The Evil Overlord List recommends that evil overlords fake a vulnerability to confuse their enemies.

For example, I will order all mirrors removed from the palace, and scream and flinch whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax, when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be “Hmm…I think I need a shave.”

Superman is obviously faking his vulnerability to kryptonite.  It’s highly suspicious that so many people have attempted to use kryptonite against him but none have managed to kill or maim him.  Also, doesn’t it seem implausible that someone would be fatally vulnerable to the radiation given off by his own planet?

Although some nay-sayers might argue that Superman is too honest to lie about this sort of thing, I think it’s just like a better version of his Clark Kent ruse.

I’ve noticed some uncanny similarities between Kurt Warner (Arizona’s quarterback) and Sylar from Heroes.

1. One has spent the better part of a season mangling his enemies in spectacularly gruesome fashions.  The other is a serial killer.
2. One wears white and red.  The other is white and usually spattered in red.
3. Sylar has superpowers that allow him to avoid any lasting injuries. Warner doesn’t need superpowers.

How does Larry Fitzgerald make all those crazy catches? Because he knows that if he drops a pass, his head is gone.

Thanks, I’d really appreciate it.  Right now, the main thing I’m working on is character-design, specifically a mutant alligator that’s pretty much the Hobbes in a Calvin & Hobbes comic duo.

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CNN just did a piece on how cops break the news that someone’s loved one has been murdered.  I think the article is an especially useful resource for the authors of superhero stories because a lot of superheroes get so caught up in their superhero identities that regular people are essentially cut from the story.  For example, on Heroes normal people are sometimes used as props or plot devices, but they never get any important lines.   (Also, the characters haven’t had real jobs since season 1, and all of the recurring characters have superpowers now. Even Suresh and Ando!)

Although breaking tragic news to a spouse might get too angsty, I suspect that an author could play it quietly to add emotional depth to the superhero.  One of the things that annoyed me about Bruce Wayne/Batman is that he’s so socially retarded that it seems like he doesn’t care about anyone else.  Beating the hell out of bad guys is fine, but that’s just revenge for Batman.  If your hero is supposed to be likable, you might want to show that he’s at least trying to empathize with regular people.  I’d recommend having him stumble awkwardly in the conversation, though.  I think the scene depends on the awkwardness of the hero being thrust into a new role that’s hard even for professional chaplains.

What do you think?

I wish I were making this up.

Blogarella link.
Humor Blogs link.

Just wondering.

(We’ve also considered the appeal of Twilight and The Hulk).

Cadet Davis reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.

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“Then she remembered…” is usually an awkward way to remind readers of backstory.  Additionally, it creates sentences that depend on a boring verb (remembered).   For example, let’s say John is investigating a murder that may have been committed by his friend Cathy.

Cathy said that she had been on a safari when the victim was murdered.  Then John remembered that she was actually deathly afraid of large animals.

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We’ve already done a general article on the dangers of using children as side-characters, but this article will discuss only the most dangerous kind of child character: The Scrappy.

Generally, a Scrappy is a character that is hated by readers, usually because he’s exaggeratedly inept in a way that is meant to be funny.  For example, instead of having a slight speech impediment, he’ll be Jar-Jar Binks.  Instead of being a bit younger than the other characters, he’ll be Scrappy Doo.  This character usually distracts from the more competent characters, often so much that he becomes a hate figure.

Here are some common misconceptions that lead authors to use Scrappies…

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Be careful when it comes to giving characters unearned reputations.

It’s insufferable when we hear something about a character and see something else entirely.   For example, everyone in Heroes tells the audience that Mohinder is a brilliant scientist, but his most notable act of science has been to inject himself with an entirely untested formula that accidentally turns him into a monster.  That makes both the character and the writers come off poorly.  (Mohinder’s a moron, the plot hinges on total stupidity and the writers clearly don’t know anything about scientific testing, etc).  If you need your cast to act very uncharacteristically, at least give us a reason why.  For example, if Mohinder’s life had been in immediate jeopardy, it’d be more plausible that he would have taken the formula without testing it first.

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Champions Online (the latest superhero-meets-World of Warcraft game) has a quiz I found kind of amusing.

You are pure evil, and hate personified. You don’t care anything about your fellow man, and are guided only by your desire to rule over your inferiors, i.e. everybody but you. ‘Mercy,’ you ask, prior to grinding an enemy beneath your mighty heel, ‘What is mercy?’

Take the quiz!

Hi, I’m looking to get published. My prospective publishers want me to provide information about my audience. Specifically, are you interested in my book about how to write superhero stories? Would you prefer information tailored to novelists, comic book writers or both?

I would really appreciate 5 minutes of your help. Thanks!

Atomic Robo is OK.  The writing is occasionally stylish but mostly forgettable.  Artistically, the main character is done pretty well and everyone else looks kind of awful.

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Just wondering.

This naming device tends to fail because it usually doesn’t make any sense.  For example, The United States of Tara is an ineffective title for a show about a character with split personalities.

1. It relies on an obscure pun.  (States of personality, get it?)
2. United States of Tara isn’t actually about the United States at all, so using that phrase in the title creates a huge red herring.

Me, Myself and Irene was a far clearer title for a story about a split-personality protagonist.  It also made better use of wordplay (“me, myself and I”).

This comic book artist gives writers a few suggestions about how to lay out the story.  I found it very useful.

Let’s see.  Right now I’m working on the cover of our first issue and a series logo.

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Our overriding goal is to provide a friendly and professional meeting place for aspiring authors.  Please keep that in mind!

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These fonts are poison.

1. Comic Sans
2. Times New Roman
3. Helvetica
4. Arial
5. Chronicles of a Hero
6. Anime Ace

Sometimes a minor character will “steal” the scene from the main character, taking so much of the spotlight that the main character just seems to disappear.  Here are several scenarios that often to lead to scene-stealing.

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“Keep the change, ya filthy animal.”  Indeed!  If your character changes in some way , it’s usually a good idea to “keep the change” rather than undo the change later on.  Backtracking often makes the characterization feel unsatisfying and usually suggests that there was no reason to make the change in the first place.  If the hero moves from psychopathic to mostly sane, it probably won’t feel right if he suddenly jerks back to psychopathic two episodes later.  (I’m looking at you, Sylar!)

In a novel or comic book, backtracking is best-handled as a major failure for the main character.  For example, it might be a decisive event that sets up the climactic struggle.  As an immature kid, Simba runs away when his father gets killed.  That sets up his return to fight Scar in the climax, establishing that he has finally become responsible.  Alternately, the hero backtracks because the hero loses at the end.  For example, if The Lion King were a dystopian tragedy about Simba failing to become mature, Simba gets hunted down and eaten by the hyenas shortly after fleeing to the desert.  That’ll teach you to try to run away from your problems!

Backtracking is generally not well-suited for traits that aren’t particularly important, or for minor characters. Backtracking tends to take a lot of space (to clear up potential confusion), so it probably isn’t worthwhile unless the character and trait are crucial to the story.

Now I’m going back to watch Home Alone.

We were thinking about titles for a possible sequel to Superhero Nation.  I liked Superhero World, so I tried to register www.superheroworld.com, only to discover that it already redirects to Marvel’s website.  On behalf of small businesses everywhere, I’d like to say “*#@! you, Marvel!”

Speaking of Marvel, fevered rumors occasionally surface that Marvel and/or DC have copyrighted the word “superhero” and plan to sue anyone that uses them.  That’s obviously bunk.  However, a more credible blogger claims that Marvel and DC have jointly trademarked the term superhero and are the only ones that can use it when naming a comic book.  It is true that they have the trademark, but there is virtually no chance that it would hold up in court. (Whether or not your publisher is actually willing to risk a case is another question, though… it’s cheaper to come up with a new title than go to court).

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CURRENT HEADER (January 14)

• The characters are slightly larger than they had been in the previous header.
• We replaced the copyright at the bottom-right with a brief joke.

PREVIOUS HEADER (January 12)

• The fonts are a bit easier to read than they had been in the January 5 version.
• We changed the background graphic.  It looks less cartoony than the flag in the January 5 version.

ORIGINAL HEADER (January 5)

I’m kind of fond of this classic one about a Holocaust survivor and a former death camp supervisor.  However, the twist ending is too predictable.  (Hold your cursor here for the spoiler).

Florida just won the national championship in college football.  I feel a comic coming on, just not soon.

I was browsing around Once Upon A Geek, which has a lot of amusing superhero content.  For example, I liked this blending of Peanuts and the Watchmen.

They also collected some interesting Christmas-themed covers.  Below the jump:  Spiderman lassoing a surly Wolverine with Christmas lights, and two shots of Santa packing heat.

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1.  The story fails to hook readers in the first three pages.
The easiest way to do this is to show a likable character facing a serious problem.  It doesn’t have to be a life-and-death threat, but that helps.  Another method is to establish that the writing style is particularly compelling.

2. The plot lacks urgency.

A character walking from his door to his car is not very interesting. Running to his car to make it to work on time is better. Running to his car to avoid gunshots? Even better. To make the plot more urgent, I recommend making giving the characters goals that are time-sensitive and high-stakes. If John doesn’t make it to work in ten minutes, he will be fired. If Captain Carnage can’t find and defuse the bomb in ten minutes, the building will explode. Etc.  The goal doesn’t have to be life or death, but it helps.

3.  The writers rely too much on exposition (particularly narration and dialogue) to tell the story.

Try not to tell your audience things that they should be able to see in the picture. For example, check out these two versions of one of our panels.

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Just wondering.

Superhero Nation is slightly eccentric and wacky, so I kind of want an eye-catching cover that conveys that.  Here are a few of my latest ideas for our first cover.

1.  This cover shows a desk with a careful array of US presidential bobbleheads.  (It’s Agent Orange’s desk, so this should look a bit wacky).  At the front of the desk would be bobbleheads of Agent Black, Agent Orange and their boss.  In the background, we’d place a motivational poster for humorous flavor.  (Maybe “Human Resources:  Killer Service Every Time.”)

ALTERNATIVE:  The desk still has presidential bobbleheads, but the bobbleheads of the cast are gone.  Agent Orange is behind the desk in a surly boss pose and Agent Black is staring at him dumbfounded.  As before, there’s a motivational poster for humor.  (Hat-tip to Brett).

2.  Agent Black is getting chewed out in an over-the-top manner by Agent Orange.  I’d probably frame it like a scene between Peter Parker and JJ Jameson.  I’m relying on the “what the hell?” factor of having a mutant alligator as the boss to make this eye-catching and appealing.  I’d probably give Agent Orange a business prop like a wacky chart or graph in lieu of the motivational poster.

3.    Agent Black is in a mock Rambo pose, ineptly wielding a machine gun on a firing range.  All of his bullets are wildly off his target.  (The bulletholes may spell out the Superhero Nation logo).  Agent Orange is looking on exasperatedly with a hand on his forehead.  He’s shaking his head.  This is probably better-suited for the second issue than the first.

We’re compiling a list of common mistakes of first-time comic book teams. I’ve got 40 so far, but I’d love to know what you would come up with.

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Only a few weeks ago, Dark Horse required writers to have artists on-board before their stories could be considered.  However, according to Dark Horse’s Submissions page, it seems like Dark Horse has nixed that requirement.  In the miscellaneous notes, it says that “If a submitted project has an artist collaborator, samples of the artist’s continuity work must be included.”  That suggests that DH will consider submitted projects that don’t yet have an artist.  That should make it much cheaper for writers to prepare a script for DH.

However, if you’re applying to DH, I would really recommend getting an artist anyway even though it’s not required. Preparing a sample of 5 pages and a cover will probably set you back $400-500 (colored) or maybe $250-350 (inked). That’s a major investment.  However, if you’re serious about your application, having art accompany your writing could really help you.  Providing pages that have been inked (preferably colored) will make it very easy for the editors to decide if you’re worth hiring.  If all you have is your script, it won’t be nearly as clear whether your team has the style and skill to convey the story on the page. Remember, businesses hate risks. When they put money down, they want to know they’re getting quality.

See the comments below.

I got tired of looking at the same header for three months, so I tweaked it a bit.  The main differences are the fonts, but I also adjusted the background flag. 

The bubbles are kind of nasty right now, but I can fix them as soon as I get back to campus in a week or two.  What do you think?

About 40,000 sets of Google search terms brought readers to our website in 2008.  Most of them found something useful.  Here are a few that definitely didn’t.

1. literary agents who are not biased against louis farrakhan
2. am i an nsa assassin
3. is writing to a male haram?
4. leaky gymnast sex
5. how to jerk readers around

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1. Expand this site to 500,000 hits and 1.5 million page-views. That would be about 1500 and 4500 of each a day, growth of roughly 400%.
2. Get a comic book series published. I need to receive my first paycheck before graduation in May.
3. Finish writing a nonfiction book about how to write superhero stories and get them published.  I expect to have completed this before graduation because I’ve already done so many articles for this website.  So the content is mostly finished.  Now the main task is adapting the chapters for a younger and more superhero-interested audience.
4. Chip away at the novel.
5. Get a fulltime job. Ideally, I’m thinking I’d work there for a year or two before moving on to grad school.

1. Novels are overwhelmingly word-driven.  In contrast, the primary tool of a comic book writer is visual imagery.  Words are a secondary tool to express what can’t be shown visually.  Comic book readers are annoyed by long blocks of text.  As a rule, I’d recommend limiting a page to 175 words of text for an adult audience.
2. Novels will usually describe the settings and what’s going on in the background at some length.  In comic books, those worldbuilding details are almost purely visual.
3. Every novel relies on a narrator.  In contrast, virtually every comic book avoids narration and instead tells the story with a combination of action, visual scenery, and dialogue (in roughly that order).   A comic book narrator may offer us little snippets of information like “FIVE MINUTES LATER…” but it’s not very interesting or smooth for him to drop paragraphs of information on us.
4. Novels are much longer (60,000-80,000 words vs. 2500-5000 and ~300 pages vs. ~24).  As a result, novels tend to focus more on dialogue and low-intensity scenes than action sequences, particularly combat.  A 24 page comic book might spend 10 pages on 2 fights, but a 300 page novel probably wouldn’t come close to 120 pages of fighting or 25 fights.   Having that many fights would get tedious.  Also, novel fight scenes tend to suck.  If readers wanted to see a rolling fight scene, they would go for a comic book or, more likely, an action movie.
5. Novel readers (particularly adults) tend to expect deeper characterization, fresher characters and more interesting relationships.  Character growth is far more important in a novel than a comic book.  If the main character has not changed or grown in some way over the course of the novel, readers are likely to feel dissatisfied.  In contrast, a character like Superman tends to change very little over the course of a comic book series.

Hello.  SN strives to provide high-quality writing advice that is as accessible to 15 year-olds as 50 year-olds.  With that in mind, we have some restrictions on what can be posted here. 

1.  Political opinions, particularly propaganda.

Please remove political content unless it relates directly to writing and/or superheroes.  For example, a question about how to write a story with political themes is acceptable.  A message about why you should vote for candidate X or believe Y is not. This isn’t a political debate site.

2. Fan-fiction.
Many publishers get surly when other people use their material. This site generates money.  I don’t want a publisher to assert that it deserves a piece of our budget! (Moderators, please remove this material and refer the author to a fan-fiction site instead).  

3.  R-Rated sexual content.
Sexual content tends to scare away other authors even more readily than other mature elements.  Anything more graphic or creepy than a James Bond movie is probably not a great fit for this website– for one thing, about half of our guests are younger than 18 and many of the rest are teachers.  (Moderators, please remove this material and refer the author to DeviantArt, SheezyArt or Daniel).  

4.  Fetish and/or pornographic material.
Our moderators will encourage these authors to consider DeviantArt, SheezyArt or psychiatric assistance instead.  (Moderators, if you’re not sure whether something counts as a fetish story, please place it in the moderation-pending queue and I will resolve it.  Thanks!)

5.  Anything that suggests that the author needs urgent psychiatric assistance.
From time to time, commenters may say that they’re feeling suicidal.  Whether they’re serious or not, we’re not qualified to help.  So our moderators will tell the author to seek professional assistance (calling 911 or the local equivalent is a great place to start) and then place the comment in the moderation queue.  Exception:  it is acceptable for an author to ask about how psychiatric situations and other wellness issues will affect a writing career.

6. Blatant self-promotion.
If an author posts a comment that includes a link to his site without providing any useful information, these links will be deleted.  If you’d like to use our website to market yourself, you have to contribute something intelligent first.  In particular, please make sure to demonstrate that you’ve actually read some of the comments.  Hit-and-run self-promoters are not welcome here.

7. Creepy or potentially dangerous personal information.
Moderators, please delete any information that would creep out a lot of other people. In addition, I’d like to make sure that we keep teens and pre-teens from giving out too much personal information (phone numbers, addresses, etc). Information posted online is visible to EVERYBODY, including hundreds of thousands of people you definitely wouldn’t want on your doorstep.

Thanks, guys! I apologize if you were really hoping to post adult material here rather than on DeviantArt or SheezyArt, but you’ll find more receptive reviewers there.