The original quote from which the title is derived is attributed to Joseph Stalin. And while it can sound cynical and harsh, it is unfortunately true: the human mind boggles beyond a cut off point when it comes to grasping numbers tangibly, not theoretically. When the numbers become too high ...

An advantage of comics as a medium is to be able to use still images to tell the story, and create an impression or feeling in the reader that runs deeper than words can do. Or at least, the images can strengthen the experience and make something people hopefully get ...

Some characters are the heroes.

Some characters are the villains.

And some characters are just punchable. But not actually bad, or even antagonists- though sometimes they can be towards specific characters rather than the general plot goals.

Every time this type of character opens their mouth to say something, our ...

Everyday Joes and the Best of the Best

Star Wars and Star Trek are long-running siblings in science fiction pop culture. I don't know if there's really a “rivalry” between the two; SW has always been more popular I think, and the two are very different.

One big ...

Photo: Mary Jane “MJ” Watson (played by Kirsten Dunst) and Harry Osborn (played by James Franco) in Spiderman 3 (2007).

Traveling down the memory lane archives has taken me back to watching the Tobey Maguire Spiderman trilogy that was released during the early-2000s.

Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman was my masked ...

Over the past couple weeks I watched and loved Cobra Kai. There are multiple articles that I could write about this show.

It's an ensemble cast, and I guess Johnny and Daniel could be called co-Protagonists. I actually think Johnny is the Protagonist, Daniel the Antagonist and Kreese is ...

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The Mandalorian is pretty unique in that he keeps his face hidden almost the whole time. This is very rare in TV and movies, the rule is ...

Usually when building a character, we go for their general personality in terms of traits, the routine/general behavior they would display, the routine/general things that would interest them and so on.

If you are writing a slice of life story, or a sitcom style series, or anything that ...

Masked, Unknown Characters

Fiction, certainly in the movie/TV/comics visual mediums, are full of characters whose identities are hidden by masks.

On The Mandalorian, the title character follows a strict creed that says he is not supposed to let another living being see his face, so he always wears ...

So we've talked often about how letting a character die in a story is something that should be used very frugally, because once death occurs, it should be permanent. In most settings, death shouldn't be something that is reversible. If not, it will lose its impact, and the ...