CHANNEL 6 SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: BATMAN (FRIDAY) RETURNS

1. Is this a joke?

It is not. (Given our subject matter, it seemed prudent to borrow the first FAQ from Taco Bell Quarterly’s excellent submission guidelines. We are not affiliated with TBQ, or for that matter with DC Comics, but we have a deep admiration for their mission and output.)

2. Who are you again?

We are the brains behind Channel 6, an ongoing storytelling enterprise which will celebrate four years of operation in July 2025. You can read our origin story here. 

3. What is “Batman Friday”?

Batman Friday began life as a collaborative project produced by the dregs of the Banner Society team, after our corporate overlords laid off most of us in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. Professionally miserable and creatively adrift, we set out to see how many weeks in a row we could publish stories about Batman on what was ostensibly a college football website until someone in charge noticed. They never did, and the series ran uninterrupted from mid-September 2020 until the end of April 2021, when the surviving team members were finally laid off or reassigned. 

4. Why Batman?

Nobody remembers! 

5. What is it you’re looking for, exactly?

Starting today, Channel 6 is accepting submissions of original work (this can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics or other visual works of art, puppet shows you’ve staged in your office conference room and filmed using company resources). If it can reasonably be pasted or embedded into an emailed newsletter, we want it. 

We are not setting any hard minimum or maximum lengths for submissions, but keep in mind that a majority of the audience reads this newsletter on mobile devices. 

6. What are you NOT looking for?

A starting list of no-thank-yous that will inevitably need to be expanded:

• Previously published work of any kind. Channel 6, and in turn Batman Friday, is supported entirely by paying subscribers, and our business model only works if those subscribers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. 
• Pitches. Helping writers shape their in-progress work is something at least one of us is already doing somewhere else on a given weekday, and while it’s a job we enjoy, it’s not a job we have the collective bandwidth to do more of right now. 
• First drafts. See above. Completed works only, please. 
• Pieces that have clearly not been proofread. If you need a reason here, this process is not for you. 
• This Thing Is Like That Other Thing. The entire rest of the internet is full of “Which Batman Villain Would Drive Which Mario Kart Vehicle”-type content. We’ve enjoyed a lot of it! We’ve even written some of it ourselves. It’s not something we have a great yearning for more of right now. 
• Apologies and/or timidity. We are violently uninterested in reading to the end of any email that begins with “Sorry, I don’t know if this is any good” or “This might not be what you’re looking for, but” or things of that nature. If you don’t think your piece is good, you should keep working on it until you love it. And if you’re still not willing to stand up for your own work, in a situation where the absolute worst-case scenario is a reply email reading “Thanks, this isn’t for us,” then why should anybody else invest in that work? ← There, you’ve just absorbed a little bit of what it’s like to work for Holly, who was trained in these malevolent arts by people much, much meaner than her. (She considers this a pep talk. Take that however you like.)

7. You said you don’t want [this kind of submission], but [I think I’m special]?

Look, we technically can’t stop you from sending us any old thing, but you might not like the response you get. 

8. Have you done [this idea] before? 

Once we get going, there will be a searchable “Batman Friday” tag on the Channel 6 site that you can peruse to determine whether your idea is similar to one we’ve already published. (You can find the link at the top of this piece.) Until then, you can search the old Batman Friday archives to make sure you’re not submitting an inadvertent retread. If either of these processes sounds like too much effort, this probably isn’t the place for you. 

9. Is this new one going to be every Friday?

Batman Friday frequency in 2025 and beyond will depend on quantity and quality of submissions. 

10. How long is this experiment going to go on?

Until we get tired of it, or it becomes financially unworkable. 

11. What happens when it stops?

We’ll all find out together! Hopefully the answer to this will be “regroup and come up with a new single topic for submissions,” but the future remains unknowable. 

12. Why are you opening this up to submissions?

The original run of Batman Friday remains to this day some of our favorite work. Nothing extraordinary was done there, but it’s a collection of fondly remembered little sparks of laughter, crafted in dark days. You can probably imagine why we’d be thinking along those lines again right now.

13. When does Batman Friday launch?

As soon as we get a piece we like. 

14. Can I submit this other thing that’s not about Batman, that I think you’ll like?

Not right now! Maybe in the future! Requests for topics you’d like to see us cover ourselves are always welcome via compliance@channel6productions.com, but we don’t have the bandwidth or the staffing right now to devote to developing other stories. 

15. Do I get paid?

That’s the other big reason we wanted to do this, yes. We’re offering $250 for each accepted Batman Friday submission, payable upon publication. 

16. Who gets the rights to what I’ve submitted?

In order to keep our business model functional (i.e. keep our paying customers sending us money to read your work, money that we then give to you), we ask that you refrain from re-publishing your Batman Friday piece elsewhere for six months following its appearance on Channel 6. We also reserve the right to include or adapt Batman Friday pieces in future Channel 6 projects (this idea began life as a physical Batman zine, something we’d still like to do someday). Otherwise, you retain all rights to your work. 

17. Do I have to be a paying Channel 6 subscriber in order to submit?

You do not! Your friends and loved ones will need a membership in order to read the published story, however. 

18. Wait, this is gonna be paywalled??

Yes. Again charging to read our stories is how we earn the money to pay you, and ourselves, to write those stories. 

19. How/Where do I submit my Batman Friday things?

Please send your complete, proofread Batman Friday submissions to compliance@channel6productions.com with BATMAN FRIDAY in the subject line. Submissions sent without this subject line or to our individual email addresses are very likely to be missed. 

20. I haven’t written it yet, but will you tell me what you think of my idea?

No, that’s pitching again. But if YOU like the idea, you should do it, in our opinion. 

21. Are you going to tell me if it’s not accepted?

Yes! We read and discuss every submission, and a Channel 6 admin will notify each author once we’ve had a chance to confer. 

22. Will you help me rework my rejected Batman Friday piece to your liking?

No. Couple reasons here: The first is that in the physical universe we currently occupy, we simply do not have time. (See above plan to read and discuss every submission. We’re trying very hard not to die at our desks this year.) 

The second is a little more nebulous, but maybe think about this process like you would think about navigating a dating app: If it’s not a good fit, it’s not a good fit, and we’d much rather encourage you to publish your piece elsewhere, with your original intentions intact, than try to bend your voice to match ours. 

23. Can I resubmit a previously submitted piece?

Highly discouraged, for reasons stated above. 

24. I’m not a writer/artist/puppeteer, but I want to support Batman Friday. How can I help?

We’ve had a couple folks reach out about this already, and we love y’all for your generous spirits. We’re working on a tip jar option for folks who already have Channel 6 subscriptions and want to help us support other authors and artists, and hope to have that up and running soon. 

25. I have a question that’s not addressed here! If you have questions about the submission process that aren’t answered on this page, please reach out via email to compliance@channel6productions.com. If you have questions about the submission process that are already answered on this page, your email will disappear into the abyss. If you have questions about the submission process that you would like to ask via other platforms, please know there is a very low chance they’ll be seen or responded to. Our mentions are trash. We blame society.