Rob Ullman's been our staff artist since Jan. 28, 2017, and, ever since, our readers have been treated, like kids on a Sunday morning opening the old comics, to a new weekly installment of his historic retrospective Cartoon Canon series.
But this one, for me, topped them all. Because this one was all mine.
To begin, it's been a point of pride to employ an artist in Rob's category for almost seven years now, given my own passion for collecting superhero comic books. But way more than that, it's been a point of pride to feature work so consistently professional, diligently researched and passionately produced. I look forward each weekend to his early texts showing me a sampling or snippet of his next entry, awaiting my feedback and/or corrections, with most of my responses ending in enthusiastic exclamation points.
A couple days ago, a package arrived at our Downtown HQ/shop. Upon opening the box, it was easy to see that, whatever this was, it was grossly overpacked and overprotected, the way that only a comic-book geek could even conceive of doing. So I'd suspected something in this vein. But once I finally made it to the center ... wow:
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
A Rob Ullman original, layered on top of recent issues of the real Green Lantern title.
It's the one in the middle. Made my heart stop.
That actual comic, the 80th anniversary celebration of Green Lantern, was adorned by what's called a variant cover. It's a way to get losers like me to buy multiple copies, which we all do, since we're all losers. Well, Rob saw an opportunity with this weird, all-green blank variant to draw his own rendition of my favorite character. So everything you see below the book's header is his.
Suffice it to say I couldn't -- and can't -- express my appreciation enough. I really can't. To do something so kind out of nowhere ... yeah.
Rob's been here a long time. He's been awesome in every way, but he's also been a friend. That alone means more than I can say.
THE AD-FREE FEELING!
It's been a few days now of being blissfully ad-free for subscribers ... and we're not really 100% there, as some of you doubtless have noticed. A couple ads are sneaking through, as is that @#$%$^&* blank video player. Yeah, still.
The process isn't complete. Our BoomPress developers are aware of this and have a solution in place. It'll take another handful of days or so.
That out of the way, the response to this move was overwhelmingly positive, as anyone would've predicted. (Who loves ads except on Super Bowl Sunday?) We heard not only from readers pledging to keep their subscriptions but also from some who'd already left us saying they'll be back. And we've yet to promote this in any way, aside from sharing here in this feature. We're anticipating this will be a big difference-maker to this broader approach we've taken.
I've had a few readers ask how we can afford to do this, especially since we also learned officially this week that we've lost Point Park University as our title sponsor. And my answer to this is that we're always OK as long as you're with us.
I'm totally serious. That's no different now than before the content itself became open for everyone to read and try. We'll be built on our worldwide community, counting on our coverage, for as long as we exist.
(And if I'm telling the truth, we kinda a like it that way!)
BIG WEEK ON MILITARY DRIVE!
Our annual Military Drive, aimed at connecting 1,000 veterans of our Armed Forces to a one-year subscription, added an outstanding number of 47 subscriptions, raising our total to 429 as we move closer to the deadline of Veterans Day Nov. 11.
Now, on that note, we've got a lot of ground to cover to get there, more than we've had in the past at this juncture. So there's going to be more of a push here to reach it. Especially now that we've added an ad-free experience to a subscription, we don't want any of our military members feeling like second-class citizens upon coming here, either with the ads or by being left out of comments, Live Qs, etc.
Here's how this works: We sell a military subscription for $20, covering a full year for any veteran. That's one-third of the regular price. However many you'd wish to donate, even if it's just one, email me at DK@DKPittsburghSports.com, and Dali will do the processing.
NEW PAYMENT PLATFORM
If your subscription expired while we were recently switching platforms, this is our new subscribe page. Make sure you're logged in, tap on the link, and thumb down to the bottom for the SUBSCRIBE button to buy/renew at the monthly or annual level.
We also have our new pages completed for student subscriptions and senior subscriptions. If you're buying/renewing either, make sure you're logged in, tap on the appropriate link, and tap the big SUBSCRIBE button. These are all annual.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page-view numbers for the past week were 850,699, with 54,123 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span. Our most-read original piece was Taylor Haase's exclusive reporting from Washington on Marcus Pettersson's remarks after fighting Tom Wilson, at 27,746. Our full top 10 files, right from our Google Analytics page, are at the bottom of this section.
• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 124,120 and our YouTube video views for the past week were 112,782.
• Our company social media accounts are at 51,303 followers on X, 40,011 on Facebook, 25,428 on YouTube, 14,929 on Instagram ... and already 2,774 on the new Threads!
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• We're often asked about our HQ/shop merch being available online, and yes, it's right here.
• Anything you need, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• As promised, our weekly top 10, with the first stack of figures denoting page views and the second one denoting unique users:
GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4
Page views, unique users for the week of Oct. 13-19
