MadMup.com

• Welcome.
• I'm sorry this is only a blog and not some fancy webcomic.

• In the first panel, Tom and Jared are out walking Truman. On the telephone pole you see two "Missing" posters. The fellows pictured are Mouse and Boulder, two characters Tom talked about introducing but decided against. It's this time's inside joke, just like the Horsefight: 2049 poster from last time.
• The Babel Fish is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fantastic five-book trilogy of humorous sci-fi books. There's a movie version of the first book in the series being released this Friday. The Babel Fish resides in a person's ear and translates any language it hears into something the person with the Babel Fish in his ear can understand. That's not the official explanation, but it is the upshot of what it does.
• I personally loved the idea that McDonald's would hand out Babel Fish in their Happy Meals - and working ones, no less!
• Second panel - as mentioned, the Babel Fish resides in a person's ear. Poor Jared. He's always getting beat up or having fish shoved in his ears.
• Third panel - I've always imagined Truman as smarter than anyone else in the strip (except maybe Cami), so it made sense to me that he would try to talk to Jared as soon as he knew Jared could understand him.
• Fourth panel - it actually took me a while to decide what awful movie to have Truman reveal that Tom secretly loved. Elektra is one of the worst most recently released on DVD.
• I love the idea that a pet's idea of revenge is to barf in his owner's sock drawer.

Tom drew a sketch of Joe and I collaborating on the strip, and I'd like to post it here, but I need to ask his permission first. You can see it now by voting for Theater Hopper over at buzzComix. Don't worry, you won't get signed up for anything by clicking on that link.

I appreciate Joe not only working with me again but suggesting it in the first place. He's already writing and drawing several strips of his own, so he certainly doesn't need me, but I love working with him. He gets exactly what I'm after and makes it better than I imagined in the first place. Thanks, Joe!

Next up: guest strips for every webcomic you've ever heard of and a week-long story arc at Theater Hopper.

...maybe not.