If you think that today’s comic isn’t exactly light-hearted, then maybe you want to check out the buzzComix voting incentive sketch. It follows a similar theme, but it turns up the irony a couple of notches. Maybe you’ll get a chuckle out of it.

I can’t quite put my finger on what’s motivating me to steer the arc into slightly darker territory, but I promise that things will start looking better for Jimmy soon.

I think part of the shift in tone can be attributed to wanting to flex a few new muscles creatively. I’m experimenting with refining my art style, adding debris and small details. At the same time, I’m testing the waters to see if I can toss in a little bit of drama.

To me, Jimmy is the only character that can withstand this emotional weight. Since he’s the only character in the comic not based on a real person, he’s kind of a catch-all that I can insert into a storyline for a specific effect. He hasn’t appeared in a lot of strips, so we don’t know a lot about him. We CERTAINLY don’t know much about him outside a movie theater, so this is an interesting way to develop his character.

Jimmy has always been the most good-natured of the bunch. He can take a joke. He’s a hard worker. He’s optimistic. What does it mean to have him experience all this bad luck? What’s the moral? “Bad things happen to good people?”

…

# The rest of this blog post was lost, presumably after Theater Hopper moved to WordPress in January 2009. #