I apologize for the delay on Monday’s comic. I was absolutely stymied by how to draw the interior of the bus in the last panel. Paralized, almost.

I kept telling myself “This is a good thing” because, as I explained to myself, this kind of fear meant that I was operating outside of my comfort zone. I’m evolving my style – if only incrementally. You have to embrace it. I think, so long as people are reacting favorably to the recent story line, I might as well go for broke.

Although, I worry that it was a lot of stress and effort for not a lot of payoff. I wish the joke could have been stronger. I think the crazy guy barking at Cami is cute, but not laugh out loud funny.

Oh, well. I suppose if push comes to shove, it’s the nesicary transition piece to move the story from the exposition to the action. Look for more of what you loved about the first three strips in the next few strips.

The good news is that I have everything plotted out at this point and envision this arc going on for at least two more weeks. I don’t want the story to wear out its welcome, but I think I have some good gags coming up, so stay tuned for that.

Switching gears, you might have noticed that the site has undergone another redesign. It’s not quite finished, yet. There are some tweaks to make here and there. But the functionality is in place and that’s what matters most.

The design is all mine, but you have to give credit to Tyler Martin and Phil Hofer from ComicPress for stringing up all the bells and whistles. Phil has been especially invaluable these last few weeks. Be sure to visit his site at Frumph.net

Along with the new coat of paint, there is a TON of functionality behind the scenes that I think is going to make your experience more entertaining. I haven’t even explored all of the options yet, but a few I can tell you about off the top of my head are things like the new “RANDOM” button in comic navigation as well as links to similar comics at the bottom of the blog. Hopefully, you will use these to explore more of the site and maybe take a trip down memory lane.

Other advantages of the souped up back end will be a special members area for people who donate to the site and also the option to BUY PRINTS of you favorite comics.

Selling prints is something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. So I am very excited by the potential of this. I plan to keep the cost low (and hopefully the quality high) and really push that in the future.

But, like I said, there a few things I need to put in order first. The Theater Hopper storefront chief among them. I’m testing out store management systems like Magento and Open Cart and will hopefully have something put together soon. There are also pages under the ABOUT, LINKS and CONTENT areas that needed to be added back in.

If you have thoughts or ideas about what features or improvements YOU’D like to see on the site, now is the time to suggest them! We’re cleaning house, so anything you can suggest that would make your experience better, please let us know.

You can either leave your comments after this blog or on the recently reintroduced THORUM.

This is the third time around for our little forum community. The first two utilized the phpBB software package and were taken down by relentless spamming. This time around, we have a far more simplified system utilizing bbPress – which is kind of an extension of WordPress. Hopefully, it will be a lot less buggy and allow us to carry on the kind of sustained conversations that comment under the blog do not.

Anyway, lots going on right now. I appreciate everyone’s patience waiting for today’s comments and I can’t wait to read your comments, feedback and suggestions about the new look and feel!

Cheers!