I have joined the editorial staff of a comic book publisher. My coworkers are very friendly, our series are excellent and it feels like a very good fit.

Hopefully, your SN reading experience will not change very much.

• As before, I’d like to help you write the best superhero stories you can.
• Please regard my suggestions merely as opinions from an extremely new assistant editor rather than rules for “the industry” or a particular company.
• I won’t blog about anything I observe on the job without asking first, so don’t expect many industry insights here.   If the editors wanted to talk about how the company runs, they’d probably use their own websites.
• If you’re looking for a job, I can’t help you much. My only advice is that professional-grade proofreading skills are required for editors and highly helpful for writers.  They show that you’re serious about writing and help you contribute to the team.  If that advice is actually news to you, I would recommend looking into fields besides publishing.

The fact that I found this amusing is probably my body’s way of telling me I shouldn’t stay up this late.

Continue Reading »

My resolutions for 2009 were:

1. Expand SN to 500,000 hits and 1.5 million page-views. That didn’t happen, but I did end up increasing my hits by 100% and my page-views by 150%.   I’m especially happy about getting my bounce-rate from 59% down to 52%.
2. Get a comic book published. It hasn’t happened yet but I think I’m at the finish line.  I submit in late February and anticipate the first round of responses by May.
3. Finish writing the nonfiction book. I have finished the manuscript, but I think it’ll take me a year or two to get it published.  (I need to get some fiction published first).
4. Work on my novel. I gave up on this, actually.
5. Find a fulltime job. Got it!

My resolutions for 2010 are…
Continue Reading »

I’m applying for a job a day for two weeks.  So far, I’ve gotten an offer I’m considering.  And a bait-and-switch scam.  I forgot the cardinal rule of writing: any writing job that pays more than $10 an hour is a lie.  (I’m exaggerating, but not much).

So far I’m up to 34 pages on my first comic book issue. I think the first draft will be ~40 pages and then I’ll edit that down to a final draft of 32 pages. I terribly underestimated the amount of space I would need for each scene. For example, in my original outline, I estimated the two main characters would meet on page 8. As actually written, they meet on page 28.

Anyway, if you’d like to review the first draft, I will have that ready by Friday. If you’re interested, please let me know so that I can e-mail it to you.

If you’re here because you’d like to color the comic book I’m working on, please keep reading. If not, you’ll probably find this pretty boring.

Continue Reading »

I’ve been updating the index of writing articles like a fiend.  Give it a look!  Yesterday it had 80 articles, and 120 today.  Unfortunately, I have about 150 more to go.

I’ll be back in a few days and won’t be on much until then.

I just bought a webcam, but I’m ambivalent about using it here.  Would it be helpful if I supplemented our usual lineup of written advice and reviews with some webcast material? Or would it feel like a gimmick?

Here are some of the factors I’m considering. What do you think?

1. The visual element can provide a solid opportunity for style and personality. For example, Angry Nintendo Nerd’s rants and Ask Prudie’s etiquette advice both use the author’s presence to create flair.  However, quite a few webcasters waste that opportunity by dully reading a script.  What’s the point?  I wouldn’t subject my readers to something that’s slower and more complicated unless I was confident that I had the style to make it work.

2. Webcasting generally strikes me as more entertaining but less informative than pure text. For one thing, it’s harder for readers to follow a video at their own pace and it’s easier to misconstrue something that is spoken rather than written.  However, university classes about fiction writing often involve a lot of oral instruction.  So I think something like a video-lecture is plausible.

Continue Reading »

Hello.  If you haven’t taken our survey yet, I would really appreciate if you gave us 10 minutes of your time.  That will help us get published.  You can take it by clicking here or by reading under the fold.
Continue Reading »

We just got up to 10,000 comments. Congratulations to Holliequ.

This time, we changed SUPERHERO NATION.  We tested out two new fonts:  VTC Supermarket Display and Rifleman.  We also added a few minor effects that are probably pretty hard to notice.  (We strengthened the drop-shadow and altered the blue-purple-red gradient).  What do you think?

I’ve included some before-and-after shots beneath the jump…

Continue Reading »

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

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?

It’s been our most successful month so far.

• Most importantly, we completed the first draft of our nonfiction query.  We are almost ready to start pitching to agents.
• We had 15,000 visitors, about 500 a day.  In contrast, we only had 350 visitors per day in February.  A 40% growth rate is pretty impressive.  We can’t sustain that rate of growth, but if we could, we’d be up to 10,000 visitors each day by December.
• Our readers spent a combined 1310 hours here.  That’s 65% higher than our previous record.
• We doubled our amount of review forums.

If you look at the top of the site, you’ll find a link that says Behind the Scenes at SN.  Here are a few of the things we’ll cover there:

• How to join our volunteer staff
• Details for our staffers
• Our statistics

• Notre Dame just announced that the President is doing our commencement speech this year.  I’ve always been opposed to the idea of commencements and do not plan to attend mine, regardless of the speaker.  This announcement merely makes it absolutely certain that my absence will cause my parents to flip out.  They’re still sore that I successfully missed my high school commencement, even though I had a valid excuse then.
• In other Notre Dame news, the police busted my St. Patrick’s Day party.  Very exciting.
• Over these past three days, we’ve been averaging 1000 visitors per day.  That’s about three times as many as normal.

Here are some brief tips for stimulating visitor loyalty on your site.

Continue Reading »

Today we received our five-thousandth comment.  Incidentally, today we also received our fifteen-thousandth piece of spam.  According to Google Analytics, we’ve only had 65 Russian readers but somehow about a third of our spam is in Russian.  Assuming that all of the Russian-language spam came from a Russian user, that would be an impressive 75 messages per user.

If you find it tricky to code tables in HTML, I highly recommend Tablemaker.  You give it the data you’d like in the table and it gives you the appropriate HTML.  Neat.  Your table might look something like this break-down of our user statistics for the past year.

Continue Reading »

It will probably be a few days until I get around to doing regular updates.

1. In February, we set a new personal record for new visitors.  (We had around 10,000 for the month).
2. Today, we reached 75,000 total visitors.
3. On Centsports.com, I am putting my $4.75 on Arizona to beat the Steelers today.  I fully expect to lose (defense wins championships), but I am fully buying into the much-hyped Arizona miracle.

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).

Continue Reading »

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)

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.

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

Continue Reading »

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.

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. 

For our next header, we’re working on getting an illustration of Cadet Davis.  Our cartoonist asked for a photograph of him, but C.D. has always been leery about leaving photographic evidence.  As a fallback, we looked for reference shots of other hardasses on Flickr and a few open-source image search engines. I had assumed that it would be pretty easy to find, but I was mistaken.

I got an e-mail about an annual conference at the Naval Academy and now all of my Google ads are from test-prep companies.  “Do you want to get into Annapolis?”  No!

It’s almost the end of the semester, so our staff will be writing considerably less here over the next 10 days or so.  Thanks for your patience!

If only I had realized that before picking it as the topic for a research paper.

I went to a pub tonight and ordered a glass of wine instead of a Sprite or Guinness.  According to the menu, my wine was supposed to taste of “notes of white and black pepper with a forward fruit.”  Hmm, not quite.  It tasted more like someone stabbed my tongue with a cattle prod.  I ended up getting a Sprite and a Coors to wash the taste away.  Blerk.  I’m going Guinness next time.

Today we reached 100,000 pageviews.  With ten weeks left in the year, we should be able to clear 150,000 by New Year’s.  Thanks for coming!

We did some calculations on the back of a napkin and concluded that the author of Things White People Like received an advance of 2.33 cents per hit.  Assuming that our advance earned us the same amount of money per hit, our projected pay per hour of website work has doubled to $1.75 over the past three months.   At this rate, we might reach minimum wage by the time I have my degree.  [JACOB ADDS:  Barely.  Won't your parents be so proud?]

Continue Reading »

In the next 2-3 weeks, we’ll clear 100,000 pageviews for the year and should clear 125,000 before the year is over.  When we set our New Year’s Resolution, we were hoping for 50,000.  Thanks for your traffic.

Hello, commenters!  We’ve added a new widget to help you figure out if we’ve responded to your comments yet.  It’s near the top of the sidebar, right below our list of superhero writing articles.

In case you’re interested.  We use this data to help us determine which site-edits are effective.

Continue Reading »

I took the online Jeopardy test tonight.  I think I did well enough to get a call back for auditions.

I hate ancient philosophy.  I find it interesting that the only endeavor in which the ancients are generally taught to undergraduates is philosophy.  In 2000 years, I hope that students (to the extent that we have students in 2000 years) learn more about us than the inconsequential quibblings of our philosophers.

We’ve started using Share This on about 20 of our most popular articles.  Hopefully it should be easier to share our sage insights with the unenlightened masses now.

A few weeks ago, we applied for a university grant to underwrite a non-fiction book about how to write superhero stories.  (Ahem, we’ve written more than 50,000 words about the subject here).  Today I learned that our application was very well-received…

Yeah, I’m really sorry about this, but I don’t think we have the time to pursue the webcomic with any degree of regularity over the academic year.  We will continue regular updates in May.

Our new blogroll focuses on the sites we find particularly funny, but we have a few sites devoted to writing and the publishing industry. If you’d like to suggest a site, we’d love to hear from you.

• Girls Read Comics
• Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent
• The International Society of Supervillains
• The Onion
• Tobias Buckell’s Writing Blog
• Wikipedia
• Women in Refrigerators

Our website is a year old now. Without navel-gazing too much, I’d like to offer some quick visuals to suggest just how dramatically our crappiness quotient has dropped. These are our first six months worth of headers…

Continue Reading »