I thought it was worth it to mention that today marks the one-month anniversary of Theater Hopper. It may not seem like much of a milestone, but I’m partial to such occasions.

With only 12 strips under my belt, I consider it a freakin’ phenomenon that the site has accumulated over 1,700 unique hits and nearly 4,400 page views. This may seem like small potatoes to some people, but it means a lot to me.

I wouldn’t have gotten this far without the help of other cartoonists in the community. There are too many names to mention, but if you head over to the links page, those are the strips you should be visiting on a daily basis.

Thanks also to the readers who visit the site and keep coming back. Hopefully I will be able to provide the kind of content you like and look forward to reading.

That’s probably enough gushing for now, but I had to let it be known. I’m having too much fun doing this not to say thanks every once in a while.

While I was mentioning anniversaries in Wednesday’s blog, someone pointed out to me one that I missed. Taking the Bi-Pass recently celebrated it’s 100th strip, and I feel like a jerk for leaving them out because Dave is a friend of the site. He’s done guest strips for us and is an all-around rockin’ Canadian. Wish him well on his accomplishment!

And while we’re still on the subject of anniversaries, I thought I would mention that today is the 4 year anniversary of my marriage with Cami. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years. It certainly hasn’t felt that long.

We’re keeping our celebrations simple for tonight. A quiet dinner for two, staring into each other’s eyes and whatnot. The real celebration comes 3 weeks from now when we go to Las Vegas – our anniversary gift to each other.

I love you, Cami!

Something that I forgot to mention yesterday was that our online community – that place we lovingly refer to as the THorum – celebrated its one year anniversary yesterday. Finally, I fell like we’re over the hump when it comes to providing a place for Theater Hopper fans to communicate with one another.

The history of the THorum is a long and complicated one. Marred by gross ineptitude on my part, this is actually the third incarnation of the community. Those who have been with me from the start know the story I am about to tell.

When I started Theater Hopper in August of 2002, one of the first things I made sure to have was a forum. I believed strongly that developing a community was key to getting the site off the ground. Initial fans would congregate and then spread word of Theater Hopper to all corners of the internet.

When only 20 or so people signed up after 3 months online, I grew impatient and shut it down.

Hey, don’t blame me! I’m a moron, remember? I was totally naive to the fact that having 500 unique visitors per month wouldn’t necessarily translate into an online community. Remember, I’m the same guy who tried raking in donations and advertisements when I was barely a blip on the radar screen. At that time, Theater Hopper was a pimple on the ass of web comics. I’m happy to say we’ve since moved up to “boil” status.

About 6 months after voluntarily closing the first forum and steadily watching our readership grow, I decided to take another swing at establishing a community. Another forum was forged.

Things went well for a while. We had gathered a little clique and we were online without and problems for a good length of time. That is until a catastrophic server failure totally crippled the site. The database that ran the forum was lost and I nearly lost a year’s worth of blogs. Of course, like a fool, I had never made a back-up of the forum. So it was gone, baby. REAL gone. Strike two in forum world.

Desperate to reconnect with the community that was lost, the third version of the forum was brought to life January 17, 2004 and we’ve been plugging along ever since.

It hasn’t been easy, though. Luckily with the help of my team of administrators and moderators, we’ve been able to keep it up and running without much data loss or obnoxious post whores ruining it for everyone. So my thanks to AdSquirrel, Brian, JClark and MadMup. You’re help has been invaluable.

In the course of our existence, we’ve even been able to implement custom features to make ours a totally unique environment. A web cam portal, The Friday Five, The Danza and The Urkle. Even our own dictionary – or THictionary for the unenlightened – of THorum-specific vernacular! Did you know we did a holiday gift exchange last Decemeber that went off with flying colors? We did, and it was great!

Now before you start thinking that the THorum is some sort of secret society or members only cabal, know that there has never been a more welcoming group of people online ANYWHERE. Friendly and bright. Gracious and insightful. And several of them more hilarious than anyone you will ever meet. My thanks to these THorumites who make our community one that I have looked forward to posting to every day since its inception. Thank you.

If you think that sounds good, sign up in the THorum today. You won’t be sorry.

A few things I forgot to mention in the first post:

1. A few people were congratulating me last Friday for reaching my 700th comic. Actually, that was a typo because I accidentally counted Wendesday’s “Boo hoo! My computer is FUBAR!” messages as an comic. I’ve made the correct and TODAY’S comic is my 700th – which is mind-numbing to think about.

   I think the last time I celebrated the number of comics I posted was 400 or probably 500. But anymore, I think I’m just into celebrating anniversaries. You’ll hear from me again about it on August 5.

2. Don’t forget to call in and listen to The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST over at Talkshoe. I pretty much plan on giving the floor to Joe to talk about Live Free or Die Hard because it sounds like he had a blast at that movie and I want him to tell us all about it.

   We’ll probably be talking about Transformers, too – if you’re interested. Join in and talk to us live!

3. It’s kind of a long story about how it came into my possession, but I’m auctioning off an 8GB iPhone on eBay and the auction ends around 10:00 PM tonight. So if you’re interested or know someone that might be interested, bid away!

For the love of God, PLEASE bid. The longer this thing stays in my house, the more I want to love it in unnatural ways.