June 2020 was another recessional month around here, as most of my readership figures have it. The number of page views dropped about 250 from May, to 3,964. I’m still hanging on ahead of the twelve-month running average, of 3,842.8 page views, but it’s a closer thing. The number of unique visitors dropped about 150, to 2,336. This is again above the running average of 2,217.0, and a bit more comfortably above that.
The number of likes jumped nearly twenty, to 87 given in the month. The secular decline somehow continues, though. The running average is 105.0 likes in a month even though I haven’t seen that kind of number since January 2020. And to give you some idea how long ago January 2020 was: remember how long ago June 2020 was? January was twenty times that long ago.
The number of comments dropped seven, also, to 32 in the month. This still has it above the average of 21.0, though.

The per-posting averages have almost an identical story. Since I have something posted every day that’s not much of a surprise. The views per posting and visitors per posting are almost exactly the twelve-month average: 127.9 visitors per posting, compared to an average 126.1; and 75.4 unique visitors per posting, compared to an average 72.8. 2.7 likes per posting, compared to the average 3.4. 1.0 comments per posting, better than the average 0.7. The per-posting averages are more useful on my mathematics blog, where I’ll let days go without a posting.
The most popular postings in June were, as often happens, not ones that were posted in June. One of them I totally understand, though, and it’s probably going to be a steadily inappropriately popular post in the months to come:
- Why does Mallard Fillmore look different now? What happened to Bruce Tinsley?
- Statistics Saturday: The Months Of The Year In Reverse Alphabetical Order
- What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Why Is Everyone Rightly Mad At Mary Worth? August – October 2018
- Norm Feuti’s _Retail_ comic strip is ending
- Why does Mark Trail look funny? Did something happen to James Allen? which is probably people who heard rumors regarding James Allen leaving Mark Trail soon.
What things from June were popular in June? Nothing involving June Morgan, it happens. Instead we had these:
- What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What was The Phantom doing at Trafalgar? March – June 2020 which was the most popular piece of any kind published in June.
- Thoughts which was the most popular thing that wasn’t recapping or reviewing some other pop culture piece.
- We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files which was the most popular long-form essay of the month. It had the benefit of being the first thing published in the month; I suspect the face brick piece is going to have longer legs, though.
Altogether, 577 distinct pages, plus my home page, got at least one view in June. 330 pages, counting the home page, got at least two views. 78 pages got at least ten views. That’s right about the same as in May. Probably these figures can’t change much until someone goes and gets me some viral bundle of attention.
77 countries or things like countries sent me viewers in June, which is the same number as in May. 20 of them were a single view, which again is the same count as in May. Here’s what they all were:

Country | Readers |
---|---|
United States | 2,640 |
India | 226 |
United Kingdom | 177 |
Macedonia | 163 |
Australia | 123 |
Canada | 118 |
Finland | 60 |
Germany | 37 |
Brazil | 32 |
Italy | 26 |
Philippines | 26 |
South Africa | 25 |
Netherlands | 22 |
Sweden | 21 |
Norway | 20 |
Mexico | 13 |
Spain | 13 |
France | 11 |
Indonesia | 11 |
Denmark | 10 |
Ireland | 10 |
Malaysia | 10 |
Peru | 10 |
Kenya | 9 |
Nigeria | 9 |
Romania | 9 |
Japan | 8 |
Singapore | 8 |
Hong Kong SAR China | 7 |
New Zealand | 7 |
Kuwait | 6 |
Taiwan | 6 |
Trinidad & Tobago | 6 |
Belgium | 5 |
Switzerland | 5 |
Hungary | 4 |
Slovenia | 4 |
United Arab Emirates | 4 |
Austria | 3 |
Greece | 3 |
Israel | 3 |
Thailand | 3 |
Zambia | 3 |
Argentina | 2 |
Bulgaria | 2 |
Croatia | 2 |
Egypt | 2 |
Jamaica | 2 |
Oman | 2 |
Pakistan | 2 |
Panama | 2 |
Poland | 2 |
Russia | 2 |
Serbia | 2 |
South Korea | 2 |
Ukraine | 2 |
Vietnam | 2 |
Belize | 1 |
British Virgin Islands | 1 |
Brunei | 1 |
Colombia | 1 |
Costa Rica | 1 |
Cyprus | 1 |
Czech Republic | 1 |
European Union | 1 |
Kazakhstan | 1 |
Lebanon | 1 (****) |
Myanmar (Burma) | 1 |
Nepal | 1 |
Paraguay | 1 |
Portugal | 1 |
Qatar | 1 |
Slovakia | 1 (*) |
Sri Lanka | 1 |
Tanzania | 1 |
Turkey | 1 |
Venezuela | 1 |
Slovakia’s been a single-view country two months running now. Lebanon’s been one for five months now. Macedonia hadn’t sent me any readers in May so I’m wondering if there was maybe something miscommunicated to the Balkan nations regarding my content here. Again, I’m always glad to have readers, wherever they’re from. I just know how far short I am of discussing anything like universal truths regarding the human condition.
My plan for the coming month is very like my plans for past months. A long-form essay posted Thursday evening, Eastern Time. On Saturday evening, Eastern Time, a Statistics Saturday piece. And on Tuesday evenings, What’s Going On In the story comics. My plan for the next few weeks — barring something special that forces me to change plans — is to cover there:
- Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker (7th of July)
- Roy Thomas and Larry Leiber’s The Amazing Spider-Man (14th of July)
- Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop (21st of July)
- Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) (28th of July)
- Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant
(4th of August)
As of the start of July I’ve posted 2,707 things here. That all has drawn 175,391 page views from 98,598 unique visitors. There were a relatively slender 14,534 words published here in June, for a sleek average of 484.5 words per posting. I like that. For the year to date I’ve published 97,880 words, averaging 547 words per post. That average is down from the 556 at the start of June. This is doing well considering that every time I think I can cut a review of the 60s Popeye cartoons down to a couple well-chosen paragraphs they sprawl out to 1200 words.
I’m always glad to have more readers, either as subscribers or just stopping in for a while. You can subscribe through WordPress by clicking the ‘Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile’ button. You can use the RSS feed in whatever reader you like, which can include a Friends page on a free Dreamwidth or Livejournal account. New posts are announced to my Twitter account, @nebusj, although I only sometimes can actually post to it manually. Sorry. Nice to see you in any form, though.