Saturday, March 29, 2008

League of Monsters Sequel?

Because Godaddy is no longer going to eternally keep all my log files on their servers for easy access (Bastards!) I have been downloading them to my pc for future reference.

This has caused me to reflect on several trends in the traffic of the FB site, one of which I'll talk about today.

For some reason, the League of Monsters comic is far and away the most popular Flashback title we have. It always leads the pack in downloads.

And while this month was different, the same is true for the Butterfly BackStory. Of the three BackStories, it's the random visitor's favorite.

See the stats here for March.


March 2008 Downloads

And check out these stats from August 2007

August 2007 Downloads

Now, the first question that should come to mind is why did the LOM comic have almost 3000 downloads in August and only 1000 for March? Is traffic on the site going down?

No, quite the opposite actually. This month is just abnormally slow for some reason and in August I got linked from the AppleGazette.com (the premiere Apple news site) and LifeHacker.com (the premiere Tech Geek news site)

When I first started I used to pour over the weekly download numbers with great intensity, trying to decipher the ebbs and flos in my bandwidth.

I gave up on that about 6 months ago.

The fact is, you are just as likely to get a ton of visitors from some arbitrary post on some South American Vampire Message Board as you are from a real news site like the Apple Gazette. (For example, last month, I got a HUGE spike from the One Child One Laptop site because someone asked about reading digital comics on their XO Laptop.

Still, the one trend that never changes is that excluding downloads from my email newsletter recipients (who bust the trend when we launch a new comic) the League Of Monsters is always the top download.

And while I have been pretty adamant about only working on comics with characters not seen so far, looking at this trend makes me wonder if I shouldn't consider a sequel to our League of Monsters comic.

Feel free to chime in.

Would you rather see a new LOM comic or one with a character we haven't featured yet?

NOTE: I want to apologize for this late Blog Post. I would also like to blame Chris Sims. If he had only liked the name SnakeRoot, then this column would have been right on time. :D

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5 comments:

  1. CaineMarch 29, 2008 at 12:18 PM

    I'd love to see more characters of the FB Universe. My vote is for Runewraith

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  2. RichardMarch 30, 2008 at 7:19 PM

    Looking at the preview images of all the Flashback stories so far, one thing that jumps out is how the LoM preview features the most traditional and straightforward superhero team action scenes. Out of all the stories, this one would look to a newcomer like the most action-packed and fast-paced of the bunch...which shouldn't be a surprise, because that's exactly what it is. Just going by the preview images, that's the first one I'd want to download too.

    I mean, clearly you should do another LoM story: it might be that the name or the premise or something else specific to that book is drawing more people in than the others are. But it might simply be that potential readers are looking for some big action and hard-hitting fight scenes with lots of heroes and villains pounding on each other. So in addition to that LoM followup, you could try amping up the action in future stories generally, and constructing the previews to show off that action to the best effect.

    And don't let some guy like me who wants to be the bastard child of Englehart and Gerber sell you a lot of pretentious cosmic hippie philosophy -- make me write you more action! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 31, 2008 at 12:51 AM

    I vote Paladin.

    I mean...
    He's Frankenstein's monster as Captain America.
    High concept doesn't get much better than that

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim ShelleyApril 1, 2008 at 5:59 AM

    So far I'm getting a lot of votes for different characters (here and via email).

    RAB - You must be forgetting that period in the 70's when Radical Roy Reb wrote the League of Monsters. Many of his stories had action AND hippy philosophies...

    ...who can forget such timeless classics as...

    Creature for the Psychedelic Lagoon
    Down with the (Invisible) Man!
    Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. High

    Ah! That Roy, he was quite a character in the old bullpen, with is petuli and his Nehru jacket, ranting against the Government every other day.

    Sadly, he ran off to Canada and now runs a farm raising sheep.

    But your comment makes me wonder if we shouldn't reprint some of his old stories...

    ReplyDelete
  5. RichardApril 2, 2008 at 6:35 PM

    As if I could ever forget Radical Reb! What -- you thought my choice of initials was coincidence? No way, man, that's my tribute to the author of "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead" and "When Titans Trip Out!"

    I hadn't heard that about him raising sheep in Canada, though. The story I heard was that he freaked out on a massive dose of LSD while reading an issue of Runewraith, and disappeared into the comic itself. If you dig out that issue you can actually see him hiding in the background of some panels...

    ReplyDelete