I thought black was supposed to be slimming. Dear Lord, someone remind me never to insert myself into my own comic ever again! I looked so much better when I pulled this stunt before back in 2004.

I wasn’t planning on doing anything special for Theater Hopper’s 7th anniversary. But when I found out that I had crossed the 1,000 comic milestone, I thought it made sense to announce both at the same time.

I had actually figured out that I had reached the milestone almost serendipitously. Back when the archive database was being managed by PHP, I knew exactly how many comics were in the archive. It even went so far as to exclude guest comics, movie reviews and other “tagged” entries from the complete tally.

However, since moving the site into Wordpress, I kind of lost track of how many comics there actually are on the site. I guess they don’t make a plugin for that.

Basically, I was sitting at my computer last week thinking about this and decided to do something about it. So I downloaded all of the comics in the archive and cherry picked all of the guest strips, movies reviews and other non-comic graphic entries from the folder.

Lo and behold, it was actually last Wednesday’s comic was our 1,000th! Since there was nothing particularly special about that comic, I decided to bide my time a little bit and come ‘atcha with a proper acknowledgment.

And here we are!

I think you guys know what is coming next. I don’t mean to preface that in a way that makes it sound trite, but what I’m about to say next I say a lot. Because it’s true.

I simply couldn’t do this comic without you. I’m amazed that anyone is still interested in what I’m doing 7 years and 1,000 comics later. Some of you have been with me since the beginning. Some of you are just learning about Theater Hopper. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read every comic in the archive or just a handful. Every, single one of you have contributed to the success of Theater Hopper and I thank you for it. You are amazing.

If you have it in your heart, I’d really like to raise the roof on crossing this milestone and promoting it as far and wide into the internet as possible.

Please let as many people as possible know about Theater Hopper’s anniversary and 1,000th comic. Use Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg… whatever you use and spread the word.

Let the guys at Fleen and Comixpedia know what’s going on. Say something about it in your LiveJournal or in a forum you visit. Anywhere else you happen to frequent, let them know about what’s going on here.

I don’t promote myself quite as much as I used to (or probably should), but this is a moment where I want to set aside modesty and invite as many people as possible to check out Theater Hopper so they don’t miss the next 1,000 comics!

Thanks again for everything you do and be sure to check the site later today for a couple more announcements. I have a few special treats up my sleeve!

If you’ve been following me on Twitter the last couple of days, you’ll know that I was inspired by my friend Gordon McAlpin’s excellent parody poster for Memento that I finally got off my rear end and put together a parody poster for Iron Man that I’ve been thinking about for months.

I think it turned out pretty well…

I’m proud enough of my work that I’m printing up 50 copies and plan on selling them as 11 x 17″ prints at Chicago Comic-Con this weekend. We’ll see how they do. If I have any left over, I’ll sell them here. If the demand is high enough, I’ll print up more! Either way, I thought you guys might like to see it.

Don’t forget: I’ll be at Artist Alley table #3414. Please come by and see me. I’ll be selling copies of both books, all of my t-shirts, the Iron Man parody poster and original sketches.

I look forward to Chicago Comic-Con all year and with the stars aligning between the convention, our 7th anniversary and 1,000 comics… I think this is going to be a good show for me.