quarterly report

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quarterly report

Gather round, Martians, and put on some striped socks, because these quarterly reports are serious business.

First, I need to thank the readers, friends, and friends of friends who helped me when I was in dire straits this summer. Things were touch-and-go here for a few months, but your generosity helped me weather the storm.

Just when that storm wore itself out, Martian monsoon season hit, and I was forced to give up the top-secret headquarters that has been my pirate-radio broadcast booth for more than eleven years. I don’t like to blog about my personal problems, but just between you and me and the worldwide web, the only way this year could suck any worse is if Dr. Doom decided to become my personal nemesis.

But as I prepare to set up shop in an all-new lair, I’m reminded to always look on the bright side of life. So, what’s been good about the second quarter of 2018?

The writers’ critique group I started back in February 2017 has been doing quite well. I couldn’t be happier with the three people I chose to be assistant organizers, and they have been the only reason I was able to keep the group going while weathering this year’s storms. My goal was to build the group to the point where I didn’t need to personally handle every single thing at every single meeting, and to have a group that was more about “us” than it was about “me”. Mission accomplished.

Has it been trouble free? No. On average, about once every six months, we get someone who only brings negativity, drama, or rudeness to the group. Then I need to step in to bring down the hammer and remove that person. But that’s taught me something interesting, because in the process I learned that one reason some of these groups don’t last long is that the leaders are afraid to be confrontational and stand up to jerks. So, even on those days where I come up short on people skills, not being afraid to stand up to someone disruptive has turned out to be a useful quality. Maybe being a leader includes being a bouncer if needed.

In other news, a few people said nice things about my recent writings as I’ve workshopped them and performed them at various readings. Some people said my favorite three words: “I love Mags”, which at this point in my life means more to me than if someone were to say they love me. I’m way too into my fictional leading lady of the asteroid belt, so it’s nice when people dig her. Then, a few others said they loved my poetry.

I mention it because these things always surprise me. I just write stuff because I need to write it, or because I need to assemble words in a way that makes me happy and satisfied. Back in my 20s, I got used to no one giving much of a damn about my weird artistic hobbies. Now, when something I made connects with people, I’m basically stunned. I think, “Really? You liked it, too?” It’s the kind of thing that makes me think I should get over being a reclusive bachelor and maybe try to reach a wider audience. Then I think, “Yeah, that might be nice. But really, I just want to finish my next story.” The creation is the fun part for me.

Last month I got a request to use a photo from this blog in a magazine that is interviewing one of my art heroes: Steve Rude. Steve, among other notable accomplishments, was the co-creator of Nexus and the penciller on most of the Nexus issues I absolutely love, even if this blog takes its name from an issue he did not draw. The magazine wanted to use one of my photographs of the Nexus flexi-disc, and I basically told them, “Hell yes, you can use it! And HAIL NEXUS!” I look forward to when that interview issue goes into print, so I can share it with you here.

What else has gone right this quarter? Thanks to readers clicking through my affiliate links, I got enough Amazon store credit to buy some toner cartridges, which are so bloody expensive, and that meant I could keep printing copies of stuff to take to workshop so I can improve as a writer. I also got a little store credit at MyComicShop, but I am waiting to redeem it until I get moved into the new Martian HQ. Thank you, readers, in a big way, because when you make purchases after clicking any of the thousands of comic book, books, and music links in this blog, it’s a lot like sending me a tip. It’s a way of saying, “Thank you, Mars Will Send No More!” And it really makes my day.

A few people contacted me this quarter to ask about a rare and out-of-print Ry Cooder disc that was never made available in the States. This doesn’t happen often—maybe once every couple of months, on average. I keep expecting Ry to send me a nasty email saying, “Stop giving out your mp3 rips of my damn disc,” but it hasn’t happened yet. Instead, a few times a year, I get a chance to connect someone with these wonderful music recordings that are simply not available in my country. Ideally, the album would be put back into print or made available digitally. I don’t know why that hasn’t happened yet, because the album is awesome, and more people in my country should have a chance to enjoy it. Those who ask about it are always super nice, too, and they usually send me grateful follow-up emails saying the album is indeed bloody awesome. It makes me happy to know they enjoyed it.

In my secret identity, I’ve helped several people this quarter get their books in print by contributing editing, design, and self-publishing guidance. Those authors have been incredibly generous in referring others to me so I can build new relationships. My marketing budget is virtually zero, and I survive because of word-of-mouth based on the positive experiences authors have with me. If I am struggling through a challenging week, and then I get an email from one of my authors who tells their friend or colleague how much they loved working with me, it brightens my day.

Just between you and me, I’ve had many jobs where every time the phone rang, I would have rather had a root canal than answer that call. But now that I work with authors who are passionate about making books, I look forward to talking with them. I’ve had stressful days this year where it was a glorious relief to just take a break for an hour or two and talk to someone about creating a book! I love it.

I also got accepted into a second Master degree program thanks to my incredible advisor who smoothed out more paperwork snafus than any advisor should need to. After years of suffering through advisors who seemed hell-bent on either giving me no information or actively giving me the wrong information, I’ve now got one who—get this—actually advises me. It’s amazing! So, on the academic and business frontlines, things are looking good for the next two quarters.

If you made it this far into the post, you’ve digested my 1000 words for the day, and I thank you for dropping by, commenting, liking posts, contributing to discussions of comic books and art, clicking through affiliate links, and being among the coolest bunch of readers a guy could ask for. I wish you all the best for the next quarter, and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Quarterly Report

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quarterly report

It’s been a quiet quarter here at Mars Will Send No More, with a few posts about retrofuturistic trading cards, some new poems, and a brief vignette. If you need more comic-book blogging in your life, I’m happy to report our old friends at Longbox Graveyard, after a long hiatus, just started a new series running every Monday. Since it’s always 1977 at the Longbox Graveyard, Paul will be covering a different comic book from 1977 every week. It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s like unearthing a glorious time capsule.

Just when I thought no one was paying attention anymore to my vast archive of comic book posts here, MyComicShop sent a message saying I had accumulated a nice credit in my account thanks to their affiliate program. No, I don’t make a dime off this blog—I lose money to keep it running—but I do earn a little “store credit” when readers click through links to MyComicShop to purchase comic-book goodness. Thanks to readers in the last six months, I earned enough credit to get a box of X-Men and Fantastic Four books I was forced to sell off five years ago.  I was sad to see them go in 2013, but we had a joyous reunion last weekend, and for that I am grateful to you. Thank you for reading and clicking!

As for why it’s been so quiet lately, most of my writing energy this year has focused on a story that’s been four years in the making. You might have noticed my ill-advised obsession with writing the utterly non-commercial fiction series The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches since 2014. The first 16 stories, totaling over 200,000 words, have been leading up to Mags’ birthday party in 2029. Now it’s time to throw that party—and have it all go horribly wrong.

More than once, I considered giving up. The self-induced pressure to take four years of notes and craft them into a narrative that would deliver a real payoff after all the build-up—honestly, I’ve had many days where I didn’t feel up to the challenge. Strangely, getting in touch with that feeling helped me work out several scenes where the odds against survival are so overwhelming that even the indomitable Mags thinks she might surrender to death at her enemies’ hands.

But what I love about Mags, and why I find it so fulfilling to write about the black-hearted smuggler’s adventures, is her unconquerable spirit. She’s stronger than I will ever be, yet she inspires me to be stronger than I am. I’ve often wondered if readers relate to her on a similar level. But last year, I sent a few of her stories to a friend who endures an extremely painful medical procedure every eight weeks. My friend recently told me she takes those stories with her every single time she goes in for the procedure, and she reads them, and they help her get through the experience.

Before it’s all said and done, Mags will probably conquer her fictitious solar system, but helping a real-life friend remains her greatest achievement. Mags is all about kicking ass no matter what life throws at her. If my irreverent space pirate’s strength can help someone cope with their own challenges, then her true mission is accomplished.

2018 has been a difficult year so far, but I hope you stick with Mars Will Send No More, and that you, too, keep kicking ass. Thank you for dropping by and reading, commenting, filling in gaps in my research on comic books and dinosaur collectibles, and enjoying my archives of artistic obsessions. I’m glad you’re here to share them with me.

 

 

 

 

quarterly report

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quarterly report

As you know, these quarterly reports are serious business, so for the love of all that’s holy, put on some decent socks.

In the past six months, your purchases at MyComicShop through the affiliate links on this site earned your humble martian moderator enough store credit to get two volumes of the Samurai Executioner Omnibus. THANK YOU, dear reader! These are books by the Lone Wolf & Cub creative team, full of poetic decapitations and deeply disturbing human behavior in Edo-period Japan.

I love omnibuses so much that I made my own this month. There will be an announcement about it here tomorrow. For now, here’s a shot of my first proof copy of the paperback edition. It’s 183,000 words, 588 pages, and weighs more than 2 pounds. It’s like heavy, man.

Hey! Wasn’t I supposed to graduate this month? Yes. But the forces of evil conspired against me, and the upside is that I have until November to turn in my final project. My sister wanted to send me a little graduation gift, which turned out to be a “sorry about the forces of evil” gift. It’s a plant that looks like an alien growing out of a Dimetrodon‘s back. Hell yeah!

It’s a lovely addition to the blogging station, especially because my venus flytrap bit the dust after I made the n00b mistake of letting its stalks grow. And yes, that’s a bloody stuffed puma in the photo, and I got him a friend this year. They read Villains of All Nations together.

Most people would think it odd that a grown-ass man takes a stuffed puma on visits to the dentist, but my dentist totally understands. He is my hero. He works on big cats like ocelots and tigers at the Phoenix Zoo, and he and his father saved the life of a jaguar that was illegally trapped in Mexico. The poor thing had tried to chew through the metal bars of its cage, damaging its teeth so badly that it couldn’t even eat. My dentist fixed up that awesome cat, and he and his staff take excellent care of me.

No, I don’t have him give pretend check-ups to my toy puma. But now that you mention it, I might ask for that next time! It would make a great photo.

Last but not least, my cell-phone pics of my old Godzilla toy got their fifteen minutes of fame this year. Some cable show about memorabilia found them and contacted me for permission to use them on an episode. No, I can’t remember the name of the show right now – This Bloody American Junkyard or something – but I signed a contract allowing them to unleash my late-night toy photos on the world. If a huge green monster destroys your city this year, I guess you know where to send the hate mail.

This is a different Godzilla toy who deserves his own gallery here someday.

 

 

7

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quarterly report

Today is my forty-fourth birthday, which means Mars Will Send No More must be starting its seventh year. Since its rashly considered inception in January, 2011, it has grown from a secret geek obsession with comic books into something far greater: a tool for spreading the comic book obsession like a virus throughout the entire solar system!

Yes, those are bold words from a site that can only brag about having 1.3 percent of the lifetime page views racked up by this video that will never give you up.

But you know what? College (and some high school) classes now send their students to this site. Seriously. Several of the classic EC Comics stories I pirated from a zillion sources (some of whom hate me) and dragged into the light on this site have become educational material for online classes which link from their course modules to individual posts here.

LOL! Let’s hope they don’t read the rest of the site, because I’m pretty sure most of it violates the university’s code of student conduct! For the love of all that’s holy, pray the innocent youth don’t see naked cat women, drug-fueled psychedelia, anarchist ravings, and deranged comic books printed with the blood of innocents in their ink!

Then again, that sounds a lot like any issue of EC Comics, so read on!

quarterly report from beyond the visible stars

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ellie, quarterly report

Once upon a time, you could find a fresh post about comic books nearly every single day here at Mars Will Send No More. That rigorous publishing schedule has declined in recent months, and we expected that to correspond with a decrease in the stats we bloggers love to obsess over so very much. This assumption turned out to be completely wrong.

Even after periods of hardly posting at all for one to three weeks at a time, the Martian archives still hold many undiscovered treasures for legions of internet users around the world. Whether it’s orginal content like last week’s Guide to Getting Started Selling Comic Books on eBay or the scans we found, cleaned up, and organized from the KISS Marvel Comics Super Special two years ago, certain posts seem to take on a life of their own.

On the art and poetry side of the mix here on Mars, we’ve already covered how our art sales are doing within the last week. Other minor successes related to this blog include earning, at last, both Top Seller and Power Seller status on eBay in June. The dark cloud of selling off our beloved comic book collection at least has that silver lining, and our success as sellers has earned us a few commissions from friends to sell some of their stuff online, too. It isn’t like we make a single dime from doing this blog, but the experience of pursuing our passionate obsession with comic books and comic book art has certainly opened some doors for us in other areas of life.

We like to chart our activity over time, so let’s have a chart already!

June 2014 exceeded 85,000 page views by more than 10,000 visitors. This topped May, which had already set a new high by breaking 80,000. June also saw a new high where daily page views broke 8,000 for the first time. All of that put us well over the top of 1,500,000 lifetime page views, a number we now absolutely love quoting to potential customers in our professional sphere.
LOL let’s just hope they don’t actually READ this lunacy!

And now, Ellie the Studio Cat. Long live the resistance.

Give me that quarterly report, baby!

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ellie, quarterly report

We do these quarterly reports just for fun, like everything else on this site. Mars Will Send No More has certainly grown beyond our humble expectations, and we have learned a lot by doing it for nearly three and a half years now. On practical matters such as coding bullet lists in HTML, effectively tagging posts to capture search traffic, and the power of a WordPress blog to drive social media marketing, MWSNM has given us as much of a learning experience as any of the things we’ve been studying at the university concurrently.

Despite the growth in size and traffic of MWSNM, we didn’t expect what happened in April. In April we posted nothing, but traffic stayed about the same. Monthly page views site-wide began hovering around the 50,000 mark about six months ago. Did that number fall in April? No. That suggests the massive collection here of over 1500 posts has achieved a life of its own. It has grown from a little plant that needed daily attention and care to a healthy young tree we can forget about watering for a month. Nice!

Now, it has not been an entirely joyous occasion selling off our sizeable collection of physical comic books since last fall. We have, however, taken great pleasure in knowing our favorite comic books of all time will be in the hands of readers who appreciate them. After all, books were meant to be read, just like guitars were meant to be played, and cats were meant to sleep in Priority Mail boxes.

quarterly report from the martian underground

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airplane, ellie, quarterly report

Even after 12 quarters, we still receive inquiries into the nature of the cryptic phrase ‘mars will send no more.’ A page dedicated to our secret origin illuminates all.

But in another sense, Mars is our virtual garden. Or maybe a plant in our garden, grown from a digital seed. We tend it, trim it, prune it, feed it, groom it, give it love, and even worry that someday Mike Baron is going to show up and make us take down the whole thing, since he invented the phrase. It’s scary, sometimes: having a little digital pet that someone could just turn off at any time.

Blogging is like writing a book you can never touch. Paper burns, but what do pixels do? Where is the page when you turn off your machine? When we were kids, we read books about magic. When we became adults, we lived in an electric world made of it.

And you know what? We love it. Why do 7000 people drop by every month to look at 7 or 8 pages in the Martian Archives? We don’t know. We do get a kick out of being referred to by such notable sources as The Atlantic, who referenced our scans of America’s most famous comic book: The safety instructions found on every airplane! Interestingly, they don’t reference the exact post. Instead, they use a URL for our tag archives for the word airplane: https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/tag/airplane/

What if we posted something new tagged with airplane? It wouldn’t matter what the post was really about, as long as it had a tag for airplane. We could post propaganda for the Martian Underground Resistance, in hopes that the Atlantic’s readers will someday join the revolution. Or, we could just leave them a greeting card with a cute cat and a cozy scarf on it.

LONG LIVE THE MARTIAN RESISTANCE!

MOUNTAIN LIONS FOREVER!

quarterly report from the martian headquarters

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quarterly report

Put on your gasmasks and get ready for another world famous quarterly report!

You never really know what’s going to happen when you post something on your fan site. Will anyone ever care? Maybe they will! We put up a collection of pages of Ian Miller artwork from an edition of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. It required the sacrifice of a copy of the book, but frankly, no one seemed to give a shit we posted it. Months later, out of the blue, someone searched for Ian Miller artwork from Martian Chronicles. Word spread from their repost. Suddenly we woke up and wondered… who the &%$#! are all these people looking at this?!

In the same month, someone got jazzed about Wolverine getting his adamantium ripped out by Magneto. And that post just keeps getting pounded every day. We just thought, hey, this is a cool piece of comics history someone might want to reference. And they found it, eventually.

That’s fan blogging in a nutshell: “I think this is cool, maybe someone else will. Oh, look – they did!” And then you get to chat about it. That’s the awesome part, really. Not stats. Chatting with people about mutual interests. I could go up and down my entire block and not find three people to chat with about Wolverine and his goddamn adamantium. But thanks to the web, we can enjoy a little connection over our personal obsessions. And you know what? Sometimes we learn something along the way. And sometimes… we even send you mail. Postal anarchy forever! Mountain Lions Forever! Long Live the Resistance!

Perfect! The Master Will Be Well Pleased!

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art, collage, comic book collage, quarterly report

Ultra Cosmic Bonus Points are yours if you identify the source comic book for the panel in the center which clearly states this collage is “Perfect! The Master Will be Well Pleased!”

 

 
Martians, normally we would do a quarterly report. But, we’ve been on a sort of vacation and stumbled upon a top secret scientific formula for destroying time itself. The upshot of this discovery is a wildly creative state of existence in which colors magically wash canvas almost by themselves, and old dreams find new life in other forms. The downside is complete impatience for things like quarterly reports!

We should mention how pleased we were that Rick Veitch noticed we posted some of his early Sgt. Rock backups and linked to them from his site. Rock on! We just mailed a spare copy of Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends #3 to someone special, hoping to spread the dream art madness.

Anyway, the last 48 hours or so we have been working on a painting using some new techniques. It started out as a collage of panels from some beat-to-hell copies of early Marvel Team-Up. As a mental break, we took the scraps and some Mod Podge and applied them to a little canvas that would fit on our scanner. It took us exactly as long as the 31-minute album by the Melvins, originally entitled Lysol before they were threatened with a lawsuit. If you’ve never glued old comic books to something while listening to the Melvins at top volume, you really should put it on your to-do list this weekend.

Mars Celebrates 200,000 Views

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comic book blogs, quarterly report

200,000. That’s a big number. Did you know scientists believe the biggest number is 45,000,000,000? Some speculate that even larger numbers exist.

Ok, maybe that’s not true. But what do we know? We only got a 100.6% in our statistics class last semester, which should be statistically impossible.

Do you remember what you did before blog technology? No, we don’t either. Something involving this weird stuff known as nature, maybe. Or this place we read about called “the outside world.”

But we have evidence life existed before blogging. At least creationists and evolutionists can all agree on that. In fact, both sides agree that the age of the universe may date back as far as 1982. In 1982, we were working on a strange technology known as paper. Paper is a substance made out of old computer printouts and egg cartons run through a wood chipper, with essential vitamins and flavors added.

Our ancestors taught us how to form primitive letters from paper using analog cut-and-paste technology called scissors. The ancient ones hoped we would use this technology for the good of all humankind. We decided that was a dumb idea. Instead, we cut out the names of superheroes and comic books.

Thank you for dropping by and reading comic books with us!
It’s a strange hobby, but someone’s got to do it. We have many more fun things to explore and share with you. So, put on your bathrobe, quit your day job, and click away!

Mars Celebrates 150,000 Views!

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quarterly report

It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating 100,000 page views. Actually, it was 2 months ago! Grab a beer and treat yourself, Martians! Thank you for dropping by and reading comic books with us. It’s always a pleasure when your space capsule docks at our mothership. Keep it cosmic, mutate yourself often, and watch out for rampaging dinosaurs!

Mars is only 15 months old but I’ve been a geeks for a long time. Here’s a Halloween pic from 1977 to prove it. My sister says, “Spider-man appears so much in our family photos that it’s like I had a second sibling!”

Mars Hulks Out at One Hundred Thousand!

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Hulk Pajamas, quarterly report

“When we started this band, back in the day, it was merely a laugh.”
-Motley Crue

We launched Mars on WordPress on January 8, 2011. That first month saw only 300 page views. Now it’s February 1, 2012, and our stat ticker just rolled over 100,000. That makes us feel like hulking out in some Hulk pajamas!

Thank you for dropping by and sharing the comic book love.

Why Comic Book Blogging Totally Rules: 2011 in Review

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quarterly report

In January 2011, we launched Mars on WordPress with a stack of comics and a dream of comic book utopia. A place where mutants and dinosaurs battled daily in a field of giant ants powered by super brains from space just as the galaxy was incinerated… And so began what Paul calls our “un-hinged ravings” about our favorite comic books.

We set two simple rules.

Rule One: If someone wants their work taken down, we will take it down. So far, that’s happened twice. Both times, everyone was happy in the end.

Rule Two: If it sucks, we don’t waste time on it. We are not critics. We don’t use server space on comics we don’t like, and we don’t have anything bad to say about anyone working in the field.

So, what happened? We had a really wordy diatribe planned for you but scrapped it all in favor of this picture:

That big Silver Surfer painting comes from Iain Carstairs – a fellow Jack Kirby fan and the brains behind Science and Religion. All the way from the UK to our wall – Cosmically Awesome! Two paintings above it are our own Kirby-inspired images, a direct result of rapping with Iain about The King.

And that’s what has really rocked the most about Mars: connecting to other fans and creative types. Blogging as a personal monologue is fun, but using it as a way to facilitate a dialogue – an exchange of ideas, memorabilia, and correspondence – is even better.

We used to be the only nerd on our block who liked comic books. Now we’ve got people sending us CD’s with dinosaur comic scans. (Thank you, Dale!) Authors of dinosaur books sending us bitchin’ dino T-Shirts. (Thank you, JP!) Comic book authors sending us autographed copies of their work. (Thank you, Paul!) Authors of comics we feature dropping by to say thanks and telling us where to find their current work. (Thank you, Reggie, Gene, and Marc!) Publishers sending us promotional images. (Thank you, IDW!) People picking up our scans of out-of-print indie comics and introducing them to their friends.

Heck, we’re even tickled when people reference our posts to settle such all-important debates as “In which galaxy did Storm tap into the power of the galactic core to kill the alien inside her?” Yes, our scans settled that question on the CBR forums. Our mother must be so proud!

Also, thanks to people clicking through our affiliate links to My Comic Shop, we enjoyed a big box of comic books totally free this year. Martians, thank you! There are a million places you can buy comics. Buying them through our links just makes one geek incredibly happy. We appreciate it, and we hope you enjoyed your books as much as we did!

Life is good.
Life with comic books is awesome!

BLAH BLAH BLAH TIME
You can stop reading now if you want… We’re going to review our year in terms of what fans liked the most, what brings people to this site, and so on. You know, stats. You’re obsessed with them, we’re obsessed with them, and someday when we hit a million page views we can look back and laugh.

Monthly Stats:

Obviously, no one knew we existed in January. We got 300 hits our first month. Now, we look at 300 views as a slow day. Every month we look for some new way to pump those stats. Do they mean anything? Maybe. But our image configuration artifically inflates them a bit. The way we have our image galleries set up, each image has its own page URL. So, if one person looks at all 30 pages of a comic we shared, that seems to count for 30 separate hits. While we’re thrilled to have more than 16,000 page views in November, it doesn’t translate as 16,000 unique visitors. Still, we love comics and we love that you love looking at comics we love. Rock.

Top Referrers:
1. Google Image Search loves us most. (Sometimes we worry people are just viewing an image and not visiting the site at all???) All other forms of Google in more than 40 countries love us second most.
2. Reddit loves us third most, even if we have to tell them ourselves.
3. Web site that sends us the most traffic: Diversions of the Groovy Kind. (Thanks, Groove!)
4. Twitter and Facebook like us fifth and sixth most. It seems to be not our own direct efforts but re-postings by others. Glad someone is enjoying this lunacy!
5. WordPress itself sends visitors in several ways (tags, .com, dashboards, search – in that order.) Just being on WP gets exposure and we like that.

Top Search Terms:
1. Jack Kirby
2. Age of Reptiles
3. Galactus
4. EC Comics
5. Jungle Girl

That’s the general trend, anyway. There’s a lot of “Jack Kirby Galactus” and “Jack Kirby Art” and so on – reconfigurations of these terms. Mental Note: We need to get a copy of the EC Comics story “Eye for an Eye.” People are looking for it and coming here, but we don’t have it. UPDATE: We have it now! Click Here: An Eye for an Eye.

Our favorite search terms: “what is the deal with mars will send no more” – Ha! See our Secret Origin, dude! Even better is “gonads in my ears.” If you Google “gonads in my ears” – and someone has – we are the TOP of the list on Google. YES! This is why we get out of bed in the morning and scan comics.

Top Clicks:
1. Our revised image of Galactus saying “Mars Will Send No More!”
2. Followed by several ‘bad trip’ double splashes from No Hero.
3. Site we refer to most: KirbyDynamics.blogspot.com
4. Most clicked affiliate link: Captain Victory at My Comic Shop.

Top 10 Posts:
These are only ranked as individual posts when they are no longer the most recent post on our Home Page, as far as we can tell. If 1000 people drop by our Home Page, whatever is posted that day does not get ranked as its own post – it gets ranked as “Home Page.” “Home Page” accounts for slightly less than half our site views. (That suggests we don’t have a regular readership as much as we have an archive of stuff people are searching for, don’t you think?) We’re not counting our Secret Identity, Secret Origin, and Sea Monkeys pages – although they are all in the top 10. People come here looking for Sea Monkeys! We like that a lot! Anyway, here’s what Martians dug the most in 2011.

1. This is the Worst Trip Ever!
Double splashes from the horrifc bad trip in the Ellis/Ryp ‘No Hero.’
2. Origin of Galactus!
People want to know where the big G is from. We can help.
3. Jim Lawson’s Paleo: Loner!
Get hip to Jim Lawson’s pure dino fury now.
4. His Mechanical Brain is Charged with All Knowledge!
Complete EC Comics story “Judgment Day” addressing racism.
5. Armadillos of the Surreal!
The second issue of Armadillo Comics, out of print since the 1970s and totally awesome. This one got reblogged several times and linked to from an Austin, TX news story. Yes! The world needs more Armadillo Comics!
6. All I’ve Got to Worry about Is Shooting My Dinosaur!
A complete EC Comics story adapting Ray Bradbury’s ‘Sound of Thunder.’
7. Preeeeeeeesenting: The Women’s Texas Championship!
We had no idea so many people would be interested in the Hernandez Brothers’ take on female wrestling, but these images got re-blogged several times.
8. Nathan, I Don’t Want to Die Alone!
Mutates doing the deed in the dark by the glow of infrared in John Byrne’s Next Men. That’s hot!
9. Swamp Thing: Rite of Spring!
Everyone needs to become one with the universal biosphere at least once in their lives. We can help.
10. Jim Lee X-Men Posters 3!
Snobby bloggers bash Jim Lee. We celebrate him.

That about wraps it up for 2011! Stay tuned, because 2012 is going to be so insane that we’ll need to conquer another solar system to host it all.