I promised you big news today, and by-gum, I’m gonna deliver!

I’m here to announce the VERY FIRST Theater Hopper t-shirts!

It’s been a long time coming for yours truly to start producing t-shirts. But after consulting with my many constituents in the forum, I decided the time was nigh to deliver. The demand is there! It was simply a matter of making the product available.

As you can see from the graphic on the right, the t-shirt features the one and only “Pimp Tom”. My forum homies had a real soft spot for this guy and I hope you do, too. The graphic is emblazoned boldly on the front while the Theater Hopper log and URL have found a righteous home on the left sleeve.

The shirts are 50/50 poly-cotton blend, black with white ink. Cost is a meager $15 dollars. They are printed with love and affection by the good people at Brunetto Shirts – the same individuals who’ve brought you quality clothing for web comics like Diesel Sweeties, Sam & Fuzzy, WIGU, Exploding Dog, Scary Go Round, Ctrl+Alt+Del, MacHall and many, many more!

Currently the shirts are on pre-order status through April 30th. That means, at the end of April, I will tally up all the orders we’ve received and submit them to Brunetto. They will then print up the shirts, mail them back to me, and I will ship them out sometime around the middle of May. Pre orders are the ONLY WAY TO GUARANTEE you will get a shirt.

I hope everyone is as excited about this as I am. Who knows? If the response is strong enough, I may just print up more shirts!

Thanks again for your support and continuing interest in Theater Hopper. I know I have some of the most awesome fans around. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t print up shirts for them. So 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!