Design-A-Villain Contest

Ninja Shizatch needs a new recurring villain – the first one didn’t last long enough to recur. So I’m going to leave it up to you, the readers, to design the recurring villain, in as much detail as you want. In the end, I will either pick the best submission, or, more likely, combine the best aspects of multiple submissions. Don’t forget to name your villain!

The only stipulations are as follows: he must be a member of the Gold Skull Ninjas, and be humanoid.

Post your villain ideas here.

New Direction?

*NOTE* If you don’t wish to read through this entire post, simply read the last paragraph.

The Ninja Shizatch webcomic has been running since September 2006. As of today, DrunkDuck records a total of 21,250 hits, and 142 comments from DD users (including my own).

That's an average of 84 hits a day, and 3.74 comments per page.

However, eXTReMe Tracking tells me that roughly 70% of my traffic is from reloads.

So what I've gathered from the hits and the comments is that Ninja Shizatch has built up a small fanbase of regular (or semi-regular) readers and commenters, for all of whom I am greatly appreciative, however it is not quite drawing in as many new readers as I would like.

From the beginning, my goal with Ninja Shizatch has been to create a webcomic tailored to meet the desires of its readers. A webcomic that would give more of what the readers like, and less (or nothing at all) of what they dislike. A webcomic that would make regular readers feel as though their input actually helps shape the story.

Looking over some of the pages that received the most comments, I find that the majority of them have action, all of them have animation, some of them have plot elements, and none of them involve humor exclusive to gaming.

Since I am always seeking to improve Ninja Shizatch (and a careful look through the comic pages should show a marked improvement in graphic design), I’ve decided to start shifting the comic in a slightly different direction.

Parodies of gaming have been done to death, and they’ve been done better. There are other webcomics that specialize in Dungeons & Dragons humor, or video games, or what-have-you. Some of my pages are dedicated entirely to making a gaming joke – well, no more. I may still throw in some gaming humor now and again, but I’ve realized that my best-received “jokes” are those unrelated to gaming, and have to do with the characters or story itself.

Which brings up the point about the story. Essentially, there has been little to no plot. The driving force of the comic has been parody – “what can I make fun of next, and how can I make my characters make fun of it?” I find this to have been a mistake. Though my intention with Ninja Shizatch was never to make a great story, a long-running comic of this variety suffers if there is no plot driving the story onward.

So all this to say the following: Ninja Shizatch will henceforth be more story-driven, and the humor will shift away from gaming parody and more to in-context humor. What do you think? Is this a good move? What would you recommend?

Twice A Week?

The Ninja Shizatch webcomic has been running on a one-update-per-week schedule. Should I switch to twice a week? If so, on what days should I post updates? Mondays and Fridays?

If enough people comment, I’ll switch to twice a week.