November 2020 was an exceptional one for me, as it was for many people. The big one is I went into a low-power mode. This has been a very stressful year. I had great fears for the United States elections. I needed to shift to things I could do when more emotionally fragile. And that’s reprinting a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fanfiction and reviewing a lot of Popeye cartoons. What did readers think of this?
They didn’t notice, because they wanted to know about Mark Trail. But that’s all right since, by good fortune, I had the plot recap for Mark Trail posted in the middle of the month. I’m sure I can’t stay in low-power mode forever. But for now? This is an easier way to manage my blog, and I’ll keep at that until I’m ready to go back to normal. Probably after the new year.
According to WordPress, there were 6,284 pages viewed in November. This is fewer than in October, but October was the greatest number of page views I’d had in a month. November was the second-greatest. I can’t be too fretful about that. The twelve-month running average leading up to November was 4,282.9 page views per month. So a lot of people are upset about Mark Trail and they’re coming to me to ask about it.
There were 3,868 unique visitors logged around here in November. Again that’s down from October, but October was my record high. 3,868 is still my second-highest unique visitor count on record. The twelve-month running average is a mere 2,517.7 unique visitors.
The things where people interact with the page in some way were up, also. WordPress recorded 136 likes given to posts in November, above the running average of 94.8. It’s the greatest number of likes I’ve gotten in a month since July of 2019. And there were 48 comments given, way above the 29.9 running average and my greatest number since … well, April, which also saw 48. But no month’s had more than 48 comments since January 2019, when 70 comments came in here. Again, people really want to argue about Mark Trail, or Alley Oop. I’m spoiling the fun by not being too obviously angry about or fannish of either strip.
What was popular around here in November? Everything with “Mark Trail” in the subject line. But to be more exact, the most popular things posted in October or November have been:
- What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Do you hate the new Mark Trail? August – November 2020
- What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Is Jules Rivera destroying Mark Trail yet? July – October 2020
- Statistics Saturday: Hypotheses about How the Premise to _Loonatics Unleashed_ Came About
- Statistics Saturday: Some Trivia Answers, For My Dad
- 60s Popeye: Popeye’s Testimonial Dinner and what the heck was that
I’m delighted that my needless mocking of an unimportant cartoon captured people’s imagination. Also that my Statistics Saturday piece for my Dad was received so well. Dad, if you have other statistics ideas, please, let me know; apparently, they play well. The most popular long-form piece was the first chapter in the MiSTing of The Tale of Fatty Coon. Chapters of that should keep going through the month, at least.
I of course intend to keep publishing my What’s Going On In series. Coming up are some of the comics that were pretty big draws back in their day, before everybody got mad at Mark Trail and Alley Oop. If pressing news, or pressing life, doesn’t force a change I expect to publish:
- Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. (8th of December)
- Neal Rubin and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp (15th of December)
- Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker (22nd of December)
- Roy Thomas and Larry Leiber’s The Amazing Spider-Man (29th of December)
- Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop (36th of December)
I’m aware that The Amazing Spider-Man is still in repeats and is almost certainly not coming out again. My plan, right now, is to cover the strip until it starts repeating things I’ve already recapped. I’ll change that if I get bored making retread Spider-Gags.
87 countries sent me readers in November, up rom a couple months of 77 countries each. The roster this month was:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 4,941 |
| India | 207 |
| Canada | 187 |
| United Kingdom | 142 |
| Philippines | 107 |
| Australia | 72 |
| Germany | 41 |
| Sweden | 40 |
| France | 35 |
| South Africa | 33 |
| Spain | 31 |
| Brazil | 30 |
| Finland | 26 |
| Mexico | 26 |
| Bosnia & Herzegovina | 25 |
| Italy | 24 |
| Malaysia | 18 |
| Japan | 15 |
| Ireland | 14 |
| Morocco | 13 |
| Peru | 13 |
| China | 12 |
| Jamaica | 12 |
| Netherlands | 12 |
| El Salvador | 10 |
| Russia | 10 |
| Belgium | 9 |
| Norway | 9 |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 9 |
| Indonesia | 8 |
| New Zealand | 8 |
| Saudi Arabia | 8 |
| Thailand | 8 |
| Switzerland | 6 |
| Denmark | 5 |
| Estonia | 5 |
| European Union | 5 |
| Kenya | 5 |
| Poland | 5 |
| Romania | 5 |
| United Arab Emirates | 5 |
| Chile | 4 |
| Croatia | 4 |
| Lebanon | 4 |
| Montenegro | 4 |
| Nigeria | 4 |
| Oman | 4 |
| Taiwan | 4 |
| Ukraine | 4 |
| Egypt | 3 |
| Portugal | 3 |
| Singapore | 3 |
| Argentina | 2 |
| Czech Republic | 2 |
| Greece | 2 |
| Hungary | 2 |
| Kuwait | 2 |
| Pakistan | 2 |
| Panama | 2 |
| Serbia | 2 |
| Slovakia | 2 |
| Slovenia | 2 |
| South Korea | 2 |
| Sri Lanka | 2 |
| Bahrain | 1 (*) |
| Bangladesh | 1 (*) |
| Bulgaria | 1 |
| Cayman Islands | 1 |
| Colombia | 1 |
| Costa Rica | 1 |
| Cyprus | 1 |
| Ecuador | 1 |
| Ethiopia | 1 |
| Guadeloupe | 1 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 1 |
| Israel | 1 (*) |
| Latvia | 1 |
| Macedonia | 1 |
| Mauritius | 1 |
| Myanmar (Burma) | 1 |
| Nepal | 1 |
| Qatar | 1 |
| Senegal | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 |
| Uzbekistan | 1 |
| Venezuela | 1 |
| Vietnam | 1 (*) |
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Israel, and Vietnam were single-view countries in October also. No countries have been single-view for more than two months in a row, just now.
Between the introduction of the second-generation iPod and the start of December I posted 2,860 pieces here. They gathered 201,752 views from 114,113 logged visitors. Oh, man, think if I’d gotten one more visitor. That would have been so nice.
For all that November was an easy month, it was not a terse one. WordPress records me as writing 25,140 words in November, for an average of 838.0 words per posting. Well, these routine, bulk-quantity Popeye cartoons give me a lot to talk about, all right? It means that for 2020 I’m averaging 551 words per post, a jump of nearly thirty words per post since October. I need to say less stuff about these cartoons, I guess.
Will I? You can find out by adding my essays to your RSS reader. Don’t have an RSS reader? Sign up for a free account with Dreamwidth or Livejournal. You can add any RSS feed to your reading page there, using this link for Dreamwidth or this link for Livejournal. If you’re on WordPress, too, you can click “Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile” on this or any post’s page.
Thanks for the reading.
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