The other week i finally watched the movie Palm Springs - I think I'd heard some good reviews, and had a vague notion that it was sort of a romantic comedy with a time loop twist. I absolutely flipped out over it and watched it again the next day, and ...

Big, big, Mary Sue-sized kudos and thanks to dpat57 and Ironscarf for their Mary Sue contributions! Both of these august individuals are very important to the Duck (even when it's only April!)

Head on over to the new Mary Sue - The Comic to see the full sized pages!
http ...

I saw a smaller youtuber talking about movies and she mentioned her belief that “Hollywood movies” - like, normal movies I guess she meant - are destructive to our psyche. ‘Our’ referring to we the viewing audience and society at large. She didn't elaborate in the video I saw; I'm ...

The Bestest Evar: Revisiting Mary Sues -
And a Contest!

Way back in the day our friend and my grizzled old mentor HippieVan did a post discussing Mary Sues - and we followed it up with a Mary Sue “contest”.

Many of us comic creator and reader types have probably known the ...

the cruel tutor himself, Pai Mei

One of my favorite character types is the gruff/grizzled old mentor. Tough as nails, mean or cranky on the outside but with great knowledge or support to offer when you know them, or when they know - and trust - you.

I've talked about ...

When writing and drawing comics, facial expression and body language can sell and reinforce character, tone and story.

A smiling face can say as much as their words about what's going on in the moment, and in the character's emotions.

But what about a sarcastic smile? Or sarcastic ...

Last week I talked about what kind of stuff to stick in the middle section of stories.

Here's a tangent I found myself on, about the actual halfway mark:

Well, the middle bit almost always contains the actual halfway point of the story. In many stories this is a ...

In the beginning, we set up our character
Iin the middle, we get them into trouble
In the end, we get them out of trouble.

Sounds so simple! It's tougher than that to pull off.

The middle of a story in particular, as people have talked about, is often ...

We're always advising people to give their characters flaws. But why? Is it just so they'll be relatable and not perfect/boring?

That is a good reason, for sure.

Is it so you'll know how they're supposed to react in certain situations?
“I wrote in my ...

I've compared “Avengers Infinity War” to the classic movie cliffhanger in The Empire Strikes Back.

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe actually pulled off an almost-“Empire”-level story a couple years before that, in Captain America: Civil War.

The MCU started off with multiple movies setting up Iron Man ...