Earlier this month, Praxis Comics’ site had gone down for a few days and I assumed that the publisher had folded. After all, it’s a cutthroat business and their website had previously mentioned some trouble with investors.  However, I am pleased to report that the website has returned with a new design.  (I’m generally fond of Praxis’ art, but I think the design probably uses sex-appeal a bit too blatantly.  Ah well.  That’s pretty standard for this industry).

I also came across Radical Comics.  They don’t accept unsolicited submissions, so I won’t add them to our index of comic book publishers.  But I think they’re worth looking into because they have book trailers for all of their series.

So, if you’re interested in doing a trailer for your comic book (or perhaps even a novel), I think you can learn something from their approach.  Their trailers are striking because they have no narration and hardly any words; they only use wordless images and an instrumental sound-track.  That’s a surprisingly interesting way to present a simpler story like Calibre, an Arthurian legend retold in the Wild West.  It did not work for series with a more complicated setup.  For example, the premise of City of Dust is that fictional stories have been outlawed 100 years in the future.  I don’t feel like the images gave me a good idea of what was going on or why I should care.

I recommend that you look at the entire list on Bookgasm, but here are some of the highlights.

8.  The market for Iron Chef slash-fiction isn’t quite as broad as you may have assumed.  “Oh, Morimoto,” Chef Batali sighed.  “Stuff me like a pepper!”

31. There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims.

32. Be thankful that they merely refused to publish it.  After all, submitting a manuscript that ends with the protagonist realizing that it was just a dream (or was it?) usually causes the publisher to edit your face with a pair of brass knuckles.

36. God may have told you to write this book, but he apparently forgot to tell you how to give it a decent ending.

47. The entire point of your book has already been more satisfactorily made in a single strip of Family Circus.

Penn State recently released a workplace orientation video about potentially angry students, such as veterans. But which angry students did they miss?

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Please see the comments below. Thanks.

Please see the comments below.

Here are some tips to help you write a super-intelligent character even if you are pretty ordinary yourself.

1.  Try not to focus on him talking intelligently– what can he do that’s intelligent? When you’re thinking about this character’s actions, he should be able to come up with cunning plans and brilliant moves.  Try to keep these as simple as possible.  After the hero carries out his plan, ideally your readers will say “damn, why didn’t I think of that?”

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Many (if not most) magical superheroes have day jobs as stage magicians.  (Zatara, Mandrake the Magician, Mr. Mystic, etc).  It’s a stale and completely obvious choice for a day job.  So I decided to do a fresh concept for a magical superhero.  By night, he’s a genuine sorcerer.  By day, he works to disprove supernatural claims, like James Randi.  I think it would be fairly amusing for a sorcerer to resort to nonmagical parlor tricks to convince the masses that what they saw was not, in fact, a magical fireball.  (Umm… perhaps it was a steam pipe malfunction?)

Superhero teams quite often go up against a lone villain.  Realistically, the Fantastic Four (or your version thereof) should easily be able to squish Doctor Doom (or the lone villain of your choice).

But that would be boring. Here are several ways to make it seem like a lone villain actually has a chance of winning.

1. Use minions.  Technically, this is cheating, but I won’t tell if you don’t.  You can always have your heroes fight your villain, and in between hundreds of nameless, faceless villains get in the way.  The best example of this is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Whilst they battle Shredder about 100 Foot Clan warriors usually jump in.

2. Give your heroes something else to do.  Defuse a bomb, free the hostages, stop the plane from crashing… if there is something else needing done, you can safely split your hero team, making it more plausible for your villain to win.  This also raises the excitement level by bringing in time limits.

3. Make your villain AWESOME.  What do I mean by awesome?  Simple.  Make your villain Neo from the third Matrix film, so ridiculously powerful that hundreds of Agent Smiths are required to do battle with him.  The downside to this is that when your heroes do win, it may look contrived.

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Please see the comments below.

1.  Don’t get defensive. The worst case scenario is that someone thinks your writing is awful.  So what?  Several reviewers have accused me of being the worst writer in the world.  No matter how bad it gets, there’s no reason to get huffy.  If you think you can learn something from what they’re saying, then read it carefully and make any necessary improvements.  If it’s just a generic “you suck” kind of review, then you should move on.  Either way, there’s no need for you to defend yourself.

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A Berlin woman divorced her husband for cleaning too much.  “The wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with the man’s penchant for doing household chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture.”  One of the advantages of marrying me is that this will certainly not be a problem.

This article is an interview with Marcus Hart, the author of The Oblivion Society. He originally self-published ObSoc but was later published professionally by Permuted Press.

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It took us three years, but we finally got to 1000 posts.  These include about 400 writing articles totaling ~150,000 words.

She offers some advice here.  Here’s what I took away from her article…

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What do you think?  Is Superman still an A-lister?

In my list of common day jobs for superheroes, I forgot soldiers.  Ack!  How did I miss that?  Anyway, I just added them.  What sort of tips would you recommend for an author writing a story about a superhero soldier?

Here are a few tips about whether you should include ads on your blog.

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Hello.  I’m still dealing with major technical issues on my end that will keep me from adding new moderators.  I’ll let you guys know when I have resolved these issues; I expect it will take us a week or two.

You can see more Dinosaur Comics here.

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Action sequences and other intense scenes usually need to be fast-paced.  Here are a variety of tips to help you pick up the pace.

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Now we have a tiny favicon to help you keep track of which browser tab belongs to Superhero Nation. Favicons are only 16 pixels by 16 pixels, so they’re very hard to read. Here’s the 64 by 64 version.

I was mulling over a few alternatives, but they were fairly uninspired or unworkable: a book, a cape, something with a pen, etc. I’ll let you know if this significantly affects user-retention rates.

What do you think?

I’m pitching a nonfiction book about how to write superhero stories. What do you think?

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(Picture taken courtesy of The Baltimore Sun; you can read their review here).

This novel has been published by Harper-Collins, so I’m sort of surprised by how unappealing the cover is.  It looks like it’s been slapped together for a self-published novel.  There’s a typo on the cover. (“a terrific send-up not only superheroes in general” is missing the word “of”).

What do you think?  What worked and what didn’t?  What would you have changed?

UPDATE: The author of this book has contacted us, saying that the cover is an “uncorrected draft.”  Erm, the book has been out for two months.  Isn’t it well past time to correct it?  Moreover, what were the circumstances that led a publisher to rush out a book that didn’t have a good cover ready?

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I’m trying to write a manga in the fantasy, comedy, adventure and magical knight genres. I’m not sure how long it will last, but the plot below is for the first arc.

The Plot: Keeak was a great hero to the people of Kalomode, a coastal town in an unspecified country. He killed creatures that had been sent out to gather power for Langi, god of evil, and built up his own power to seal Langi away. However, he accidentally sealed himself in, but not before throwing his pendant to his younger brother, Neon. Keeak’s family abandons all hope, before lying to the police and saying that he ran away.

Seven years later, Neon is old enough to use the pendant and the magic associated with it. At first he holds onto it as a reminder of Keeak, but the creatures start surfacing again and he has to fight them. At the same time, he begins to hear a voice. It’s Keeak, who is begging him to unseal the realm of Langi so he can escape. Neon begins to build up his magic for it, while trying to maintain a secret identity.

Target Audience: I imagine it would appeal to guys more than girls, between the ages of 13-18.

Comparable Works: It could probably be compared to DNAngel by Yukiru Sugisaki and The Dreaming by Queenie Chan. At times it will have the feel of DNAngel (more lighthearted) and at other times it will be more like The Dreaming (dark, foreboding, creepy, mysterious).

How Thick Is My Skin? Go easy on me, but point out the errors or potential problems.

Please see the comments below.

We don’t sell ads or subscriptions here.  I’d really appreciate if you could donate to help offset our art and hosting costs.  Thanks.

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