December

I'd like to take a moment to address and explain the NOTES contest we held over the course of December.

Based on the lack of submissions received, it's clear that the interest in this contest just wasn't there. And I can understand that. NOTES is a character I would doubt any of our steady readership has ever heard of. So why would we choose him for one of our contests? Shortly after opening up shop, we were contacted by Superhero Enterprises about hosting a contest for NOTES, their flagship character. Having never heard of the character and discovering that Superhero Enterprises was, at the time, just starting up, it was something I was initially hesitant to do. But I also found reasons that I thought could make it exciting, particularly the thought that doing a contest where readers could redesign a character they've had little-to-no exposure to would be cool was because of the immense freedom awarded to the artists.

You'll note that this isn't what the Contest Announcement called for; this was at the request of the sponsor. However, I felt I shouldn't fight it simply because they were providing the prizes; as such, I let it go. In spite of my reservations, I committed myself and this site to the contest and felt it was my duty to see it though. But there's also a duty to the readers. You all come here for redesigns, and this contest didn't promise that. On that front, this month we let you down. I apologize for that.

I don't want anyone to think this is a slight to Superhero Enterprises. All of my interactions with them have been great, and they've been very kind to Superhero of the Month. But it would be an immense error to not recognize that this contest just didn't generate the interest of artists. Part of running Superhero of  the Month for the last year has been seeing what works and what doesn't, and this was one of those experiments where something simply didn't work, regardless of this contest being run and promoted just like all the others we've done. Needless to say, it's just something that isn't worth running the risk of having a month with no submissions again.

From now on, we'll strictly be sticking to well-known properties and brands that most of our readership should be familiar with.

In spite of the lack of submissions this month, site hits have still been very generous, so I'd like to thank everyone for their continued support of Superhero of the Month. I'm very much looking forward to 2012; we've got a lot of great contests already scheduled, and a lot of great characters yet to be redesigned.

Stay tuned, we've got new posts coming every day for the next week, including January's contest announcement coming tomorrow, and Joker Week beginning December 26, commemorating the late Jerry Robinson.