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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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…

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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?

Continue Reading »

(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?

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

evilHow is an amusing resource for supervillains-in-training.