Today’s strip has a history to it. It was originally intended to be part one of a 9-part crossover between JLCM and a couple of other comics. Unfortunately the creators (me included) got busy and couldn’t pull it together in time. Still, I had this one comic very close to finished so I figured I’d share it with you guys.

It has a lot to add to the world of JLCM. On the surface it’s just a weird joke about seeing Jean-Luc Picard playing video games with Irv, but this is not completely out of nowhere.

Regular readers will recognize that Picard has made his fair share of appearances in the comic, always lurking in the background with squinted eyes and a jovial smile. I guess the guy just loves to go to the movies. The origins of him showing up are more innocent than me picking a random pop culture figure to decorate the background. Really, I just drew a guy and while coloring realized he looked a lot like Picard, so I said, “Why not?� Since then he’s become my go-to background character. Have a look around, he pops up more then you’d think.

I like him as my background character, and I’ve always liked that it’s sort of known but never addressed. Something that gave me reason to debate doing this particular strip at all. I rationalized though that this doesn’t hurt the joke at all. If anything it gives me ground to build. Now Picard is more than simply “there�. Now he’s elusive and just out of Joe’s grasp. Joe will always want to meet him, but will keep missing him. A most bizarre case of cat and mouse where the cat doesn’t know that mouse is in the room and the mouse doesn’t know that cat is even looking for him.

I’m looking forward to developing that a little.

But I encourage you to keep an eye on the background. I try every now and then to put in cool movie posters of real and fake films, and sometimes, if people ask nice enough, I’ll even put THEM in the comic. The guy next to me in panel one of the strip for The Break-Up is some guy that e-mailed me through MySpace. He was really nice and just asked if he could be in the comic. Sure, why not. I hope it’s a good likeness.

Picard is JLCM’s big guest star but the Crappy family has been wiggling their way into the comics of my movie brothers. There was of course the appearance of Yeo and me over at Theater Hopper last week, which was awesome, but this Monday I was thrilled to see a familiar face lurking in the shadows of Multiplex. Go ahead. Take a look at the last panel and shake in terror!

I think it’s endlessly cool that a character like George has enough of a presence to not be a main character but still leave an impression on people. Enough of an impression to justify an appearance in another comic. For those playing catch up, George ruled this very comic strip with an iron fist back in March. Good times. Good, completely insane times.

George showing up was a great treat but also a little odd. You see in my mind I’ve had George headed on a very different path. A path away from government work and towards crappy movies. It’s something, like the Picard angle, that I’d like to explore a little more in the future. Or I could just stop wasting time and get back to reviewing movies, right?

Thanks Gordon and Tom for including members of the JLCM family. Makes me feel a lot better about using yours.

I’ve been putting off writing the reviews for Cars and Nacho Libre, but if you’re desperate to see the comics you can check them out over at Clickwheel. Not sure why I’ve been avoiding them. It’s the sort of thing where I feel like it will take longer to do than it actually does. I’m an old school procrastinator, but smart enough to get other comic work done while I’m avoiding the work I should be doing. GAH! Gotta get back on the ball!

This past weekend I spent in Virginia with the in-laws and the only comic work I got done was a guest strip for Beaver and Steve. (That should be up sometime in the next week, but his guest week has already started and so far is a lot of fun.) It was a nice weekend though. We did lots of stuff for the wedding and relaxed a little. Yeo even agreed to sneak out with me on Saturday and see The Lake House. It was completely obvious what was going on but was still fun and actually sparked much discussion.

The Cars review will go up tomorrow though. In the meanwhile don’t forget to vote. Two new incentive images today. Over at buzzComix is an image of Iron Man exacting his revenge on my eye. And over at Top Web Comics is another part of the Many Faces of Jesus. Today it’s Jesus – the buddy cop! If you haven’t been voting then you’ve already missed Jesus the Alien and Jesus the giant chicken. That’s some quality blasphemy.

See you tomorrow, folks.