It’s that time again! I’ve been posting up longer ones because of lack of news, but we’ve got October coming up and I like to keep those a secret until the October trailer drops. Click read more to see what’s coming up!
Schedule of Upcoming Episodes
8/2 – Doom’s IV #1
8/9 – PATREON: Batman/Elmer Fudd #1 and Catwoman/Sylvester & Tweety #1
8/16 – Batman: Odyssey #4
8/23 – PATREON: The Dresden Files, vol. 1: Storm Front
8/30 – Late Night Double Feature: Found Footage Frankenstein Night
9/6 – US-1 #10
9/13 – Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #6
9/20 – DC Challenge! #3
9/27 – Marvel Super Special #1: KISS (666th episode)
As always, the schedule is subject to change for any reason, though especially in the case of Patreon-sponsored reviews and the 666th episode, it’s kind of necessary to keep them what they are given the subject matter. And of course dates are tentative, especially when other stuff can get in the way of release dates… like how Doom’s IV #1 was supposed to come out yesterday, but working on History of Power Rangers got in the way of that.
Longbox of the Damned
The Longbox of the Damned Bumper Contest IS happening this year! It’s just, as you can probably tell, things have been a bit busy around here so I haven’t had a chance to release the video announcing it. It’s written, just need to quickly throw it together for you guys (in addition to putting together the Longbox bumpers from 2020). Tentative cut-off date is going to be September 15th. Otherwise if you want to get started on it right away, none of the rules have changed from last year’s video announcing it, which you can find HERE.
And of course Longbox itself will be coming this October, as per usual. Hope you guys enjoy this selection of videos and that you’ll participate in the Bumper contest!
History of Power Rangers
The video on Beast Morphers is complete! At the time of posting this State of the Wall update, it’s available to be viewed by $2+ patrons on my Patreon, but will be released publicly tomorrow. Hopefully it’s edited well enough for ContentID, but we’ll see. It’s also in one big video instead of multiple parts, which is explained below.
Patreon
So, finally set a new milestone! At $3500, I’ll do a History of Power Rangers-style retrospective on Spider-Man: The Animated series – five parts, one for each season. Been wanting to do something like this for awhile, but like with HOPR, it’s a lot of work and time investment.
Unlike a big franchise like Power Rangers, the show is over and it’s not coming back (maybe it’ll get acknowledged in a Spiderverse sequel or something). Even if somehow it WAS to come back… no, I’ll do it on those five seasons and that’s it. I have no nostalgic connection to any other Spider-Man animated series like Spectacular Spider-Man, so it would indeed be limited to that one and no others.
However, there is an issue with milestones I have to talk about. No one has complained about it, but since it was a milestone as part of the Patreon, I feel it needs to be talked about. So the $1000 Milestone Goal was to end midrolls in Atop the Fourth Wall videos. Especially during the Blip days, midrolls could be obtrusive and frustrating – especially if they were a full unskippable minute. I tried to minimize the damage with midroll bumpers, but it could still be frustrating for people. The simple fact is that this IS my job, so the tradeoff of midrolls for Patreon money made sense.
But things are getting difficult again. Rising cost of living in particular without huge gains in revenue or the like. But I still feel that having a midroll in the middle of, say, a 15 minute episode like the Mr. T and the T-Force #6 review would be wrong. Hell, even a regular Atop the Fourth Wall episode at around 25 minutes seems wrong. But longer episodes mean a lot more work needs to be invested into it, so the last few years I’ve been splitting them into multiple parts any time it goes over 40 minutes. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have been having success with longer videos, so I did an experiment with the Batman: Hush review and made it one big review and added some midrolls in the equivalent points of where I would cut them off in multiple parts.
The numbers are in: it was a massive success, both in viewership AND revenue – not only surpassing the numbers for the Batman v Superman review (which has a bit more mainstream appeal since it’s a movie and not a comic), but it beat out all the weekly livestreams. If I want my channel to grow and for me to be able to keep doing this, this is the way forward, so here’s how this is going to work:
Midrolls on Atop the Fourth Wall episodes will ONLY occur if a video is 40+ minutes. At 40+, one midroll. 1+ hour two midrolls, and we’ll play it by ear after that, but most likely every 20-30 minutes added will put on another midroll. That way, it’s the equivalent of an ad played before a video of average length starts. If people want me to bring back bumpers, I’ll think about that, but otherwise to keep it as unobtrusive as possible I’m currently putting in a single second of black screen at those moments so it’s not interrupting anything said.
Conventions
Obviously with COVID still a thing, conventions are going to be very sparse for a while. However, one that I had signed up to simply table at last year, Convergence, has pushed all of that to this year. They’re instituting a policy where you MUST wear a mask while in it, but I will be there selling merch! If you want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so from August 5th through the 8th at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, MN! I’ll be in the Vendors Hall during that time and selling posters, DVDs, T-shirts, etc. If you’re worried about COVID or just feel you can wait for another time, I completely understand.
That’s all for now! Feel free to leave your questions, comments, and concerns below!
