Nullification

Happy Holidays, and New Year and stuff!  My Christmas was pretty good.  Being broke and unemployed, I couldn't really afford to get anyone anything, so I don't really deserve the stuff that I got.  

Incidentally, did you know Super U. has merchandise for sale?

We kept it low-key again this year.  I was invited once again by my brother-in-law's sister's family, and while I appreciate the offer immensely, there's just something not right about spending Christmas with your sister's husband's sister's husband's family.  I mean, I'm not even the fifth wheel there, I'm the flat doughnut in the trunk.

I also don't go overboard with presents for my kid and keep things as simple as possible (so her expectations remain low).  Two years ago we attended the aforementioned Christmas party, and my kid was showered with gifts.  You know, that point where the kids stop appreciating what they're being given and just toss things over their shoulder to tear into the next gift?  I almost avoided that this year.  Almost.  We got together with my sister after Christmas to have a mini-celebration and exchange gifts, and she had waiting for my kid there all the stuff those people had bought her.  Part of me thought, man, how nice of them to get her presents... they hardly know her, and we didn't even show up!  But the other part of me thought, great.  She's going to start expecting this every year, and sure enough she managed to hit that point when she stopped even paying attention to the gifts she was opening.

Anyway, I'll stop before I go on a tangent about how much the holidays bum me out.  I'm sure most of you feel the same this time of year.

So!  Only three strips to go before the end of this chapter!  After that, I'll take a bit of time to write up some ideas for the next Chapter, and I'll be re-visiting the Super U. merchandise.  Expect some after-Christmas price drops!  There's also a few minor changes I want to see to concerning the site.  The Walters Files have gotten so extensive now, I want to separate the students from the faculty, and give them their own sections.  And, like I said before, this may be a good time to look into getting a new site entirely.

Last but not least, be sure to catch up on the Saturday Super Stories, written by my friend Jason, for they offer insight into the origins of the Super U-niverse.

The Walters Files: Mr. Walters / The Dark Avenger

It is all kinds of fun writing for Mr. Walters.  Like I always say, I'm not a big fan of DC, but I love Batman as much as any fan of superheroes does.  I love that Batman is human, and yet is capable of defeating anybody ever, and usually does, solely because of his rigorous training, wit and level of dedication.  Mr. Walters is no different.  My version is reminiscent of Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond, but his attitude is more closely that of Frank Miller's Batman (both the older, well-written Frank Miller Batmans and the terrible, terrible more recent versions Miller blasphemously concocted after he became a sad parody of himself and lost his credibility as a writer).

This is slightly off-topic, but fans of comics, often during an argument in a comic shop, love to ask, "Who would win in a fight between ___ and ___.  Whenever Batman is involved in this question, the answer is always pretty much Batman.  My theory is that Wolverine could beat Batman, but only if Wolvie got the jump on him, and Batman wasn't expecting to be jumped by Wolverine that day.  Or ever.  If Batman had more than five minutes to prepare... sorry Wolvie.

Anyway, in the Super U-niverse, some of the characters are amalgamations of heroes and villains from DC and Marvel.  Jason came up with the idea that Walters would also be the Punisher of the Super U-niverse, which works perfectly, and the military aspect of his background helps to justify that lack of information about his past.

My goal for Super U. is to constantly keep moving away from the parody aspect and focus more on the original stories and characters, but I'm not sure if I can see a Super U-niverse that doesn't involve Walters in some way.

Super U. Strip #72: Reunion

Super U. Strip #60: Interrogation

Super U. Strip #56: Staff Infection

Super U. Strip #57: Eulogy

Super U. Strip #53: The Exchange

Super U. Strip #47: Divine Blessing

Reunion

Well, look at that, I finished the strip and it's not even 3:00 AM!

I think I've mentioned before that a lot of things in Super U. are based off of role-playing game I ran for some friends.  In that game, it came to pass that each instructor took on one student to personally mentor and more or less "pass their mantle" onto.  It's something I'd like to reflect in the comic, and you're seeing the first step here.  It might not come as much of a surprise that Mr. Walters, A.K.A. The Dark Avenger, would select Raine to be his protege, being the tragic back-story vigilante that she is.

There's only 6 more strips to go until the end of Chapter 2, and shit is about to go crazy at Super U.

Interrogation

Click to Enlarge

For a recently unemployed person, I was pretty busy yesterday.  As you probably noticed, the site got a new re-design.  Unless you're new to the site, which is a big possibility.  In that case, hello!  Welcome, and thank you for visiting my webcomic.  I hope there are things that you like here.  Please visit The Archive to get acquainted with the students and faculty of Super U.  Hit us up on Facebook.  The Super U-Tube channel.  Whatevs.

Also, Super U. is now being advertised through Project Wonderful, who, if you don't know, is an advertising group that does a lot of their work in the field of webcomics.  Which means I had to make a lot of ads.  Here, I'll show some of them to you.

Here are couple of the "Safe For Work" Ads.

And also a couple of the, ha, "Not Safe For Work" Ads.

I put a relatively small amount of money into advertising for starters, but I didn't expect to find that, after less than 24 hours, 6% of that money would have already been spent.  I'm advertising, for now, on some relatively low-traffic sites.  But I cannot complain about that.  As of the time of this writing, the ads have already been viewed 2,281 times, and they brought 10 new people to the site.  Pretty cool.

Also, I made the comic.  With all the work I'd been doing on polishing up the site and putting together the campaign, I nearly didn't get the actual strip done.  Despite the fact I never wrote any dialogue for it, I'm happy with it anyway, and I think it works.

But that brings me the biggest change of all: Starting next week, Super U. strips are going bi-weekly, to be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays!
With this change may very well come a change in the format of the strips.  I have a lot of experimenting to do to see what works for me.

I'd appreciate some feedback on all the, you know, stuff.  And again, if you're new to the site, thanks for coming.  And also if you're old to the site.  You guys are awesome.

Eulogy

I'd blog today, but the shorty wants to get on the computer.  That's how it goes, folks.  As a parent, whatever it is that you want to do, you must share or outright relinquish it instead to your offspring.  It doesn't matter if they are, say, watching TV, if you begin using the computer, your offspring will immediately want to use the computer.  Furthermore, if you then go and do something involving the television, the likelihood that the offspring will then alter her or his desires to involve said television is quite probable.  

I pulled the strip out of my ass this week, but you know, I like how it turned out.

Staff Infection

Doing a little better this week.  Got out this weekend to Bok Tower, which is about an hour from my apartment.  And my wife ran across this incredible thing that we are planning to make a whole weekend out of during their "Hatsume Fair," which I gather is some sort of spring festival.  We had no idea such a place existed in Florida, let alone only a few hours from here.  Knowing there are things like this outside of Tourist Hell, Florida is helping me to come to terms with the reality that I may be living here for the next third of a century or so.   It's nice to have something to look forward to.

A short strip this week.  I had some ideas where I would introduce Dean Clobber, Disciplinary Head, in the third panel, and I wanted to give him a ridiculous "It's Clobberin' Time!"-esque catchphrase, but I drew a blank.  But, nevertheless, I like how it came out.

I think once I hit the end of Chapter One on the "official site" I'm going to ditch Interrupted Reality.  It looked promising at first, but it has yet to bear fruit.  I still plan on, after the end of Chapter Two here in another 23 strips or so, taking another hiatus to YouTube-ify the Chapter, with the goal of 2 movies a week, I think.  Maybe I'll spread them out to trick myself into thinking the sites are getting more attention than they truly are.

Anyhoo, please help to spread the Super U. love.  "Like" and / or "+1" this page with those little buttons over there, and "Like" and "Share" the links on your preferred social media sites.  Doing so will result in your gaining my utmost admiration.

The Exchange

Sorry, brief bitching-session upcoming.  I'm going to post the comic first, before I invite you to the pity party.

It was tough scrounging up the motivation to finish the strip this week.  Anyone reading this has probably been supporting me from the beginning, and I appreciate that to no end.

The problem is... well, let me give you an example.  Every Wednesday, Facebook sends me an activity report.  On a given week, an average of  5 to 8 people total either Like or Share the links (both for the strip and the Saturday Super Stories combined).  In all likelihood, those people mostly consist of my close family and a couple friends.  Now, this week, for example, the links reached a combined total of 70 people, which is actually somewhat low in comparison to previous weeks.  But let's use that as an average.  So, on any given week, 62 to 65 people see the link and say, "meh, this does not have pictures of cats," and they ignore it.

I don't have anyone to blame anyone for this but myself.  The problem must be that either my comic sucks, or I'm doing something wrong to promote it.  Though promotion is something I really need to invest further in (as in, spend money), I'm going to have to lean toward the first option, because most of my "best friends" don't even read it.

I'm just going to stop there, because everything I try to follow that up with becomes even more negative,

Anyway.  I'd like to follow up on that with something more uplifting, but I got nothin'.  Hope you enjoy the strip this week.  Got some good stuff lined up.

The Quest

Heh, I almost totally forgot to post this today!

FYI, there's a chance there won't be a strip next week, or it will be late.  My mom's going to be in town and she's staying with us on the night I normally devote to finishing up my strip.  I'll keep you posted.

I really like the way this one turned out.  The hand-drawn stuff doesn't look as good as I hoped it would, partly due to my ancient scanner, but whatever.  It's still fun.  Hope you enjoy!

The Walters Files

Phew!  So, yeah, kind of late getting this one out.  But it is still Wednesday, dammit!  I suppose I should apologize to my readers who I know will be upset by this strip.  But to those people, I recommend you read All-Star Batman and Robin.  I think that's what it was called.  The comics awesomely drawn by Jim Lee and written by... Frank Miller.  Frank Miller, who had so much potential, long ago, and then he got famous, and full of himself, and forgot how to write a good story.  Or maybe he didn't, and just stopped caring.  Anyway, go read that.  Just a page or two is all you'll need, really.  Then stomp on it and burn it.  Because even Jim Lee's art couldn't save that crap.  Anyway, afterward, you'll understand this strip better, and maybe you won't be mad at me.

This week has been nuts with moving into my new place a block down from my old place.  My new place is dope, by the way.  I hope we can afford it!

I'd actually had another strip in mind this week, but I never managed to get the last panel conceived.  This "Walters Files" thing, though, is something that I've had up my sleeve for a while.  It was actually something used in the RPG I ran that much of Super U. is based off of, and I think Jason was the one that said I should actually create the files Walters keeps on the students.  So I'd already had Aiden's file mostly done. I'd like to dip further into these things.  I don't think they'll occupy any more of the strips (maybe), but I do think it would be cool to feature them somewhere on the website.  A sort of "get to know the characters" section, as seen through Walters' eyes.  This wouldn't work so well on Blogspot, but perhaps, if Super U. ever starts to become something, I can convince one of my smarty-pants programmer friends to make a real website for me.

Then I can really wwebsite as on the internet.

Everyone says Avengers is amazing.  Everyone.  I am sure it is.  How can it not be?  I will be seeing it in a few days.  So shut up about it already!  But seriously, kudos to Marvel, and Hollywood in general for finally giving Joss Whedon a chance like this.

Share / Like / Join, and thanks!

-Matt

Sorry no boobs.