Popular posts of 2024
Word Balloons #1250: No escaping Adam Hampton
It’s Adam Hampton’s world; we’re just living in it.
Looking back at my most popular posts of 2024, two of them featured the Dale, Oklahoma-raised actor/writer/director/host, and I didn’t even post about the guy making a movie with Mel Gibson.
There were 116 posts on this Substack in 2024. The following are the 10 most popular posts for “Word Balloons and Other Nerdage” in 2024.
When Hampton reached the finals of the Kinolime screenplay competition, with the prize being the film being made with a substantial budget, I wrote about it and urged people to check it out and vote. Hampton crafted an excellent screenplay with taut, gripping horror that also revealed character. How’d it do? Keep reading this column, and it will be revealed!
Here’s the logline for the screenplay, titled “The Waif”: Upon arriving at his family cabin, a suicidal man who has lost everything, encounters a mysterious woman who brings her own twisted family and plans for a night of unspeakable evil that will ignite his innate will to survive.
A documentary on Christopher Reeve, the Superman of the 1970s and 1980s, was released in theaters in 2024. This was my second most-popular post of the year; I was and remain a fan of the work Reeve did on “Superman” and in his later years as an advocate for disability rights.
Like last year’s Thanksgiving comics post, this year’s write-up of Thanksgiving-themed comic stories again made my top 10.
This write-up on Valiant’s plans for its first major crossover under the Alien Books imprint got readers’ attention.
He did it! Writer Adam Hampton’s script “The Waif” was among more than 600 screenplays that were entered in the Kinolime competition. Voters culled the screenplays in multiple rounds. From the top 10, a team of judges selected the top three. Then, voters selected the final winner – and it was Hampton.
There’s a pretty good crossover between Speeding Bullet Comics fans and readers of this newsletter; two of our sale announcements fall into the top 10 at 6 and 7.
My announcement that I was joining Comic Shop News as a Contributing Editor made the top 10 for the year. Thanks to everyone for the support! I’m enjoying continuing to provide coverage for the weekly comic-store newspaper, and I encourage you to check it out!
Convention announcements or recaps tend to get some eyes on them, as did this year’s Pryor Creek show announcement. The con is run by longtime newspaperman, convention vendor and comics fan Jimmie Tramel.
With a new Superman film set for July 2025, DC will also be reaching out to young Superman fans with an early reader book (ages 5-7) set for July 1, 2025, release. This announcement of the Rob Justus GN cracked the top 10 posts for 2024.
That wraps up the top 10 for 2024 — what will be the most-read in 2025? It’s up to you! Keep checking out the newsletter and sharing it with your friends — and if you have areas of coverage you’d like to see more of, let me know!
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about comics, entertainment, film, and a variety of Oklahoma topics and industries for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.