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Some of the things on my to-do list.  

PARODYING COMIC BOOK VIOLENCE

1. Someone being eaten
2. Death by plant
3. Death by fire extinguisher
4. Death by ceiling
5. Death by squid
6. Death by refrigerator 
7. Death by frog and meteor showers

PARODYING ALTERNATE IDENTITY-INDUCED STUPIDITY 

1. POLICE: “Well, Mary Jane Watson’s been kidnapped at least three times in the past ten years, generally by criminals associated with Spiderman.  But there’s no reason to suspect a connection…”
2. EMPLOYERS: “My star employee puts in fewer hours than everyone else and runs off a lot more.  He must just love being productive… by himself.”  
3. JOURNALISTS: Glasses.  Enough said. 
4. POLICE DOGS: fortunately, they are curiously unable to identify superhero scents at crime scenes and then track them back to either the source or hangouts.

PARODYING USE OF WOMEN IN COMIC BOOKS

1. Women virtually absent
2. Any woman introduced must be paralleled by the man she will end up falling in love with 
3. Feminists complain about objectification despite wearing less clothing than most four-year-olds and OBVIOUSLY getting implants
4. Women must be hopelessly, hopelessly clueless compared to male peers

PARODYING ALIENS IN COMIC BOOKS

1. EMPIRE STATE CONNECTION:  The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence uses the Empire State Building as a beacon to contact alien life.  That’s why aliens that crash-land on Earth have a remarkable tendency to make landfall within 25 miles of it.  
2. GOVERNMENT COVERUP:  The government will always spend considerable amounts of money and manpower covering up the presence of aliens and will kill anyone that gets in the way.  The conspiracy is so deep that none of the participants know why the government needs to conceal the existence of aliens.
3. CONVERGENT EVOLUTION:  Humans are really genetically competitive!  
   • 100% of alien species have a human body structure (two arms, two legs, walking upright, etc.)
   • 90% of aliens have fundamentally human psychologies (similar thought processes, senses, cultures, desires).  And the remaining ten percent are invariably villains opposed by human-like species. 
   • 75% of aliens look exactly like humans (or shape-shift) and lack any characteristics that would rule out an alternate identity easily identify them to humans.   (How frustrating would it be to look overwhelmingly like a human but smell overwhelmingly different?)
   • ALIENS, DARWIN’S GOLDEN CHILDREN:  Sorry, guys… aliens outclass us in every conceivable way.  Every alien species beats us in strength, resilience, flight, senses and technology.   Aliens aren’t necessarily smarter than humans, but no aliens are notably dumber than humans.  In short, humans have no advantages compared to aliens, even in traits like speaking human languages.  We don’t even have a distinct edge at seeming human. 

1. VESTIGIAL LIMBS:  Even species that can fly effortlessly retain their two legs.  Among species that fly, legs are considerably more prevalent than wings.  Even species that able to fly will have two legs.
2. Unlike human behaviors, 100% of alien behaviors are attributable to their species.  For example, if France randomly attacked Germany, it wouldn’t follow that “humans are really aggressive.”  However, any alien aggression towards humans indisputably proves that the alien species is implacably hostile and needs to be stopped. 
   • Per Independence Day, War of the Worlds, E.T., Perfect Dark…  in peacetime, humans will capture and exploit alien prisoners.  When aliens and humans fight, humans never take POWs… because the aliens are savages! 

Note: Superhero Nation does play on these expectations, but the joke’s on the reader.  I surveyed 30 people that read chapters 1-3.  

• 26 agreed with the statement “Agent Orange can’t be trusted.”  “Why do you think that?”  3 said because he probably lied to Lash in Best Investigator.  17 went with “because his species is hostile to humans.”  6: don’t know.  (I allowed for that option because I didn’t want respondents to feel like they HAD to assess Orange based on too little information). 
• “Why do you think Paingod and Agent Orange are upset with each other?”  5: because of political differences.  8: because of personal differences.  11: “because members of their species interact differently.” 
• “Why do you think Lash is upset with Fox News?”  15: because of political differences.  13: because of personal differences.  1: “because of the human condition.”  (I really struggled to come up with a parallel to ‘because members of their species interact differently’).  It surprised me that anyone selected the “human condition.”  On further investigation, it turns out that he was a fan of Augustine.  Sigh.  I need to weed out Philosophy majors from reader surveys.   
• “Which one of these do you think best describes Agent Black?”  6:  “An American doing a patriotic and moral service to his people.”  13: “Someone making the best of a morally difficult situation.”  5: “Generally more a part of the problem than the solution.”  1: “A traitor that needs to be dealt with.”  (5 unsures).  (Other questions revealed that self-identified conservatives tended to go with the first two categories and liberals with the last two).   
• “Which one of these do you think best describes Agent Orange?”  2: “An American doing a patriotic and moral service to his people.”  4: “Someone making the best of a morally difficult situation.”  8: “Generally more a part of the problem than the solution.”  4: “A traitor that needs to be dealt with.”  (12 unsures).  The ideological split was less clear here.  Conservatives made up most of the two extremes and liberals generally went for the third choice or weren’t sure. 
• “It is possible that someone who is born into drastically different conditions that I was could be meaningfully American.”  Virtually unanimous agreement (26 strong agreements, 2 weak agreements, 1 weak disagree, 1 don’t know). 
• “It is possible that someone who acts or thinks drastically differently than I do could be meaningfully American.”  This was more contentious but a majority still agreed.  (12 strong agrees, 7 weak agrees, 4 weak disagrees, 4 strong disagrees, 3 don’t knows).  Compared to the previous question, populists moved the most (and also, to some extent, conservatives).   
• Looking back at the question, “which of these do you think best describes Agent Orange?,” readers generally thought less of Orange than (the human) Black. 
• So Agent Orange was generally judged much less sympathetically.  That could be because Agent Orange just is less sympathetic and that my readers aren’t discriminating against aliens… the results would flip if I made Agent Black the alien and Agent Orange the human and kept everything the same.   Or people are subconsciously discriminating against Orange because he’s not human.  I don’t have enough information to determine which it is, yet, but it puzzles me that anyone would describe Orange as a “traitor that needs to be dealt with” without factoring in him being an alien.  I’m vaguely sure I didn’t put in anything that would suggest that… well, I did write a possibly sinister line about Agent Orange reworking the world, but I think readers would be more inclined to judge that the line would be idealistic, rather than creepy, if it were spoken by a human.   

Methodology 

I used a few criteria to eliminate potential poll responders.  They had to answer three multiple choice questions correctly.  Additionally, I only gave the quiz to Americans because I want to examine the American political culture.  (Sorry, everyone else… I’m sure you have your own political scientists).  

1. “What state is the setting of the first three chapters?”  (NY)
2. “Which species does Agent Black belong to?  Which species does Lash belong to?”  [correct answer: both are human.]
3. “Which one of these best describes the physical appearance of Agent Orange?”  [the correct answer was the only one that sounded remotely reptilian.]  

The first question was pretty basic.  Even if you didn’t specifically remember that the answer is New York, you might have recalled that Lash works on Wall Street, that Agent Black is the “Manhattan Mangler,” the “Empire State Strikes Back,” or the mention of mutated animals living in the Queens sewers.

The second question mattered because I needed to know whether my readers were reacting differently to alien characters because they are alien.  Obviously, if you don’t remember who is human who isn’t, then your answers wouldn’t help as much.  (Sorry!)

The final question served mainly to identify readers that would remember enough specifics about the book to justify their opinions later. 

Over 60% of respondents answered the three questions correctly.