little break.

Really, there’s nothing on my radar until Spider-Man 3 comes out on May 4. The only high-profile movie between now and then is Nicholas Cage in Next and that holds no interest for me. Can someone please explain to me his increasingly bizarre choices in wigs these days?

I’ve got my comic for Next in the can, but beyond that, I don’t know what movies I’m going to cover next week. I hope I don’t end up burnt out, truthfully. I’m participating in the 24 Hour Comic Challenge this weekend, so it’s very possible I might be completely tapped for ideas when it’s all over!

I ended up deciding on doing a personal story about Cami, myself and Henry’s introduction to the work for my 24 Hour Comic Challenge project. It will be something personal that Henry can look back on someday. I just hope that I can keep the quality consistent enough where he doesn’t look at it and say "You were a semi-professional cartoonist for 5 years? It shows, old man!" before he immolates it with his ray gun. I’m calling it simply "2006" because that really sums it up. 2006 was a turning point year for the two of us. We made a lot of big decisions, a lot of cool things happened to us and we ushered in 2007 with a new baby boy. It doesn’t get much better than that and I want to celebrate it.

There will be some exposition stuff. I’ll talk a little bit about how Cami and I came together as a couple and why we waited 7 years to start trying to concieve. I don’t want to make it sound more dramatic than it is. We were basically selfish. There were things in our lives we wanted to do first and that’s what the first act will probably be about. The second act, of course, will be the pregnancy. The third act, the birth.

I have all of this in my head right now. At some point, I need to sit down and type an outline. Otherwise, I’m going to be totally lost once we start working on hour 18 of the competition. I’ll need a road map and pleanty of references. I told Cami I would probably be calling her a lot on my cell phone to make sure I have dates and stuff right.

It’s my fantasy to turn this into a mini-book that I could sell on the site for cheap. Probably no more than $5 depending on the quality. I might give it the full-color treatment and take it to Comixpress and have it printed up proper. Or I might keep it in black and white and make Xerox copies that I staple together myself. Y’know, INDIE STYLE!

What do you guys think? Is that something that interests you? Is it something you would buy?

That’s all for the week. Thanks again for all the encouragement on the Hillbilly Jeff arc. I don’t know when he’ll be back again, but it may be sooner than you think!

Have a great weekend, everyone!