The mounting sense of pressure I blogged about with Wednesday’s comic became very pronounced while I was writing today’s comic.

It’s been interesting tracking these last few comics about New Moon. You guys are very into it. You’re posting lots of comments and submitting ranking votes in record numbers. All good things!

The ranking thing I really blowing my mind. As if this writing, 101 of you ranked Monday’s comic and 92 of you ranked Wednesday’s comic. When you consider the average is about 20 people, it feels really good when a comic generates over 5 times that level of interaction.

So keep it going! Keep rating the comics! Keeps submitting your feedback in the comments section. I love to read about what you guys think, so let’s see more of that!

To that end… I feel a little embarrassed that I ended the arc this week with a very lame and obvious pun. But I at least hope you find it endearing. It’s nice to put a bow on these things sooner rather than later before they get drawn out.

I’m wondering if anyone here saw the midnight screening of New Moon last night and if so, what did you think?

Consensus among critics is trending downward. As of this writing, the film has been given a 29% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes. When you consider the original Twilight averaged about 49% positive, that’s a red flag. Obviously Twilight has a contingent of die hard fans. But now with New Moon, nearly 25% of the people who were on board with the first movie have jumped ship. Why?

I’ve read that star Robert Pattinson isn’t in the movie much – really only at the beginning and at the end. Co-star Kristen Stewart ends up carrying most of the movie.

Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise to fans of the books. And certainly the movie has hit upon a piece of choice casting by adding Taylor Lautner as Jacob. So there must be something that’s keeping it from connecting with the critics.

Of course, this is entirely moot. The film will do just fine at the box office this weekend. Entertainment Weekly is already predicting an $80 to $100 million haul. Obviously they’ll film the next two books as well. It’s just food for thought. I’m all about realistic expectations, people!

Time to leave your thoughts in the comments below! Are you one of the Twi-hards who saw New Moon last night? Let us know what you thought!

Since I didn’t mention it on Wednesday, I wanted to check in with everyone and remind them about the Kickstarter fund raising campaign for Theater Hopper: Year Three. Pledges have slown down a little bit and I want to make sure we haven’t lost the momentum that we built up last week!

I notice that a lot of people have been pledging on Friday’s. I don’t know if that has anything to do with people getting paid, but I thought I would just float that out there. If you think you can pledge $5 from your paycheck today, that would be awesome. You can always increase your pledge later!

I’ve been trying hard to maintain a level of engagement surrounding the project by posting updates on the Kickstarter page. If you haven’t been reading them, it’s a good way to stay connected without me having to badger everyone on the homepage.

Most recently, I posted a video update where I discuss the mini grant I applied for from the Iowa Arts Council. I submitted my proposal before I heard about Kickstarter and I got my notification letter this week. If you want to know the outcome, you’ll have to watch the video.

I’m also taking suggestions on topics to address with my Kickstarter updates. It’s kind of hard to do actual “updates” because the book is already finished. So it’s not like I can post something telling you how “I’ve written commentary for the first 50 comics and I only have 100 more to go!” All of that work is done. The book is ready. I could have it sent to the printer today, you know?

If you have questions about the book that you would like answered or have suggestions to help me promote the book, leave your comments on the Kickstarter page.

…or here, too. That’ll work.

Someone had the simple suggestion that I need to be a little more aggressive about how I promote the campaign here in the blog section of the site. They advised that I need to put Kickstarter updates ABOVE the main blog post so you are at least giving the Kickstarter updates a cursory glance.

It’s a good idea, but I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to. I’m trying not to be to overbearing. But at the same time, the closer we get to the deadline, the more paranoid about it I’m going to get.

There are 41 days left in the campaign. Please consider pledging today. Thank you.

Something I was remiss to point out earlier in the week is that my good friend Joe Dunn has posted a brand new comic over at Joe Loves Crappy Movies!

I feel particularly embarrassed for not mentioning it on the homepage because 1.) Joe is a friend and 2.) because, for a while, I was probably getting 2 to 3 e-mails a week asking me if Joe was ever going to update his comic again.

This isn’t exactly a new thing for me. For a while I was getting e-mails asking me when Zach Miller was going to bring back Joe and Monkey. Before that, people were sending me e-mails asking me when Mitch Clem was going to bring back Nothing Nice to Say.

It puts me in a weird position because I certainly don’t want to speak on the behalf of any of these guys or accidentally share too much information about whatever is happening in their personal lives that may preclude them from creating new comics.

However, at the same time, I’m a fan and I understand the need for a fan to stay connected to their favorite artists. So you end up sharing what you think is appropriate and maybe it gives that person a little extra hope that the comic will come back sooner than later.

People started talking about this a little bit over in the Digital Pimp Forums. I talked about the e-mails I was getting and Joe said he never saw a single e-mail asking him about Joe Loves Crappy Movies. Many of his readers came back saying that they didn’t want to pester or annoy Joe for not producing the comic. They didn’t want to make him feel guilty or come off too demanding. So in that context, it makes sense that a fan would say “I don’t want to upset Joe, let’s see what Tom knows.”

I dunno. I found it interesting.

Anyway, I’m obscuring what’s important about this blog post which is that Joe Loves Crappy Movies is back! Check it out!

And if you’ve never read it before, Joe has almost 500 excellent comics in his archive. SO GET TO WORK!