There are mad scientists. There are political scientists. At Superhero Nation, you get the worst of both worlds.

(Maybe this is why we haven’t had a mission statement up to this point).

Earlier today, I added a I DEMAND COMEDY button to the sidebar (under New Here?)  That will make it easier for the comically minded to find what they crave, rather than be bogged down with articles on writing or Campaign 2008.

1. I’m also trying to identify which of my articles are the most popular and highest quality.  I’m moving these articles to categories marked Reader Favorites.  For example, Reader Favorites:  Comedy is a collection of my top comic work.  So far I think I’ve listed 5 of those.  In a day or two, I’ll have sifted through my ~600 posts for the best 15-30.
2. I’m also working on a Reader Favorites: Writing Advice.  I haven’t started this yet.  That’s clearly less of a priority because most of my writing articles are relatively easy to find on the sidebar.
3. I may add another category or two.
4. You can see all of the Reader Favorites at the aptly named Reader Favorites:  All Categories.  That won’t make much of a difference until I start adding entries to Reader Favorites:  Writing Advice.
5. I’m trying to clean up my category headers to be more precise.  Postings that are listed as Comedy are now only those that are primarily meant to be funny and not, say, writing articles that occasionally are funny.

Are you writing a novel or comic book about a powersuited hero, like Iron Man or Steel? Powersuit stories often suffer from the following problems, many of which are easy-to-fix.

Continue Reading »

Beat’em-up superheroes like the Hulk and Superman often suffer from these six problems.

Continue Reading »

Writing a novel or comic book/graphic novel about a psychic character? Here are some recurring challenges.

Continue Reading »

1. He’s a few blast-caps short of a detonation.
2. He’s like the R.L. Stine of political scientists.
3. He’s a few receivers short of a spread.

These are my observations about the Notre Dame experience. Hopefully this will help you decide if ND is the right school for you and give you the details you need to demonstrate your commitment to the admissions staff (assuming ND is right for you).  If you’re into application strategies specifically, please see Getting into Notre Dame.

Continue Reading »

This article will help you design your superhero’s appearance for a comic book or novel cover-art. No matter what your style is, you can avoid these 9 mistakes that cause a superhero’s appearance to sink the story.

Common Flaws of Superhero Appearances

1. The character’s appearance lacks a distinct theme.
2. The character looks lifeless.
3. He looks unrelatable.
4. His appearance is inconsistent with his personality.
5. His appearance is inconsistent with the story’s mood.
6. His costume is too campy or demeaning.
7. His appearance makes his secret identity implausible.
8. The details of his appearance are inconsistent.
9. He has too many accessories.

Continue Reading »

“Dallas Police, Officials Discourage Random Gunfire.”

Uhh… what were the Dallas police doing before?

On a side-note, I think the Dallas police will find that it’s easier to cut murders by reducing targeted gunfire.

Michael Totten took a picture of this sign from Lima Company.

If Illinois’ performance in the Rose Bowl is any indicator, units also get attacked less if they look like Trojans.  

I think the geometry of fires is a set of rules and conditions related to several battalions operating in a close area.
No Marine has been injured in Fallujah for months, leading to interesting techniques to maintain troop alertness.

There are also some borderline-amusing stories about bizarre and dangerous strategies from Iraqi kids to get Americans to give them candy.  (Well, yes, making fake speedbumps on the road will get Marines to dismount, but…)

Quote of the Day:

Agent Orange: Few things are more pathetic than the crocodile terrorist. Yep. They can’t even do that right.

And they talk like thisssssss…

We already knew that mammals > crocodiles, but this also indicates that mammal-insects > crocodiles. But Spiderman foolishly let the crocodile escape, which is further proof that alligators > mammal-insects.

I recently added a category, Writing About Superheroes. So far, I have some articles devoted to character design (like the Superhero Questionnaire and Superpower List). Additionally, novelists and other writers that are trying to adapt somewhat niche material to a mainstream audience might appreciate Making Your Story Less “Weird” and More Novel and the Transformation/Nonhuman Questionnaire.

 A Time article had the following correction. 

An article on Thursday about John McCain’s relationship with his children misstated, in some editions, the site of a graduation ceremony for Mr. McCain’s son Jimmy, which was attended by several siblings. Jimmy McCain graduated from Marine boot camp; there is no Marine Academy.

“There is no Marine Academy.” Yeah, Time. Any college football fan could tell you Marines play for the Naval Academy, one of an elite group of nine teams that beat Notre Dame this year.

I’ll chalk this up to a crucial misalignment of football fans, rather than a “I-hope-someone-at-Time-knows-military-stuff.”

And, just in case anyone at Time’s Human Resources Department is reading (wink wink), I know the difference between Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada and a Hawaiian death-threat.

No one on the Superhero Nation editorial board is pleased with the way football has gone this year.

Continue Reading »

Why are peace talks held at summits?  Because things can only go downhill from there.

This article will help you write better dialogue in novels.

Continue Reading »

Nya-nya-nya-nya!

Mike: You’re positive you’re not an alien?

Catastrophe: Do aliens frequently speak fluent English?

Mike: Decryption programs applied to radio transmissions can do surprising things.

Catastrophe: I was checking football club rankings when you found me. Unless aliens are frequently interested in football…

Mike: You’d be surprised. You follow football?

Catastrophe: Sometimes. There aren’t any good teams around here.

Mike: Name three.

Catastrophe: Good teams? Arsenal, Man U and Newcastle.

Mike: Please. If you ever need to make up sports teams in the future, I recommend going with animal names, not randomly selected adjectives and nouns. “New castle?” “Man you?” That doesn’t even make sense!

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: You don’t get out much, do you?

This is the final part of a four part series. You can see part 1 here.

Catastrophe: When I said that I was a cartoon character and not an alien, I meant it.
Mike: A cartoon character?

Catastrophe: Well, a facsimile of a cartoon character. The mutagen is presumably influenced by subconscious mental states like memories and impulses. It was the day of the goddamned Hegemon parade and the effing balloon had come loose and trashed my car. So it was on my mind.

Mike: You expect me to believe—

Catastrophe: —not really, nor do I care. What you believe is completely besides the point. The only thing that matters—the only positive thing, anyway— is that at least it wasn’t Peaceachu.

This is part 3 of a four-part series. You can see part 1 here or part 4 here (after 6 PM US Central on Dec. 31).

Generic Physical Superpowers

1. Superstrength
2. Speed
3. Durability
4. Agility/reflexes
5. Healing/regeneration
6. Supersenses
   1. Sight/hearing/smell/taste/touch
   2. Sensing danger (spider-sense)
   3. Sensing other types of events (dishonesty, murder, etc.)
7. The ability to remove senses (like inflicting blindness, etc.)
8. Longevity/immortality

Forms of Transportation

1. Climbing/wall-crawling
2. Swimming/water-breathing
3. Flight
4. Teleportation
5. Exceptional leaping (e.g. the Hulk)
6. Phasing/intangibility

Time-Based Abilities

1. Temporal manipulation (like The Matrix)
2. Time travel
3. Prophecy

Elemental Control/Manipulation

1. Basic elements (fire, water and/or ice, earth, wind)
2. Electricity
3. Light
4. Darkness and/or shadows
5. Gravity
6. Magnetic forces
7. Radiation
8. Energy
9. Sound
10. Nature

Generic Mental Abilities

1. Skills and/or knowledge
   1. Popular categories: science, mechanical, computer/electronics, weapons-handling/military, driving, occult/magical.
2. Super-intelligence
3. Resourcefulness (“I’m never more than a carton of baking soda away from a doomsday device”)

Psychic Superpowers

1. Telekinesis (moving objects mentally). Can be restricted to a particular type of material (e.g. metal for Magneto, paper in Read or Die, deadlines for B. Mac, sand, etc).
2. Telepathy (reading minds)
3. Mind-to-mind communication
4. Mind-control
5. Possession (total mental control)
6. Memory manipulation (may include creation/alteration/deletion)
7. Mentally generated weaponry/objects
8. Mindblast
9. Ability to locate someone mentally
10. Forcefields
11. “Psychometry”–the ability to learn things about the past or future of an object by touching it

Biological Control

1. Acid/poison
2. Controlling plants and/or animals
3. Shapeshifting (animals).
4. Shapeshifting (people)–mainly useful for disguises/stealth. In some executions (e.g. Clayface), the user’s body can create weapons or otherwise modify itself for combat.
   

Miscellaneous Talents

1. Elasticity
2. Self-destruction
3. Self-liquification
4. Gaseous form
5. Growth/shrinking
6. Self-duplication
7. Invisibility
8. Absorbing someone else’s powers
9. Negating someone else’s powers
10. Luck manipulation (good luck for hero and/or bad luck for enemies)
11. Illusions
12. Pocket space–the ability to hold and remove objects so that only the user can retrieve them. It could be used for carrying really heavy equipment, hiding valuable and/or stolen and/or highly explosive goods, concealing weapons, smuggling candy into movie theaters, removing a hostile explosive, etc.
13. Ability to control density

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

I’m working on a guidebook about how to write superhero stories. If you’re interested in superhero writing advice, please sign up for the email list so that I can let you know when it comes out. Thanks—it’ll be easier for me to get published if I can show that many people are interested.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Mike: We have a non-optional orientation program for aliens. This is very simple. If anyone asks, say that you’re not an alien.

Catastrophe: I’m a cartoon character.

Mike: That was easy, wasn’t it?

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: Wait. There are aliens on Earth?

Mike: Uhh… no?

This is part II of a four part conversation. You can see part 1 here or part 3 here.

I don’t have anything substantive to add, but my father met Ms. Bhutto during their time at Oxford.

This questionnaire will help you design a superhero or supervillain for a novel or comic book.

Continue Reading »

Agent Orange presents his link of the day and a related public service announcement for crocodile-Americans.

The Annals of Crocodile Failures, 94^th Edition

Lions, buffaloes and crocodiles do battle for control of a Kenyan wildlife refuge. This film is rated PG… Pretty Gruesome. The crocodiles make their inglorious appearance at 3:30, but they’re so ineffective that the (mammalian) commentators only notice them at 3:38. Unless you enjoy watching lions play two crocodiles silly, I recommend skipping ahead to 4:30, which is when things get rowdy on the land. “They’ve got ’em surrounded” (5:45). I also enjoyed the sudden appearance of Superlion– he flies– at 5:45.
6:30 is outlandish and further indicates how completely pathetic the crocodiles were in their brief appearance. Any creature that is unable to cripple a baby buffalo is hereby banished from the reptile class. Experts at Palomar University, one of the world’s leading reptological institutions, have found that:

The class Reptilia [Reptiles*] includes turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators**, and other large reptiles…

Let’s face it, crocodiles: even turtles and snakes*** count as reptiles. But not you*. (Don’t snicker too hard, mammals… the lions did not make a persuasive case for your phylum).

Not to fear, crocodiles: although you are no longer reptiles, you may technically qualify as amphibians****. However, both mammals and reptiles will remain ashamed to share a subphylum with you.

Tailnotes

*clarified for the benefit of crocodiles. Not that I think it will help.

**Unsurprisingly, saving the best for last. Incidentally, 99 % of reptologists agree that alligators > lizards > snakes > amoeba > crocodiles. As for the last 1%, if you are ever so horrifically unfortunate to find one of them, escape quickly. (Even if you’re a mammal—it’s not worth finding out if it can spread across species). Say whatever you need to. “I need to sharpen my claws (fingernails)” or “my scales (skin) require polishing.”

***Crocodile sympathizers may dispute that snakes are more worthy of the reptilian name than crocodiles. And we can speculate about the psychological disorders that might prod them to do so. But the fact remains that snakes can eat hippos (not for the squeamish). And, furthermore, snakes have their own baseball team, with which I am not familiar, and dominate a city with which I am.

****Assuming they’ll have you. Don’t hold your breath.

Setup: Catastrophe is a statistician that has been transformed by a mutagen into something uncannily similar to a character on a hit cartoon show, Hegemon (“Gotta kill ‘em all!”) Mike heads the Office of Special Investigations’ efforts to conceal extraterrestrial life and mistakenly believes Catastrophe is an alien.

Mike: Hello.

Catastrophe: I’m reading.

Mike: This’ll only take a second.

Catastrophe: Time’s up.

Mike: …

Mike: Let’s say five minutes.

Catastrophe: That’s 30000% of your original request. Is talking with you really more important than the club rankings?

Mike: And considerably less likely to get you pushed down the stairs.

(This is part of a four part series). After 6:00 PM on 12/29, you can read part 2 here.

This is based on what a friend in the Peace Corps claims is a true story.  

The presidents of two African countries—let’s say Togo and Nigeria—meet in Nigeria.  The Tongan is surprised by how nice the Nigerian’s house is. 

“Nigeria is so poor,” the Tongan said.  “How can you afford this estate?”

The Nigerian points out the window to a bridge spanning a river. 

“See that bridge?  The World Bank give us a huge amount of aid to build it, but not all of the money was spent on the bridge.” 

The Tongan thought about his shabby home and nodded.  “That seems like a really great idea,” he said. 

The next year, the Nigerian was visiting the Tongan and was astonished to learn that Togo had an absolutely luxurious palace.  He asked the Tongan how he had improved his house so much in a year.

The Tongan pointed out the window to a barren desert, rolling as far as the eye could see.  “See that bridge?”

Dr. Berkeley is a mathematician that Jacob Mallow hires to complete a project that relies heavily on numbers theory. Unfortunately for Berkeley, the project is actually an attempt to build a weapons-grade mutagen. Whoops. Several accidents later, he is mutated into a dead ringer for Katastrophy, the supervillain in a popular Japanese cartoon show.  In the aftermath of his mutation, he has to escape capture from his former employer and devise a serum to restore his humanity.

WRITERS’ NOTES

When designing a character, it’s critical that your audience discern key characteristics about each character.  Did the quotes help you associate Catastrophe with any particular characteristics?  Which ones?  Some variation of self-assured, eccentric and calculating probably made your list.  Did you get discontented as well?  

I’m still doing pretty well in the Google searches that I’m specifically optimizing for– queries like superhero story, superhero novel, superhero parody, superhero satire, etc.  Here are a few of the searches where I’m doing surprisingly badly.

1. #3 for “Superhero Nation.”  DAMN YOU TIME.
2. #3 for alligator superhero — I wish I were making this up.  Fortunately, the search is pretty insignificant (only two so far).  Relatedly, I’m at #4 for mammal superhero and– not surprisingly– #1 for mammals superhero*.
3. Not in the top 50 for government superhero
4. #14 for agent superhero

*If I ever get published, I’m virtually positive that Amazon will use “mammals” as one of Superhero Nation’s statistically improbable phrases.  By my count, the first half uses it six times (it’s Agent Orange’s tagline).

Evil-Corp Publishing Presents: So You Want to be a Supervillain!

1. If you ever capture your opponents, kill them immediately. If possible, execute them yourself—leave nothing to chance. “But how will my most hated enemies see my glorious schemes come to fruition?” They won’t—they’ll be dead. That’s the point. Have their descendants serve as slaves and/or witnesses to your undying greatness.

2.  As attractive as doomsday devices are, they don’t provide a very credible threat. Would you really destroy the world you live on? Even the UN will laugh at you rather than recognize the magnificence of your doomsday device. For a nominal fee, however, you can buy EvilCorp’s InstaWorld Kit*. Then the only question is this: would you rather have a billion dollars or the chance to get rid of the UN?

3. Villainous devices will work only once. You will only be able to shrink/zap/body-swap with a cabbage/etc. to a hero once. Any subsequent attempt to use the device will end in disaster. If the hero survives the first use, switch to conventional weaponry and ready your escape pods.

4. If any minion suggests any plan that involves monkeys—simian minions, devolution rays, etc.—shoot him immediately. If possible, feed him to real minions, like sharks or animated trash compactors. On the list of most mind-boggingly inept supervillain schemes, “monkey business” ranks right around invading the US with Amazons and killer bees.

*Life not included.

OSI DIRECTOR KINO:  There’s always one thing I’ve wanted to know.

AGENT ORANGE:  How I eat with a mask on.

KINO:  …

KINO:  Yuri Rastonovitch.  How did you convince him to cooperate with us?

ORANGE:  He was a Gators fan.

KINO:  …

KINO:  He was a KGB agent!

ORANGE:  Gatar never fails.