City Mouse Makes a Movie #7

Previously: City Mouse returns to Columbus, Ohio, where his producer friend Collie lives and where he used to live, to make his movie.

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I had an idea to do several chapters in this series as movie trailer parodies, but at this stage I'm not sure if the story will allow for it. As of this writing, I'm almost at the halfway point, and given the direction the story is taking, I don't think I'll have many more opportunities to make more. Still, things could change.

During the original City Mouse series, I did a strip called "High Street Drifter" (High Street being Columbus' main drag) which wasn't necessarily meant to be a movie parody, but obviously drew on Western cliches to an extent. I had started another strip like that here, but I had to scrap it.

This week we get to meet more of the supporting cast. These are all returning characters from the original series, even though they didn't recur that much. I never got to do more with them than I did - the weekly run only lasted a year - but now that CM has been revived, I can and I have. 

The COSI Rats were inspired by an ongoing feature at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI): live rat basketball matches. I only made it to COSI once and I wasn't able to see it then, but as soon as I heard about this, I knew I had to include a COSI rat basketball team as part of the strip. Recently I've used them here and here.

Sophie was initially a nameless throwaway character that I brought back (and gave a name to) when I needed a gay couple for my Pride Fest strip, which is when I introduced her girlfriend Donna. I'll have more to say about them later on, because I've had so much fun developing them. I recently used Sophie here.

And then there's Max. He's the only other character here (so far) based on a real person, my former roommate while I lived in Columbus. Here's a sample strip featuring him. I'll talk more about him in subsequent installments as well.