Yes, yes, I, like everyone who’s reading Mary Worth, am excited to see Wilbur Weston’s fallen off a cruise ship. I’m hoping to get to recapping it next week, when we might know whether he’s dead or what. Let me share what my plan is for comic strip recaps, before I get into anything further here:
- Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail (11 January)
- Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth (18 January)
- Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) (25 January)
- Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. (1 February)
I’m willing to chance the schedule when circumstances warrant. But, for now, yes, Wilbur Weston has fallen into the sea in what might be the first Mary Worth death since the legendary Aldo Keldrast. We’ll see. All my recaps of what’s going on in the story strips are at this link.
Still, I do like sharing my readership figures around here, for reasons I can never quite articulate. I guess other bloggers like the reassurance that it’s not them, their readership has fallen off since a couple years ago.
In a reversal of the pattern since 2018, my readership increased from November to December 2021. The total number of page views for the month increased to 4,492. This is below the twelve-month running mean of 5,161.0, though, and also below the running median of 4,728. April was a very popular month around here, thanks in part to my post about which Paas tablet matches which color egg. Also to people wanting to know what was going on with The Phantom, a reliable source of readers this year.
The number of unique visitors rose too, again reversing the usual November-to-December trend. There were 2,568 recorded unique visitors in December, but this again is below the running mean of 3,072.4 and the median of 2,722.5. Liking me (nb not licking) was above the averages, though, with 166 likes given in the month. The mean for the twelve months ending with November 2021 was 145.3 likes, and the median 138.5. Comments were about average: 51 given around here in the month, compared to a mean of 55.4 and a median of 51. Certainly average enough.
My most popular post from December was comic strip based, of course. And I’ve been making more short, punchy little posts that have been well-received. I like this, since I like anything being well-received, and short stuff is quicker to write. I wanted to share the five most popular things from December and there was, naturally, a tie for fifth. So here’s the top several things:
- What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Why should we read this imaginary story? September – December 2021
- In which Comics Kingdom has a thrilling offer for me
- The Holidays in Order of Their _Peanuts_ Special
- Although I want to feel cheer that it’s Friday
- In which I am dissatisfied with my own habits
- MiSTed: GALACTIC FEDERATION Update (Part 4 of 4)
- What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? What’s the story with Morgan Le Fay? September – December 2021
There were 80 countries sending me any page views at all in December. Greenland was not among them. Here’s the countries that were:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 3199 |
| India | 171 |
| Canada | 153 |
| United Kingdom | 132 |
| Australia | 121 |
| Germany | 79 |
| Japan | 60 |
| Philippines | 50 |
| Italy | 41 |
| Brazil | 38 |
| Ireland | 27 |
| Sweden | 27 |
| Spain | 26 |
| Nigeria | 21 |
| Norway | 21 |
| Netherlands | 18 |
| France | 15 |
| Sri Lanka | 14 |
| Finland | 13 |
| New Zealand | 13 |
| Thailand | 13 |
| Egypt | 12 |
| Mexico | 12 |
| Peru | 12 |
| South Africa | 12 |
| Indonesia | 11 |
| Malaysia | 10 |
| Russia | 10 |
| Switzerland | 10 |
| Taiwan | 10 |
| Austria | 9 |
| Romania | 8 |
| Singapore | 7 |
| Belarus | 6 |
| Paraguay | 6 |
| Denmark | 5 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 5 |
| Portugal | 5 |
| Saudi Arabia | 5 |
| Bulgaria | 4 |
| Colombia | 4 |
| Greece | 4 |
| Jordan | 4 |
| Kenya | 4 |
| Puerto Rico | 4 |
| South Korea | 4 |
| Iraq | 3 |
| Jamaica | 3 |
| Poland | 3 |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 3 |
| Ukraine | 3 |
| United Arab Emirates | 3 |
| Belgium | 2 |
| Cambodia | 2 |
| Croatia | 2 |
| Georgia | 2 |
| Israel | 2 |
| Kuwait | 2 |
| Macedonia | 2 |
| Montenegro | 2 |
| Pakistan | 2 |
| Turkey | 2 |
| Albania | 1 |
| Azerbaijan | 1 |
| Belize | 1 |
| Chile | 1 |
| China | 1 |
| Costa Rica | 1 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 1 |
| Ecuador | 1 |
| El Salvador | 1 |
| Guadeloupe | 1 |
| Guam | 1 |
| Honduras | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 |
| Lebanon | 1 (*) |
| Serbia | 1 |
| Slovakia | 1 |
| Tunisia | 1 |
| Vietnam | 1 |
Of the 18 single-view countries (up from 14 in November) only Lebanon is on a two-month streak. Nobody’s on an even longer streak.
Wordpress figures that I posted 18,853 words in December. Even though those were not all different words, that was still my second-least-loquacious month in 2021. This was an average of 608.2 words per posting. And it brought me to a total for the year of 269,360 words, averaging 738 words per posting.
Between the discovery of the English Channel and the 1st of January I’ve posted 3,256 things to this blog. They’ve drawn 268,184 views from 153,567 unique visitors. And there were 4,915 comments overall, some of which I should get around to reading one of these days.
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Another Blog, Meanwhile 
The fact that you have 1 view each in Albania, Serbia and Slovakia gives me hope for world peace.
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Oh, I’d like to hope for world peace, but I suspect what’s happening is a world that just doesn’t understand the timelines between Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean.
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It’s sad you can’t count on Betty White giving you Hollywood,Ca anymore, but from what I understand she wasn’t reading you as regularly anyway as she did when you routinely published conversations with your bunny. Especially the “Proud of the Stick” one. She really liked that one.
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Ah, I understand. But this is a different rabbit and has different expectations of confidentiality, and a greater tendency to bite when annoyed. But I’ll see if she has anything she feels fit for public discussion.
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