I spent a good chunk of time trying to write a joke about the few Valiant Comics I have, but the best I could up with is “Valiant comics are terrible because they’re titled things like Shadow Man or The H.A.R.D. Corps,” but that’s not so much a joke as a literal observation (Seriously, what publisher signed off on H.A.R.D. Corps?).
I’d like to thank everyone again for their response sto last week’s question. If we could repeat the success of last week, I’d like to ask you all another:
Of the many things Dana and I are working, one of them is making some improvements to the Web site, both visually and mechanically. If anyone had any suggestions in either category, it would be most appreciated. I can’t speak much to the visual changes we’re going to be making, besides that I know Dana is making new buttons and logos, because, well, Dana is handling all that. I can barely match my socks most days, so I’m not the best person to be in charge of making things pretty.
Mechanically though, I can sling a little jive. I plan on putting some nav arrows on the top header bar, as I’ve had a few others comment on their absence, and I know personally, when I need to cycle through comics quickly, it’s annoying to have to go to the bottom previous/next arrows after every comic, especially since we have big comics that push the buttons way down. I have a few other surprises that we’re going to be adding for you all in the coming weeks, but as far as other technical improvements, I’m not really sure where to devote my attention. So, if anyone has any other suggestions, please let us know.
The only caveat here is that my CSS, and computer skills in general for that matter, are basically horrendous. I can tweak and shuffle and input other people’s code, but writing it on my own is really something I can’t do with much success. So, if you have a great idea, and I don’t implement it, don’t take it personally. It probably means I just can’t get the code to work, either because I can’t write it or it won’t work with comicpress.
Advice-seeking aside, I suppose I don’t have much to really update you guys with. I’m pretty excited about tonight’s True Blood, as I think there’s finally going to be some fighting. Don’t get me wrong, I like the show a fair bit, but it gets annoying after a while to watch hour after hour of people with super-strength not totally wrecking shit. It’s kind of like filming someone loading a gun, then never firing it for the whole movie.
Pandora has introduced me to MC Lars, which has been kind of fun. I’m picking my way through his catalog on iTunes, grabbing singles here and there. So far my favorite is “True Player For Real,” possibly because he mentions being a poor English major and also references Bukowski in it. Also, Weird Al plays accordion on it which takes an already distinct song and gives it a nice little nudge towards surreal.
<3 Mike
I’ll reserve comment on any possible aesthetic site tweaking until those changes roll out. I actually like the handwritten-style that you have going right now; it is somewhat spartan, but it works and the colour palette is nice.
As for functionality tweaks, arrows near the top-right of the comic would probably be nice, yes. Outside of that… hmm. While your humour has so far been largely situational, if you plan on doing more character building, a “characters” page for new readers could eventually be useful. Personally, I’d like to see a larger “about” page as well, but that’s just because I like to get an idea of who the people I’m visiting next week are, eh? So that’s a personal interest, but most likely not one that is really needful. Tacked onto that would be an interest in Dana’s art outside of the comic, and other writing you might have done, as both have obviously come together into something I enjoy, thus they have spurred an interest in them as separate entities.
Oh, and re: polite concern expressed about my eye: I’ll likely have to have laser surgery at some point in the future if I want incidents of eye-pain to cease, but I am in no immediate danger. It’s more an irritation than anything else. And at least I got to wear an eyepatch for a few days.
saddly I have like 30% of bland books wizard hyped…
As far as buttons go, I would recommend redoing, well, what it is that they do. With what I am used to (and what my instincts say), the double arrows on the outside would be first and most recent respectively, while the text on the inside would be for previous and next, etc. It just throws me off my game a bit when I’m trying to browse rapidly, although I’m certain I’ll get used to it eventually (I do plan on reading this long enough for that!). Adding buttons to the top is also just a great idea. I do trust that, considering Dana’s art, the website will be very pretty at the end of this overhaul — and I appreciate prettiness.
Also, if you have the scripts floating around, I would love a search function. When I want to show friends a specific strip, I have to remember its name. . . and I’m bad with names. However, I’m good at remembering lines, especially the punch lines which make me want to find a particular strip. In light of that, such a function would be useful. Your catalog at present isn’t so large as to make not having a search function any sort of hassle, but I do look forward to the day it gets that big, and I would like, on that day, for there to already be a text-search function.
@ Everyone: Sorry it took me a little while to respond. I like to spend Mondays and Tuesdays writing if I can, since I’m not too burnt from the work week just yet. I usually crash after a few hours of post-work writing though, which makes giving thoughtful responses to your comments a little tough. Everyone’s commenting is always greatly appreciated, and hopefully I’ll be able to address all responses properly tonight.
@WR: Glad you like the site’s look right now. I wish I could tell you anything worthwhile about what Dana’s cooking up, but she’s still toying with ideas on her own and I haven’t seen much.
An upper nav-button will probably be going in pretty soon, basically whenever I get the gumption.
We are planning to make a “Characters” page in the near-to-middle future. Dana and I are both tangled up in larger projects for the site right now, but they’re definitely on our “to-do” list. I’m not exactly sure when to expect them by. I’m tempted to make some inane and meaningless promise like “as soon as one month, and as distant as 6,” but instead I’ll stick with, “Not exaclty sure.”
As for the “About” page, I hadn’t really ever thought much about adding a great amount of detail to it. Perhaps we will expand it someday, but in the meantime, I can seriously promise you that I am really not that interesting. God help you too if you ever find any of my writing. What I do for work now is pretty dull marketing copy, and the only other stuff out there is terrible, terrible things that I wrote in college.
Dana is a bit more interesting than me, but most information about her is classified by the government.
Thanks for commenting and complementing as always, and especially for offering suggestions for improvement. It’s surprisingly hard to manage all the facets of a Web comic, so good suggestions like yours are like manna from god.
@John K: Thanks for reading and posting. Yeah, Wizard can really put the screws to a fellow. Still, I don’t want to hate too much on that magazine. I haven’t read it in years, but I used to love all the fun stuff they would do like “10 Best Villains” that would be all these long essays about how Thanos is better than Darkseid and Lex Luthor is better than Kingpin.
@JBo: Our flipped buttons have been bothering me a bit too. I should probably fix those too.
To be honest, we almost deleted search from our site as a whole. I just assumed no one would ever want to use it, but for some fluke reason I decided to keep it just in case. I’m glad that I did.
I’ll look into text-intergration for search. Off the top of my head, I think that’s what “Oh No Robot” does, but I’m not entirely positive.
Thanks for suggestions, and for reading as always.
-Mike