I'm a former assistant editor with advice about how to write novels, comic books and graphic novels. Most of my content applies to fiction-writing in general, but I also provide articles specifically about superhero stories.

Vampires Suck is startlingly bad.  How could anybody dig into a comedic vein so rich–ripping into Twilight–and come up with so little?  It’s like going to Alaska and failing to find snow.  If you’re in the mood for a good Twilight parody, I recommend this fake screenplay. Here’s an excerpt:

SCENE 2

BELLA: It’s tough being the new kid in school! Especially when everyone is so friendly and helpful and interested in me. Why can’t they just leave me alone so I can sit in the corner and cut myself?
CLASSMATE: You’re awesome, Bella!
BELLA: See what I have to put up with? Hey — who are those hot people over there?
CLASSMATE: Those are the Cullens. They avoid direct sunlight, they don’t eat food, they sleep in coffins in a graveyard, and holy water burns them. I think they’re Canadians.*
BELLA: They sure are spectacularly gorgeous.
CLASSMATE: Yes, they are.
BELLA: I mean seriously, those people are BEAUTIFUL. Especially the one who keeps looking at me. Man alive, that guy is stunning. I mean, wow. He is hot buttered seduction on a stick. I’m not interested in him sexually, of course, because sex is dirty, but wow — LOOK AT HIM! Yee-ikes! Hubba hubba! If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the next 75 pages talking exclusively about how attractive he is, and then bring it up again every paragraph or so for the remaining 400 pages.
CLASSMATE: Knock yourself out.

*The makers of Vampires Suck stole this joke.

Thank God this is a parody.

I especially liked Corporate White Boss.

I don’t usually post ridiculously profane material, but I’ll make an exception today. Here are several not-safe-for-work videos.

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The New York Times uncovered evidence of serious detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay:

How do you break a suicidal terrorist? Find something worse than death.

As if the nipples on the Batsuit weren’t bad enough.  To be fair, though, it was the 1950s (Detective Comics #241).

Somehow, I doubt it’ll help them all that much.

Just because something has happened doesn’t necessarily make it believable.  Here are some examples.

John Quincy Adams kept a pet alligator in the White House.  (Not surprisingly, he faced no assassination attempts).

Unwacky: Brett Favre’s first completed pass was to himself.
Barely wacky: Austria’s World Cup team threw a key match to West Germany to screw Algeria.  The game got so bad the announcer asked viewers to change the channel.
Wackier: “You were like 50 feet away.  How could you be so sure that the ball crossed into the German goal?”  “Stalingrad.”
Outlandish: “The Band Is On the Field!”

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PIXAR VS. DREAMWORKS

INDEPENDENCE DAY RAP
This is ridiculously crass, but pretty hilarious.

P. Mac coded this random plot generator:

Did you like this? Submit us to Stumble!

If you’re into ridiculously petty literary squabbles, you might get a kick out of this amusing list of reader stereotypes based on favorite authors.  Just don’t take it seriously. I thought these two were funny. 

James Patterson fans: Men who bomb the LSAT.

Stephenie Meyer fans: “People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv <3 <3.”  [But they'll still complain when you misspell Stephenie!]

Here are some of my own. 

Aldous Huxley fans: People that have FAR too much fun to survive to 40. From his masterpiece’s Wikipedia entry: ”…They turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of [drugs] and sex.”  Make that 35. 

Tom Clancy fans: Guys that like guns but have never actually carried one. 

James Joyce fans: Guys that like James Joyce books but have never actually read one. 

Franz Kafka fans: I think they’re the people that run airports.  It’s the only possible explanation. 

H.G. Wells fans: If they ever had a time machine, their first act would be erasing George Lucas from history.  (Could you wait until Return of the Jedi? Thanks). 

Charles Dickens fans: Readers that think a book is twice as enjoyable if it’s twice as long.

Lorraine Hansberry fans: Jeopardy writers.  I’ll take 1970s Tony-Winning Adaptations for $2000, Alex! 

Step 1: Randomly pick an inciting event, an antagonist, a protagonist and a goal.

INCITING EVENT

• cheated on
• kidnapped
• impaled on a national landmark
• thrown out of a window
• mentally mutilated
• disowned
• fired
• hired
• drafted
• mugged
• kicked down the stairs
• put in the poor house
• brutally murdered
• psychically ravaged
• drop-kicked in Times Square
• publically serenaded
• mistaken for a felon
• exiled
• sent on a one-way trip to Djibouti
• interrogated
• sold a [adjective] pet
• implicated
• sold into slavery
• deceived
• misidentified
• sued
• infected
• ruined
• mistakenly tackled
• swindled
• blacklisted
• judo-chopped through a wall
• poisoned
• framed
• drunk under the table
• thrown into a pit of carnivorous gophers
• beaten in the World Series of Poker
• outed as a superhero
• humiliated
• betrayed
• forced to read Twilight
• thrown into a wood-chipper
• blackmailed
• tricked
• nearly decapitated
• rear-ended
• magically turned into a man-eating llama

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Mike Lacher has a pretty funny list on McSweeny’s Internet Tendency. I especially liked “Seven Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism.”  Here are some reworked titles of my own.

• A Wannabe Philosopher Goes Ax-Crazy on a Pawnbroker
• They Turn on Each Other, in a Frenzy of Beating and Chanting that Devolves into a Mass Orgy of Drugs and Sex (I can’t phrase it any better than Wikipedia)
• Everybody Dies
• America, F*** Yeah!–nonfiction, obviously
• It’s Like an Acid Trip but Legal
• I Get Paid by the Word, and You Can Too!
• Even Air Italy Isn’t This Bad (well, except that it actually is).
• British Schoolchildren Gone Wild!

I came across this in the Wikipedia article of Kevin Conroy, the long-time voice actor for Batman.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Conroy helped out in the relief efforts by volunteering to do cooking duties for officers and firefighters.  On the Batman: Gotham Knight DVD’s commentary, he said that another cook found out he was the voice of Batman. The cook asked if he could tell everyone, and Conroy agreed, though he thought no one would even know who he was. At the other cook’s urging, Conroy yelled in the voice of Batman, “I am vengeance! I am the night! I… am… Batman!” (a line he delivered in Batman: The Animated Series), eliciting cheers from the first responders eating at the relief center. They began telling him what their favorite episodes were, and how they had watched the show with their kids. He said it was the first time he had seen any of them smile or laugh since the attacks a week earlier.

Batman never ceases to amaze me.  Err, unless Joel “Batman and Robin” Schumacher is involved.  I should amend that to “Batman never ceases to astound me.”  Good God, movie audiences haven’t been that astounded since Sean Connery killed a bunch of henchmen in bear suits or a bear-suited Nicholas Cage punched a woman in Wicker Man.

Overheard yesterday: “It was like a romance co-authored by Caligula and H.P. Lovecraft.  Thank God I escaped!”

I tried working on The Taxman Must Die today but got distracted by an NBA idiot getting fined $100,000 for speculating about whether a player would leave his team and join the idiot’s.  Here are some other things (related to taxmen and the untimely demises thereof) you can get for $100,000.

• 15.6 issues’ worth of labor on The Taxman Must Die (best guess: $200 per page and 32 pages per issue)
• 25,000 copies of The Taxman Must Die (best guess: $4 per issue)
• 694.4 hours of therapy (for coping with mutant alligator partners) – $144/hour
• 20,040 jars of gator repellent (so that you don’t need the therapy) – $4.99 each
• 2532 cases of heavy-duty gator repellent (in case the mayo fails) — $39.49 each
• 2.6 Stinger surface-to-air missiles (in case you aren’t taken seriously as an officer of the law) – $38,000 each
• 840 water coolers (in case you need something to prop the Stingers up against) — $119 each
• 3.3 class A felonies (such as murdering a taxman) — a maximum criminal fine of ~$30,000
• 158.7 refrigerators (for hiding the bodies) — $629 each
• 2.08 Basic Employee Death Benefit packages (for taxmen that do die) — $49,000 each?

NOTRE DAME SECURITY GUARD, to a wandering B. Mac: Hey, you, stay with the tour group.

B. MAC:  These seventh-graders?  Umm, I’m twice as old as them.

[The security guard grunts skeptically]

SEVENTH GRADER, to security guard: R u srs?

EIGHTH GRADER: Hes oldr thn mah grndma.  Eww.

[B. Mac shows the guard his staff ID].

SECURITY GUARD:  Damn.  You’re short.

B. MAC:  I’m wearing penny loafers.  Penny loafers!

SEVENTH GRADER:  Pwnd.

EIGHTH GRADER:  Lulz!

Umm, yeah.  I was carded for PG-13 movies as a college student.

Birdemic!

Kindergarten would have been a lot more kickass if I had had these when I was learning the alphabet. Most of these are pretty amusing, but I highly recommend  D and X.  Here’s Z.

Image is trying to promote its upcoming Invincible spinoff, Guardians of the Globe, and it hasn’t announced the team membership yet.  However, it has released some teasers, which are pretty funny… especially if you’re familiar with Wolverine Publicity.

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I have a checkered relationship with the Academy Awards…

If you’d like to do your own, please go here.

I’ve linked this before, but it’s worth seeing again.

According to Lulu’s Titlescorer, “Superhero Nation” has a 35.9% chance of being a bestselling title.  Here are some titles that beat “Superhero Nation.”

• The Romance of Vampires (69%)
• The Vampire of Darkness (69%)
• The Magical Elf (69%)
• The the of of (41.4%)–what, you don’t like it?
• Dark Vampire (41.4%)

Darn it.  Next time, I’m writing fantasy.

It’s not quite a superhero comic book, but

please check it out anyway.

Since this is a website mainly about superhero writing, I should probably tie this comedy video into superhero writing to make it relevant for you. Well, this video might help you write a superhero who’s really a journalist in The Matrix cutting off lighthouse operators’ heads with laser beams.  Relevant enough?  (Caution: the language is a bit rough).

READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

Courtesy of Miss Snark.

Dammit.  Lady-friends roped me into Twilight tonight.  At least something good will come out of this: a drinking game. 

1. Take a sip every time someone broods.  (Small sip– save some room for #4 and #5). 
2. Take a drink every time there’s a product placement.  (I counted 7).  
3. Take a drink every time someone uses the word “understand.”  Take two drinks every time someone uses the phrase “you don’t understand” or “you can’t understand.” 
4. Take a drink every time someone compliments Bella or declares his devotion for her. 
5. Take two drinks every time the audience cheers at a shirtless male or an expression of love.
6. Take a drink everytime the audience laughs at something so bad it’s funny.  Take two drinks when a sparkly Edward and a sparkly Bella take a romp through a Disney-like forest. 
7. Take a drink every time the audience laughs at something that’s actually meant to be funny.  Take two drinks during the Face Punch scene.

“I hate reality television. If I wanted to see conmen humiliate themselves, I’d watch C-SPAN.”

Overheard at a college tutoring center…   

No, the Underground Railroad was not the world’s first subway system…   I don’t care what Wikipedia told you. 

The author behind My Writer’s Block got off lucky with this one– it definitely wasn’t that easy for me to get rid of Vista. 

This reminds me of my freshman year, when Dell computers suddenly started melting (and at least once bursting into flames) across campus.  I signed on as a marketer for a team of computer guys who were selling homemade computers that were suddenly desirable.  Our motto was “one melted computer is a tragedy; a hundred melted computers are an opportunity.” 

It’s pretty funny.  By the way, if you replace “quantum flux” with “Speed Force” or “Pym particles,” it applies just as well to superhero stories as it does for sci-fi.

In Green Lantern #9, Batman gets a GL ring.

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This redubbing of a few Darth Vader scenes is pretty funny.  Caution: highly profane.

In particular, I found 1:15-1:50, 3:20-3:50, 6:35-6:40 and 7:10-7:25 hilarious.

Joel Schumacher is a director best-known for his vicious crimes against Batman, including putting nipples on the batsuit. Earlier today, I was browsing through TV Tropes and found that one of the Batman cartoons had a hilarious scene mocking Schumacher.  (The idiot in the scene is named Joel and is standing in front of a sign that says Shoemaker).

The Washington Post reveals that Iranian’s crack spies are getting dangerously close to uncovering the conspiracy surrounding Iran’s democratic movement.

The governor of greater Tehran, Morteza Tamadon, a staunch Ahmadinejad ally, claimed Wednesday that 800 artists and academics who had visited the United States in recent years were trained to protest the election outcome.

I met one of them in Washington!  I don’t remember discussing how to protest election outcomes, or even how to statistically identify electoral fraud.  But then again, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

CNN reports that Iran has outed another party involved in this vast democratic conspiracy:  CNN!  A spokesperson for the Iranian government has more:

This is the CNN’s schedule. They officially trained the people to come and hack Iran’s government Web sites. This is the English text, I can give it to you. This is a cyber war.”

I cannot remember what I was doing last Saturday.  Perhaps I was getting drunk as a Mormon in a barrel of rum*.  Or perhaps I was actually training hackers to destablize the Iranian government and the CIA kindly implanted fake memories of $6 margaritas so that I couldn’t give up any information under torture.

*Not likely, given that I don’t drink.  If you think I can afford $6 margaritas on a writer’s salary, you must be factoring in the CIA/Mossad stipends I get every month.

Dark comedy aside, I wish the best to the people of Iran, but unfortunately protests against undemocratic regimes are rarely successful in the short term.  In the heat of the moment, the government has several major advantages, including all-but-unmatchable firepower.

This is strikingly funny.

Bleach’s writing is not terribly inspired and it introduces its premise in a fairly awkward fashion.  However, this visual from episode 2 made me burst into laughter.  The hero is at school and meets someone that is obviously the girl he saw dice up a demon the night before.  (Because of secret identities, he can’t say anything to the people around him, though).  He starts to freak out and she turns to shake his hand.

If you’ve ever been to Arlington, VA, you know how accurate this is. Down to the bad rappers.

Ok, that settles it.  I’m getting cremated.

You deserve to lose if…

1. …you have access to every Russian and American ICBM and still cannot exterminate the human race.

2. …you make a human into a cyborg and then show him where to find his control chip. You deserve to have him tear out the control chip and kill you.

3.  …you make a cyborg with a control chip, and the control chip does not prevent him from ripping out the control chip.  What was the control chip doing?

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“Please enjoy our authentic tapas.  I am afraid they are not like that Taco Bell stuff you Americans like so much, sir, but if you want I can smother them in sour cream and you will hardly be able to tell the difference.”

Hat-tip to our Japanese correspondent.

I found this dangerously amusing. “Ah, excellent. Simmering sexual tension is my specialty.” Please look past the awful production values; they’re part of the humor.

Also, I like that they casted Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) as Spock.  Except for  James Lee (Ando), he’s the only Heroes actor that strikes me as remotely talented. However, Quinto will probably go farther in Hollywood because he has the crucial advantage of being non-Asian.  Nobody’s Asian in the Movies, except for kung fu stars and ninjas.