This site provides writing advice and superhero comedy. If you're writing a superhero story, you will probably find our superhero-themed articles especially instructive.

Would you like to subscribe to our RSS feed?

Authors, particularly new and unproven ones, have to use promotional events to drive sales. Google Analytics can provide useful information about which cities are worth promoting in. The conventional wisdom is probably that the most readers for the typical book can be found in large cities (NYC, Chicago, LA…) But you can probably do a lot better than just hitting up large cities.

For example, we’ve tabulated our numbers for January 2008 and found that Atlanta and Toronto currently have almost as many Superhero Nation readers as NYC.

Continue Reading »

For an explanation of the Jimmy Carter killer rabbit attack, please see here.

If you would like this bumper-sticker on your car, you can look at it here. We’re selling it for $4, of which $.45 goes to the “Save the Starving English-Major Fund.” No pressure! Five will buy us a McDonald’s fish sandwich, 15 will buy us a Chipotle burrito, and 25 will buy us a panini sandwich and a glass of orgo-soy milk. [B. Mac adds: anyone that spends $3 on a glass of milk, let alone FAKE milk, deserves to starve].

Perhaps you’ve heard the proverb that teaching a man to fish goes farther than giving him a fish sandwich. That’s true. “So how can I teach a starving English-major to feed himself, Cadet Davis?” Well… if you’re feeling especially generous and have a large vehicle (like a hummer or an aircraft carrier), I’d estimate that I’m 250,000 249,998 bumper-stickers south of an English degree. At that point, I still won’t be able to pay for my own food, but at least I’ll know how to write grant proposals.

[B. Mac adds: hey, don’t forget the Starving Political-Scientist Fund! These bumper-stickers don’t write themselves, you know. *winks*]

Picture taken courtesy of NetteBini.

Agent Orange Campaign Poster: BELIEVE

This poster is a sendup of Shepard Fairey’s campaign posters for Barack Obama.

This poster can be purchased for $10 here. (Our art may LOOK communist, but we’re not).

This is part of a life insurance ad that I found very amusing.

Someone used The Sims 2 to make a music video for the Men in Black theme. Normally, I think efforts like this are hackish. But this one was quite funny, particularly from :48-55. If you were writing the script for the music video, it would be like casting IRS agents as dancers and then telling them to improvise Thriller.

I also found the series of bunny hops at around 1:25 perversely amusing.

On April 30, we changed headers…

Continue Reading »

Oiur resident political scientist plays with the numbers and concludes that Hillary Clinton could very well end up winning the popular vote.

Continue Reading »

Picture taken from Trykemom.

The current crop of presidential candidates leaves us yearning for someone who can plausibly claim the mantle of Commando in Chief. By a vote of 2-1-1-1, Agent Black beats Catastrophe, Lash and Paingod as our preferred candidate. As far as presidential candidates go, I think these runner-ups aren’t bad (certainly more credible than Huckabee or Biden), but they have several key electoral disadvantages compared to Agent Black.

1. Catastrophe isn’t human. Even if we put nonhumans in his camp, Florida only has a million alligators.
2. Lash is black and, probably worse, a New Yorker that works for an organization called the “Social Justice League.” Even without using racially-tinged imagery, you wouldn’t need Lee Atwater or Karl Rove to turn that into a 45 state massacre. If John McCain survives to Election Day, maybe 49.
3. Paingod’s a supervillain. That hasn’t stopped Lex Luthor, Tempus and Savage Dragon’s nemesis from running for the White House, but it would presumably be an obstacle. (”Well, I won’t vote for a Mormon, black, or divorcee… but I guess I could give Paingod another chance”).

If you would like to see this pin at our Zazzle store, please click here.

Note: you may have noticed that this post isn’t tagged with the “National Service” category. That isn’t accidental.

I love Zazzle for selling custom apparel, but its choice of models is a little bit… questionable.

(You can see the shirt here).

This article looks at some rough drafts of Superhero Nation t-shirts and some of the marketing and business considerations of selling your own apparel.

For our first t-shirt version (the expensive one), I assembled a few cast-members on the front and a few funny quotes on the back. It’s a nice shirt, especially if you like the way our characters look, but I suspect that we will have pricing problems.

To see this image full-size, please click here.

Pricing, Marketing and Aesthetics

Currently, we’re looking at a reasonably high price of $20 $15 for this shirt. By selling on Zazzle, we have taken $5 off the price-tag (compared to CafePress). Have I mentioned that Zazzle’s design features are considerably better and more flexible?

We are also working on a cheaper, $10 alternative. I think it’ll look something like this one-sided shirt.

Theoretically, we could take prices even lower by cutting down the number of colors and printing/selling them ourselves. I doubt we have the time, money and salesmanship to make that work, though. As time allows, I will try to provide a rough business model for two different sets of entrepreneurs: those that sell goods through third-party vendors like CafePress, and those that actually invest money and try to distribute the goods themselves.

T-Shirt #3

The next one is a parody of the US Navy’s Accelerate Your Life slogan, brought to you by the conspicuously high-mortality Office of Special Investigations.

Finals is really putting a hurt on us, but within a week or two you will be able to buy the final versions of these drafts at our Zazzle store.

Superheroes should never ask “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” The answer is never helpful.

But where could you find that much nitroglycerin at this hour?

–Dr. Darpa

Unless your IQ has tripled since we’ve last spoken, probably not.

–Catastrophe

You are now.

–Mr. Mental

Don’t flatter yourself.

–Paingod

Science plays heavily in many superhero stories. So, today, instead of coming up with some pithy quote about science, we’ve used others to do so for us.

What is science?

Hocus pocus, but with less hand-waving.

– Agent Orange

Always being within a carton of baking soda of a doomsday device.

– Dr. Darpa

Like Hollywood, except without the beautiful women, oversized budgets and snappy outfits. Actually, it’s not like Hollywood at all, besides the explosions.

–Dr. Savant

A series of triumphs over unpleasant realities.

– Jacob Mallow

Pretty awful. Stick to game theory.

– Catastrophe

Agent Orange: I have learned something important about mammals. Two quasi-mystical words will put a mammal into a hypnotic stupor that will force him to believe anything.

Agent Black: You’re crazy.

Agent Orange: I am prepared to demonstrate my new-found learning of mammalian psychology. First, I will greet a victim-mammal of your selection. Then you will make an outlandish statement. And I will administer the two word hypnotic spell.

Agent Black: Let’s see it.

Five minutes later.

Agent Orange: Greetings, Mammal-Darpa! We have learned something intriguing on our latest posting.

Dr. Darpa: What?

Agent Black: We were attacked by robotic, flesh-eating airplanes.

Agent Orange: IN JAPAN!

Agent Black: … !

Dr. Darpa: Egads! How did you survive?

Agent Black: …

Agent Black: NO!

[end] (If you’d be interested in reading a related article, “Stuff Mammals Like: Japan,” please see more.

Continue Reading »

This art is used by Red Alert 2, a video game that portrays an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States. There is, however, one major artistic flaw in the drawing (and it’s not that there are enormous blimps attacking New York, of course)… can you spot it? I’ve got the answer at the bottom.

In this picture, the blimps are facing the same way as the Statue of Liberty. However, the Statue of Liberty doesn’t face towards the United States, it faces towards the sea! These blimps are not attacking– they’re fleeing.

Here are several quotes from the book Soon I Will be Invincible. Which character says them? You have three choices: a mutant cat created in a lab accident, a genius millionaire turned businessman and a whiny teen idol. If you expect this will be easy, you obviously haven’t read SIWBI.

“This is all geek stuff.”

“Maybe you should be at work, then. Spend some time on the streets.”

“He always looks fine. I know you two kept in touch.”

“Darkness? Crime, you mean.”

“You honestly think there’s something behind this.”

“We haven’t seen a serious threat for almost a year. I’m almost bored.”

The first four are from the mutant cat and the last two are from the genius businessman. If you’re wondering why a mutated cat would use phrases like “geek stuff,” you’re not alone. I’d like to note that none of these lines actually came from the whiny teen idol, but most of them sound like they should have.

(You can read our much longer SIWBI review here).

This article will help you organize the plotline of your story or novel.

Continue Reading »

Somehow, I suspect that the individual who got to Superhero Nation by Googling Air Force Office of Special Investigations business cards didn’t stay very long. [I hope he wasn’t at work– B. Mac]

We also got a query for do alligators have thumbs? . Turning to our resident reptologist, P.G…

No. Although alligator feet bear some superficial resemblances to human hands, they aren’t really used for much except traction.