Sorry about it, but this was a hell of a lot easier to keep on top of when I was only working part time instead of 50 hours a week...

Anyway, the big news I guess is that tomorrow is the sixth, which represents the one year anniversary of the "Superman is a Dick" meme getting started on a message board. I tried to come up with some way to celebrate it, but to no avail. The good thing about it is that it's probably a bit more appropriate for Superdickery.com to celebrate the start up of the website, and that one year anniversary is still several months away. If anyone can think of a way that we should celebrate that (The best idea we've had on the forums was that we should all eat forty cakes, but that'd be kind of hard to implement. And that's terrible.), by all means shoot me an e-mail and let me know.

In the meantime, here's the new comics, and here's the new mailbag, featuring an historic first hate mail letter. Huzzah!

So anyway, self congratulatory back-patting is over. Here's your fix, you junkies you:
New Mailbag (Finally.)
New comics (As always.)

The past couple months have been somewhat rough, but things have for the most part evened out now, so I'm foreseeing no further interruptions in the updates as usual. Sorry I haven't been around much, but I've been busy busy busy (My last paycheck had 140 hours for two weeks on it). But at least my schedule has been set for Sunday through Thursday, which leaves me free on Saturdays to do the usual update and whatnot.

Currently there's a massive load of e-mails sitting in my inbox that I haven't read yet. I'll get to it as soon as I can (Starting later today), so if you've sent anything over the past three weeks or so, I apologize profusely for the lack of a prompt response. Obviously this means that once again there's no letters column today, but it'll be back next week. Probably.

New stuff.

Heh. How wrong I was.

Shortly put, last Saturday kicked my ass. I spent 12 hours wrestling monkeys (The last hour of which was in the dark, since the lights on the habitats are on a timer), and found that a weekend shift entails a full day's worth of usual duties, but only half the staff with which to get it all done. Sunday was much the same. Labor Day was worse. Tuesday even worse still.

Shortly put, despite my best efforts, there's was no update last week, obviously. Also obviously, this weekend's fine, but the week after brings another weekend shift. Looks like from here on out, I'll be alternating my weekends off with weekends I work. And that's terrible.

I'll try to work something out at work, i.e. volunteering to work every Sunday so I can have every Saturday, but if the scheduling won't play ball, I think I'm going to have to start updating on random days during the week, depending on whichever days my days off fall. I don't much like that solution, as I prefer regular updates on a regular day, but what can you do (Short of updating every other week, which doesn't strike my fance either.)

In further bad news, my friend who writes the Bizarro letters is facing a personal emergency, and as such has had to place his contributions on indefinite hiatus. If anyone can think of a feature they'd like to contribute on a weekly basis to fill the void, I'm all ears.

In a ray of good news in what would otherwise be nothing but bad news, feel free to join the new Superdickery IRC channel at #superdickery (Duh) on the Nightstar Network. And that ain't bad.

Until the next impending calamity,

--Mike

I don't forsee any other things that are going to be taking up so much of my time on Saturdays (Which is what was responsible for so many letter page-less updates), so here's to hoping that things will settle back into the old routine of things.

Here's an interesting link to check out: We all know that Superman is a Dick (Otherwise you wouldn't be here, would you?), here's a page that speculates that this is the case because Superman Has No Dick. Frankly I think he raises some good points. Also frankly, I think the internet's obsession with superheroes' genitalia is quite disturbing.

This Week:
New comic goodness.
New letters.
Bizarro letters: Back To School Special Edition

Yeah, I'd better wrap this up before I start rambling any more.

New comics, right here.

In other other news, it appears that Superman has been captured by some sort of madman. I'd say this is a most distressing news, but given that it's Superman, I'm rather hard pressed to get worked up about it. Now had it been Batman...

Anyway, he's yet to make any demands yet, but we can only hope that they are as unreasonable as possible so that we may finally see Superman get his comeuppance.

Like today, for instance, Bizarro Letters is taking a break. Which is fine, lord knows I seem to skip out on letters half the time myself. Everything else in place this week, and you'll hear from me again when I have something new to report.

New comics.
New letters.

For everyone that wrote in this past two weeks, I promise I'll read it tomorrow when I actually have some time off from work and errands.

New comics.
New Bizarro letters.

Buy now, buy often.

I've got to jet for the day, so I'm afraid I'm gonna have to leave it at that.

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

It's the 4th of July weekend, and surprisingly I could only find one picture to commemorate the occasion. It's in the Propaganda Extravaganza section this week. I'm sure there'd be more if I looked, but yeah... I don't want to.

While it won't come into play for a few months yet, there is a possibility that I might have to switch up on what days the site gets updated, depending on what I get scheduled at work. Right now I don't have to worry about it because I'm officially still a trainee (And will be for the next six weeks at least), but study designs don't take breaks for weekends and holidays, so you never know. Weekly updates will continue though, no need to fret about that.

Maybe if I can get a digital camera up here, I can snap some pictures of my cavernously empty apartment to show off...

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

So obviously the big news this week is that Batman Begins came out. I've yet to have a chance to go see it (I will see it this weekend though, so help me god... the streets will run red with blood if I don't get to see Batman.), but I'm hearing spectacular things about it. I knew it'd be great anyway... Chris Nolan endeared himself to me forever with "Memento," and Christian Bale proved he's got the action movie chops required to play Batman when he did "Equilibrium." Granted it was a thinly veiled knock-off of Orwell's "1984," with the word "Sense" substituted for "Thought" for things like sense-crimes and such, but damn did it have some kick ass action sequences. Gun Kata > You. So yeah, Nolan + Bale = redemption of the Batman franchise after Schumacher drove it into the ground with his neon and black light atrocities.

I could seriously rant for a day and a half about those two movies...

Anyway, just so no one's caught by surprise, next weekend I'm going to be moving into a new apartment in Everett to be closer to my new job, so there's not going to be an update until the following week. I'd put it off until later, but I start there on the 27th, and there's just no way in hell I'm going to be able to commute there from where I live in Seattle by bus, it'd take 6 hours round trip. So yeah, gotta move. At least internet will be hooked up when I get there, so I won't have any down time. Better than that, I can finally afford broadband, so there will be much rejoicing indeed.

Until the week after next...

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

New comics.
Bizarro Letters.

Of course no sooner do I finish a project then I start getting restless and thinking about new material to add on the site. To that end, I'm currently working like a beaver on a new addition for the site, one that is super ambitious and will most likely take a while. I can't give you an ETA for it, but I'm certainly hoping it will be worth the wait. It's probably going to take more effort than the rest of the site combined has taken me. Anyone who wants to know what I'm talking about should visit the discussion board and register so that you can see the Secret Forum. Why don't I just tell you outright? 'Cause I'm being a dick about it. What can I say.

Also on the topic of being as busy working on the site, I'm caving in and trying to retrofit the site with PHP. Not having even the slightest clue about how to do it, it seems that after all these months I've finally got something that more or less makes it an automated process. Which should make life a little easier for me, since any changes I'd want to make to the whole site would merely involve making an alteration to the master page, and then everything would be altered accordingly. i.e. if I want to add a button on the sidebar for the new store, I do it to one page, and it effects all the pages, rather than having to manually edit what has quickly become an intimidating number of pages. Plus it should even out all those formatting quirks that vary form one page to the next. Overall, it's just gonna make the site look a hell of a lot nicer.

Speaking of the store, stay tuned for the grand opening coming very soon. It'll be your one stop shop for getting all these old school covers in archive editions and all that fun stuff. Seriously, I'm unspeakably excited about getting the whole thing off the ground.

So yeah... back to work for me.

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

Frank Gorshin, the Riddler? Died.

Henry Corden, the voice of Fred Flintstone? Died.

Thurl Ravenscroft, voice of Tony the Tiger? Died.

As though last week didn't have me contemplating my own mortality enough. Sweet lord. I know it doesn't seem like much, but to think that my children will never experience "Theeeeeeeeeey're GREAT!" the way I have for the past 2 and a half decades... It's a sobering thought.

This is not a happy way to start what's supposed to be a long weekend. Even less happy is the fact I actually have to work tomorrow, so while everyone else gets a long weekend, I actually have to work an extra day. I'd ask how this week could get any worse, but that's invariably followed by fate finding a way to do just that...

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

Even though I haven't watched the show in nearly a decade and a half, I still have fond memories of watching Gorshin on Batman. When I was four, I used to be up at like 5:30 in the morning so I could sneak into the living room and watch Batman on TV until it woke up my parents and they came and made me go back to bed.

Being the clever tyke I was, I started watching it while hiding under the coffee table. Not that I believe that had them fooled for a second (It's not like the TV randomly turns itself on to watch Batman every morning), but I think it corresponded with my parents giving up on trying to make me go back to bed. And thus a Batman fan for life was born (Even though I did have a bizarre recurring nightmare when I was about 5 or 6 where the villains from the show were trying to teach me how to shave.)

What's ironic now is that when I was about 12 or so, Fox would rerun the old Batman show in the afternoon after the after school cartoons (Back before they were limited solely to Kids WB) but before the local news, and I thought it was incredibly lame at the time. Now if the series was on DVD (Is it on DVD? I haven't checked.), I'd totally buy it in a heartbeat.

*Sigh*

So the site expansion is for the time being largely complete. Frames and Panels might be sticking around, or it might be folded into the Confounding Comics section, I haven't decided. I think its fate will largely be determined by whether or not I can think of an additional new section to add to the site, if only for the sake of symmetry between the two columns of sections. Right now the top contenders are the Baby Superheroes section, a "Lois is a Bitch" section, or a "Jimmy Gets Superpowers" section. Feedback is appreciated as always.

New comics.
New letters.
New Bizarro letters.

Last Thursday I come home from work, and my computer won't boot up because a file was corrupted or missing. So after hours of trying stuff, I finally got it to boot up long enough for me to get in there and snatch my copy of the website off the hard drive, along with all backlog of images that need to go up eventually. That was the thing I was most concerned about, since I can't even fathom how much time it would take me to collect everything I've gotten all over again. But I got it, so everything's fine on that front. My computer is one sick puppy though, so until I could get that fixed, I borrowed a loaner iMac from my parents.

Which just made trying to get today's update out the door a major hassle, since it didn't have any my usual programs that I use for doing it, but it was workable. But then the FTP server was all out of whack (More on why in a little bit here) and it wouldn't let me upload, and ARRRRRGH... I was filled with irrational fury.

But I'm on the home stretch here now that I'm writing this, so there's hope yet. Anyway, on to the big news for the week...

A couple months ago, work started on an online store for the site. So now, after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, the Superdickery "SUPERSTORE" has finally made it to the beta stage - and is available for previewing. There are a limited number of items available during this beta phase - though if all goes well the rest of the inventory will be added shortly. Stop by, take a look ...tell us what you think - and most importantly BUY SOMETHING! Check back often as the inventory begins to grow and let us know if there is something you want that is not being offered. Our goal is to become your favorite source when it comes to Trade Paperbacks, and other comic materials.

Once all of the inventory has been added to the store - I will send out a Grand Opening announcement.

By comparison, the addition of the new comic section this week, Stupor Powers seems rather small potatoes, doesn't it? This week's new section is devoted to all those super heroes and super powers that time has forgotten, but will forever live on in our mind for their zaniness. The number of powers Superman spontaneously invented on the spot in the Golden Age of comics is enough to fill a section all of it's own, but I'm also including stuff like "Fatman: The Human Flying Saucer." And no, I did not make that up.

Superstore here
New gallery here
New additions here
Letters here
Bizarro Letters here

And, despite popular demand, that was never ever going to be the title of the section. I think it'd actually be a fairly good title to evoke the same sense of shocking political incorrectness contained within, but if there's one thing I understand above all else when it comes to this site, I understand taking things out of context. And a section called "Slap a Jap" could waaaay too easily be taken out of context.

So it came down to Improperganda and Propaganda Extravaganza, and I just liked the latter more. Certainly better than what I'd initially come up with, "Perterbing Propaganda."

This section is also unique in that it is the only one where there's things listed in more than one section at once. Prior to this, all the new sections have been largely culled from the Confounding Comic Covers, which was initially just a catch-all for bizarre covers that weren't Superdickery candidates. This time though, a bunch of the really good stuff were in the Superman is a Dick section, but since that's pretty much the focus of the site, I didn't want to diminish it in anyway. So for now the propaganda stuff from the SiaD section is listed again in the Propaganda Extravaganza section, only with different commentary.

If I get enough of a response from people who think it belongs entirely in one section or another, I may change it at a future date, but for the forseeable future that's how it's gonna be for now.

New Ask Bizarro returns after last week's hiatus.
New covers.

So this week there are sadly no new, letters, bizarro letters, or new sections. I figure since those sections get relatively little traffic compared to the other parts, most people could do without it for just this one week.

But fear not, the meat and potatoes of the site are the comic covers, and those got the standard update.

New stuff.

Regular updates will return next week.

For those of you who don't already know, I highly encourage you to read up on William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder Woman. Read up, and discover how every last one of these bondage instances and innuendo were completely intentional. It'll blow your mind.

So yeah, I've finally gotten around to putting up the section that inspired all the other sections. Enjoy.

Also new this week:
New Letters
New Ask Bizarro

Personally this is one of my favorite subjects, as I'm a huge fan of the whole "Rockets and Robots" 50's pulp sci-fi conventions. That's probably why I liked Futurama so damned much (And why I will never forgive Fox for cancelling it. Ever.). Some things like "The Day the Flash Weighed 1000 Pounds" were kind of a tough call, given that a ray gun that can make a person turn fat is pretty out there, but the ray gun was way in the background and the emphasis was more on what the ray gun did to the Flash rather than the ray gun itself.

So I guess the general rule of thumb will be that if it's specifically mentioned in the title on the cover, it'll wind up under Weird Science.

Also new this week is Bizarro Letters. This is a first run attempt at adding third party content to the site (meaning I didn't do it), an advice collumn by Bizarro. To get things started it's just responses to the same letters I answered in the mailbag this week, but he's got his own e-mail address at ambizarro@yahoo.com, so feel free to send him your own letters. If there's enough interest, it'll become a permanent fixture on the site.

To let me know what you think or if you've got your own idea for something you'd like to contribute on a weekly basis, drop me a line.

Basically if you can look at it and come up with some sort of dirty thought about it, then it's probably gonna go in this section.

You might also notice that the frames and panels section seems to have been reduced a bit. Mostly because I folded in several of the images into the new section, but in the long run the section is probably just going to be removed completely, with all the images being coopted by new sections. This week is probably the last time it'll be updated.

Not that I think anyone will miss it. At least I hope not. It's not like the pictures are going anywhere.

New letters today.
New pictures.

Yes, technically gorillas aren't monkeys, but "everything's better with monkeys" sounds better than "everything's better with gorillas."

Anyway, as I said this is the first phase of the reorganization. Every week for the next few weeks I'll be adding a new section until everything's all resorted. Basically the Confounding Covers section was getting a bit unwieldly in size, so I figured it'd probably be a good idea to break it down into multiple sections by theme for easier browsing. Granted there weren't a whole lot of covers with monkeys or gorillas on them already in that section, but it'll grow. Oh yes, it'll grow.

Also note that the galleries page has been changed up a tad, with a brief blurb for each section added in addition to the new gallery link. What new section will arrive next week? Who knows. I haven't completely decided yet.

So yeah, the usual updates can be found in the usual places. New additions here, and new letters here.

I think today I've accomplished less than I've ever accomplished in any other day of my life since I became capable of coordinated motor movements. Seems that Cartoon Network was having Teen Titans marathon (Still having it while I'm writing this), and apparently I was way behind on the series because they just kept showing episodes that I hadn't seen before and I couldn't bear to tear myself away from it (Which is ironic, because intially when the show started I thought it wasn't all that great).

Eventually though they showed a couple of reruns (Well, reruns that I had already seen before), and I got to work. I really ought to learn to do this stuff on Friday afternoons or something so I'm not rushing to update on time. Live and learn, live and learn.

So yeah, new stuff to be had. Find the new listings here. Some truly logic defying stuff to be had there. I don't have the image galleries up just yet, as I'm working on something here that would pretty much make them worthless. You might also note that the new pages lack the numbers on the bottom. Having a quick link ability like that is a nice idea, but it's entirely too much work to alter all those pages every week, and since they were going to be replaced relatively soon anyhow, I just skipped out on it for now.

Never liked them anyway.

Letters are updated as always.

Stay tuned for stuff outside the standard material in updates coming soon...

1.) I've gone and added a new recent additions page that will list the new stuff by date. Alternately you can still use the site index, but this is more for anyone who misses an update or anyone who's just too darn lazy to scroll down to the bottom of a collumn to see the new stuff.

2.) Some format tweaks are in the works. For instance, I'm breaking down and doing thumbnail galleries, which will replace those links at the bottom of each page with a single link to a gallery of thumbnails for the 25 pages at a time. I'm hoping to have it done by next week, but no guarantees.

3.) Mailbag this week is entitled "An Ode to Ownage." I made a flub, and subsequently got owned by a whooooooole lotta people. Worth checking out if you enjoy the embarassment of others.

1.) New content can be found at the site index as usual. Next week I'm planning on tweaking the index to make it a bit easier to find the new stuff, and maybe level out the two collumns since one section so vastly outnumbers the others.

2.) Currently exploring the posibility of opening of a store of some sort. Help me out by telling me what you'd want to see. Clothes? Action figures? Books? What?

3.) New edition of the maibag is up. Added a link on the front page too.

Other than that, not much to report. Always open to input on what you'd like to see on the site, so drop me a line.

1.) Massive thanks to everyone who spread this site like wildfire across the internet. I thought it'd be popular, but I'm totally blown away by how popular it's been. Craziness, craziness, craziness. I know I said we killed the server, but I didn't mean it literally. The server was fine, but we were doing 48 megabits/sec sustained usage and crippling the T3 backbone of the service that was hosting us. In the brief time we were up, we transferred 122+ gigabytes of data. That is just pure insanity. And seeing as how we weren't actually paying for anything, we got what essentially amounts to "If you're going to do it, you can't do it here." But now we're on a server with unlimited bandwidth, so feel free to poke around and tell all your friends.

2.) The domain name has been changed, as no doubt you are already aware. Making commentary on the covers falls under fair use laws, but calling the site Supermanisadick.com is more of a gray area. It may be legally fair use, but if AOL Time Warner didn't like it they'd shut me down regardless.

3.) New Format. A lot of people requested better navigation, so I moved the navigation bar over to the side of the screen. Then I scrapped the whole thing and rebuilt the entire site without using frames. Boy was that not a fun thing to do in one night. Also added an image index, by popular request.

4.) New content. Added some pics during the downtime, more to come next week. I'm hoping to make this a weekly update thing.

5.) Added a discussion forum. Nothing fancy, I just wanted this thing to go up quick and dirty.

6.) Mailing list. Be the first to find out when updates occur, plus maybe fun bonuses like desktops and the like.

7.) The first SUPERDICKERY CHALLENGE!: Can anyone tell me what issue this comes from?

8.) The second SUPERDICKERY CHALLENGE!: The artists of these covers should be credited. Any help people can provide would be most greatly appreciated.

9.) Added a mailbag page of some of the e-mail I've relieved. If this keeps up, I'll make it a regular feature.

10.) Here's some related links that I've found/people have sent in (Opens up in new windows):

Study shows that Superman fans are dicks.
Superdickery caught on tape.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Found in a Photoshop Contest on Fark.com
Someone started a Superman is a Dick blog
"The DC Comics Hall Of Shame"
Not even sure what this is.
Photoshop contest. Not work safe.

And lastly a special tremendously huge thank you to each and every last one of the people who took it upon themselves to pimp this out, and e-mailed me a whole slew of suggestions on what to do with the site after we blew out the T3 line.