Posts Tagged ‘New Year’
6 items.
That’s kind of a gross image to end the year with, isn’t it? Some old white guy wiping his ass with stationary? I thought I could do better than that, but really – I can’t.
At any rate, please enjoy this sketch for the new year.
For what it’s worth, this has been a terrible year for movies and I think most of you would agree. Even when I talk to my friends that aren’t hard-core into cinema like I am, I hear the same sentiment. "Man, there just hasn’t been any good movies this year, has there?" I die a little inside when I’m forced to confirm their suspicions.
I’m pretty sure there is some kind of statistic floating around out there that spells out just how awful this year has been. I think if you add up the number of crappy sequels, pointless remakes and movies made from lame televisions shows, it would have to be upwords of 80% of Hollywood’s total output this year.
You could accuse Hollywood of having run out of ideas. But fundimentally, we’ve been gathering around the proverbial campfire listening to the same stories of horror, drama, romance and comedy since mankind developed spoken language. In other words – Has everything else been done before? The answer is a resounding "YES." So what I’m saying is, don’t get mad because there’s been a lack of new ideas on screen.
What Hollywood has FAILED to do is find a way to say new things about old ideas. I can’t imagine anything more insulting to a thinking person’s sensibilities than to take a television show that aired 50 years ago like The Honeymooners, retool it with black actors, film it and dump it into theaters and claim that you’ve done something original. I choke at the thought that anyone felt strongly enough to make Cheaper By The Dozen 2 and then said, "We really don’t have a plot for this. Let’s just rip off that old John Candy movie The Great Outdoors. That’ll do."
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and I hate to look at the glass as being half-empty. Will 2006 be a better year? I don’t know. But I guess the fun is trying to figure that out, isn’t it? After all, it’s why we keep going back. Or at least why I keep going back.
It’s funny. People (and by "people," I mean me) bitch and moan about the state of things, but yet keep filing back into the theaters. As angry as I get watching bad movies from time to time, I can’t imagine ever seeing something so awful that I would write off watching movies entirely. Because for every Herbie: Fully Loaded, there will be a Walk the Line. And as your tastes refine, the challenge becomes weaving your way through the traffic and finding that one piece of film that communicates with you directly and reflects something about yourself you never considered.
That’s what good art does. It helps you grow as a person. Who would turn their back on that?
I have some more thoughts regarding the end of the year, but I kind of like the tenor of this post, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll be back later in the day with more thoughts relating to 2005, Theater Hopper and our direction for 2006.
[ No Comments ]
Here it is, the fist comic of 2006, and I’m late with the blog. Not a good way to kick things off, is it? Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel torn up inside about it. Check out my Webcomics List incentive sketch if you don’t believe me!
Incidentally, after being asleep at the switch throughout the month of December, it looks like they finally reset the vote counts. We’re at number three as of the authoring of this blog. Let’s see if we can’t reclaim the top spot with totalitarian fury!
I haven’t had a chance to see Brokeback Mountain yet, but I’ve seen the trailer. I’ve mentioned it before – that line that Jake Gyllenhall’s character yells to Heath Ledger – "I wish I knew how to quit you!" Totally removed from context like that, it’s one of the greatest, most quotable, unintentionally hilarious line deliveries next to James Van Der Beek’s twangy "I don’t want… yer life!" from Varsity Blues. At any rate, I’ve been struggling to find a way to incorporate it into the strip and I think I finally found a situation where it made sense. I’m happy with how this comic turned out.
I’ve read articles about the line. I guess they say people have been laughing about it in theaters. But, at the same time, if people are talking about it – that’s a good thing, right? At least they aren’t ignoring it completely.
Cami and I both have an interest in the film. I want to see what all the hub-bub is about. It looks as though it’s been positioned as the big Oscar contender in a year rife with lightweights. I think Cami wants to watch it for hot man-on-man action.
Yes, I am being sarcastic.
We were hoping to see the movie today, but it doesn’t look like it’s showing yet in our area. We’ll probably see The Producers instead – despite the fact that we’ve already seen the Broadway show and heard the filmed version is as if they took a camera and pointed it at the stage. No one I know is talking about The Producers. I think it was a big mistake for them to open on Christmas Day. Apparently that was Mel Brooks decision. He didn’t want to compete with King Kong. Yeah… ‘cuz, you know… they’re like EXACTLY the same movie. I love Mel Brooks, but sometimes I feel like he doesn’t know when to quit. I was watching History of the World: Part I on AMC over the weekend and I was laughing my ass off. I don’t know if the filmed version of a musical that was a film 30 years ago is going to do the trick. I mean, I enjoyed the stage version when I saw it. But isn’t it kind of like Xeroxing a Xerox?
I guess my parents saw it a week ago and really liked it. But they go to about 5 movies a year, so their rating scale is skewed a little differently. Oh, well. It has Will Ferrell in it. And that’s like throwing in catnip when it comes to my comedic sensibilities. What can I say? Ferrell is my kryptonite!
[ No Comments ]
It’s a new year and, as you may have noticed, there is a new coat of paint on the old joint. Welcome to the all-new Theater Hopper!
People who know me are aware that I’ve been kicking around the idea for a redesign probably since last October. At least, that’s when I started working on it. I’ve probably have ideas or at least loose sketches lying about since early last year! But, of course, life gets in the way, you self-publish a couple of books and, well… where does the time go?
Part of the goal behind redesigning the site was purely cosmetic. As you can see, I’ve widened the content area of the site to a little over 900 pixels wide. My counter statistics were telling me that the majority of you were viewing the site at 1024 x 768. So many of you were, in fact that the two resolutions below it (800 x 600 and 640 x 420) COMBINED couldn’t compare. To me, that’s a lot of wasted real estate. Especially considering that those of you viewing the site at a resolution LARGER than 1024 x 768 outnumber those below that resolution by a margin of nearly 3 to 1.
That’s kind of technical. And I’m getting away from my point.
The other goal behind the redesign was to get the site to a point where it could kind of generate it’s own activity and help maintain traffic flow. As you may recall, Cami and I are having a baby in February. Clearly my resources will need to be dedicated to my family at that time. But I also didn’t want to abandon the site or come back to comics faced with the challenge of rebuilding what I had lost.
To that end, we have introduced several new features!
First is the Mailing List. Sign up and I’ll be sure to notify you every time the comic updates. This is a great little reminder in case you don’t check the site every day. Don’t worry, I’m not going to spam ya’. It’s just a little extra customer service on our end!
Second is the “Mail This Comic to a Friend” feature. This is so those of you who are already fans of the comic can help me spread the good word. It’s a very easy e-mail form that lets you include a message along with the link to the specific comic you’re referencing and a great way to tell people about that HILARIOUS Theater Hopper strip you read today without having to open your mail client!
Third is the excellent “Rate This Comic” feature. (I’m really thrilled about this one.) It’s simple – just navigate yourself to the comic you want to rank, click on the link and place your vote on a scale of 1 to 5. This is a great piece of instant feedback that I can use to figure out what you guys like to see in the comic! Eventually, once we’ve collected enough votes, we’re going to post a link to a Top 50 page so you can see the most popular Theater Hopper strips of all time!
Again, this will be a great advantage to bringing new readers to the site. Instead of seaching through the archives as a means to being introduced to the site, they can check out the Top 50 page and see if there is anything to their linking! Hopefully, with your feedback, we can hook ’em and bring new readers to the site!
Last, but not least, we are introducing a brand new Commenting feature in the blogs. Now you can leave INSTANT feedback for each of the comics and the individual blogs. This is a major coup for me. For a while now, I’ve been posting a lot over on my LiveJournal page. Mostly because I enjoy the feedback I get from the readers. I thought to myself “Why can’t I have something like this for Theater Hopper?” So, with a little help, we brought the feature to the site! My goal is to post more often to this space and really bring the blog back to the foreground again.
This feature will be great for people who want to leave feedback about the comics who might be a little intimidated by sending an e-mail or joining the THorum Of course, my hope is that if you’re posting, you have a strong enough investment in what’s being communicated to return to the site more often to see how others have responded to what you’ve left behind!
There are also some smaller touches we’ve added to the site including a the weekend box office office estimates for the Top Five films of the week, courtesy of Box Office Mojo as well as a few new pages that haven’t been added to the site yet – permanent homes for information about the history of the site, the cast, my contact information, press I’ve done and which conventions I’ll be appearing at. You’ll see announcements about these new areas as they are added!
Also be sure to check out the new store! All of your favorite goodies are there, but we’re streamlining the ordering process and also adding a permanent section that allows you to bundle different items together at a reduced cost! That’ll be the first part of the site besides the home page to be up on two feet in the very near future.
If you guys are feeling up to it, I would love for you to take advantage of the commenting feature to get your thoughts about the new site design. Test things out. Play with it a little bit. I’ll be making changes and additions to the site all month and I would love to get your opinion about what we can do better.
With all of that said, I need to take a special time out and call attention to all of the help I’ve been given by a wonderful guy – Dave Buist, creator of the online comic Taking the Bi-Pass.
Dave has been an invaluable resource to me over the past month. He’s the guy that actually wrote the code for all of these wonderful applications. He helped me out immensely by creating databases to manage everything and he did it with great enthusiasm and efficiency. Often times, Dave went above and beyond creating features for the site that I hadn’t even considered.
As a small token of my thanks, I have attached a permanent link in the footer of the site to give credit to Dave for his enormous contribution to the site. Without him, none of this would be possible. Please show your support for Dave’s hard work by visiting Taking the Bi-Pass, bookmarking it and adding it to your weekly reads! Thanks, Dave!
That about does it for now – although I’m sure more will come up later. Again, take a look around, rank your favorite comics (use the archive search function if you need to!), leave comments and let all of your friends know about the exciting changes happening to the site.
2007 is going to be better than ever!
[ No Comments ]
Before you start sending me e-mails, yes, I know I screwed up the last panel in today’s comic. Everything looks right at 1:00 in the morning. I’ll fix it when I get home tonight.
Here’s hoping that everyone had a safe and happy new year celebration. If you’re reading this, I have to assume that’s the case.
Our New Year’s celebration was decidedly white, suburban and boring. Cami and I took Henry to Applebee’s at about 5:00 at night for dinner. We came home, put him to bed and watched a rerun of Saturday Night Live in the ’90’s on NBC until 9:00 PM. Henry is teething again and was up crying the night before, so Cami was exhausted and went to bed around 9:30. I stayed up because I felt I should, but only lasted until about 11:00 before I went to bed. Oh, well. At least we were together when the clock struck midnight.
That sounds bad. It sounds like we had a boring New Year’s because of Henry. That’s not true. We had an awesome New Year’s. I guess I just called it “boring” because to an outsider, that’s probably what it looks like. Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t have done anything different even if we didn’t have Henry. I went to see the ball drop in Times Square when 2003 rolled over into 2004. Since then, I haven’t really cared about celebrating the occasion.
Once you’ve partied with EVERYBODY, you don’t want to party with ANYBODY.
As you know, I live in Iowa and tomorrow is the big caucus. Cami and I have both decided to caucus for Barack Obama. It’ll be our first time caucusing, but we felt it was too important to pass up. I vote in every election, but I’ve been more proactive this time around. I’m tired of sitting on my ass assuming things are going to shake out the way I hope they will.
Odd that we would get a babysitter so we could sit in a church and argue with people about politics on a Thursday night, but not get a babysitter so we could go out and ring in the new year. But something tells me this caucus is a little more important.
We actually went to an Obama rally here in Des Moines yesterday. We took Henry and he behaved great. I felt like I was doing something good for him. It was a good time.
I know none of this has anything to do with the comic or with movies, but now that the new year has begun, prestige pictures have all evaporated from the landscape. There’s certainly some catching up I have to do in terms of what I’ve seen and what I haven’t. But if the goal here is to be timely, I’m not going to talk about Atonement, three weeks past it’s release date in favor of uncovering the intricacies of the cell phone horror movie One Last Call.
A couple of guys that NEVER miss a movie are my good friends Gordon McAplin from Multiplex and Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies. After taking the holiday week off, the three of us are getting back together tonight for a live broadcast of The Triple Feature talkcast at Talkshoe, 9:00 PM CST. Tonight we’ll be talking about all the great holiday movies we’ve seen. So set your alarm and be sure to join us tonight at 9:00 PM CST! See you there!
[ No Comments ]
This is a little annoying, but I have to throw it out there.
It’s a new month, which means the voting tallies have been reset at Top Web Comics. If you could throw a vote Theater Hopper’s way, I would appreciate it.
We did pretty well last month. We managed to crack the Top 100 and had a comfortable spot at 97 on the list as the year closed out. I think that’s pretty amazing for a comic that only updates once a week. Please continue to keep up the great work. Vote from home, vote from work, vote from your smart phone – it all counts. And don’t forget to VOTE DAILY. That’s the most important part. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to do it. That’s why I draw those incentive images, don’t you know? They’re a little reward. Wanna see today’s comic through the eyes of the snowflake? Just click on this link to vote and you can!
As for the comic, yeah, I know that New Year’s Eve has come and gone. I wanted to do something a little romantic. Don’t hold it against me.
Normally I take stock at the end of the year and reflect a little bit. I did some of that last week, but I didn’t indulge in the deep dive I normally take. I guess that’s because my what I want to say about Theater Hopper in 2011 and what Theater Hopper will look like in 2012 doesn’t neatly line up with celestial events. I have a lot to say about the topic, but now doesn’t feel right. Maybe I’m putting it off a little bit – avoiding it. But I also want to make sure what comes next is expressed correctly. I don’t want to leave any confusion or doubt in your minds.
Annoyingly vague enough for you? Don’t worry. Explanations will be forthcoming. Consider this comic a taste of what 2012 looks like.
Let’s avoid the movie commentary for right now and just let it speak for itself a little bit. The rest will reveal itself soon.
I wish the very most to you and yours in 2012. May the New Year greet you warmly. I will talk to you soon.
[ 2 Comments ]
A quick bit of business… If you want to see a humorous take on the “family” Tom is referring in today’s comic, be sure to vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics for a funny little incentive image. We were in the middle of the pack last week. Now we’ve fallen down to #91 on the list. Let’s see if we can turn that around. And don’t forget to vote daily!
Now for a very important announcement…
Originally, I was going to make this announcement last week. I thought it made sense to start the New Year with this, but decided at the last minute that perhaps a more romantic reprieve would ease us into things. Now I realize I was kind of running from the inevitable. I’ve never been the kind of guy to pull a band-aid off in one sharp pull. But I can’t hide from it any longer.
On August 6, 2012, I will be ending Theater Hopper.
I didn’t come to the decision lightly. I’ve been debating about whether to end Theater Hopper for over a year now. Even though I thought I was mentally prepared, it doesn’t make the challenge of sharing this announcement any easier.
There are a couple of reasons why I’ve decided to end Theater Hopper and why I’ve set a deadline so far out into the future.
First, the deadline. I wanted to give everyone a head’s up in advance mostly because I thought you – the audience member – deserved it. Nothing disheartens me more than to become invested in a comic I really, really like and see it end out of nowhere for no reason. It always leaves me with the feeling of “What if?” and I think you guys deserve better than that.
Setting a deadline that far into the future gives me an opportunity to wrap up a few lingering story lines and also moves the characters into a place where you know they’re going to be “okay.”
Plus, like I said, I’m not a “tear the band-aid off” kind of guy, remember.
August 6, 2012 will be one day past the 10 year anniversary of the comic and I like the idea of going out that way. Call me crazy – I just like round numbers. It’ll be a tidy break.
10 years is a crazy amount of time to do anything. Writing and drawing Theater Hopper is the longest job I’ve ever had. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, but it’s time to let it go.
Part of my motivation is that I can’t maintain a level of quality for the comic that I feel is fair to you or to me. It takes me a long time to put together a comic. Anywhere from 3 to 4 hours. That was one of the primary reasons I went from three strips a week to one. Looking back, I don’t know how I ever managed to produce three a week – especially while I was going to night classes, pursuing my Master’s for two years! I guess I just had momentum behind me.
But the point is that I don’t think I can evolve my art or my technique to a point that will improve the comic or lessen my time investment. If I can’t grow or improve, then it makes it hard to justify continuing. The frustration of those limitations strips all the fun right out of it.
A lot of what makes Theater Hopper complicated to produce is coloring and shading. I don’t enjoy doing it and I’ve never been very good at it. But I’ve picked up enough tricks along the way that it doesn’t stick out too bad.
I’ve talked to a few of my contemporaries about this and they’ve suggested going to black and white as a way to streamline things. The see no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. To jettison the investment I’ve made in building up the brand and viability of the domain. They’ve made strong cases for me to reformat the comic in order to salvage it.
I’ve considered it. Switching to black and white would improve my attitude toward the work significantly. Truthfully, it might even increase my output to more than one comic a week. When you get down to brass tacks, all people really want is more content. They probably aren’t overtly concerned about all the bells and whistles thrown into the coloring and shading of a comic. I mean, look at XKCD, for God’s sake!
But, to me, that’s a step backwards. Going to black and white kind of spits in the face of the effort I’ve made so far to build my art up to what it is toady.
Taking the comic from three times a week to once a week was a loss for me. Taking the comic from color to black and white would be another loss – one I don’t think I could bear.
It is not my wish that Theater Hopper’s legacy become reductive. Stripping away the elements of what made it successful will eventually leave me with nothing. That’s not fair to me and it’s not fair to the audience that has supported me for so long. This is the way it has to be.
My concerns about the art also does not solve the content problem I feel like I’ve been ignoring for probably the last… five years.
I feel like I still have stories to tell. But the conceit that Theater Hopper is “a comic about movies” has handcuffed me. Once Cami and I had kids, the amount of movies we went to see dropped off dramatically. I don’t think this would come as a surprise to anyone. But it kind of creates a situation when you write a comic that’s about movies.
As a result of this life change, Theater Hopper became less about movies and more about how movies are marketed. And while marketing is a personal interest of mine, I can’t deny that this evolution has made me feel somewhat fraudulent over the years.
Truthfully, I thought like Theater Hopper would end after Henry was born. I always told myself that once we had kids, there wouldn’t be room for comics.
That was largely fear and inexperience talking at the time. Having kids changed my life, of course. But I was able to compromise a little bit and continue pursuing the art that I loved to make. I’m glad I did. Some of Theater Hopper’s most successful years came after Henry was born. I self-published three books. I traveled the country exhibiting at comic book conventions. I met awesome people and made life-long friends. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.
But there comes a time when one realizes that you can’t go on forever. I realize now that it’s time to move on. This post is just as much as head’s up for you as it is for me. Believe me – it’s going to take me a while to get used to the idea, too.
Over the next few weeks and months, I’m going to take Theater Hopper in a more character-driven and dramatic direction. There will still be jokes – don’t worry about that. Oh, and you can COUNT on there being one more appearance from Cardboard Iron Man when The Avengers comes out in May.
But August 6 is the date I have targeted to put a bow on everything and call it a day. I’m looking forward to the journey that takes us there.
As always, I appreciate the love and support I’ve received from my readers all the years. You guys are phenomenal. My words won’t do your devotion justice. But I hope my art and these last few stories will.
With thanks,
Tom Brazelton
[ 74 Comments ]
