Last week marked the loss of two actors who brought my favorite fantasy villains from childhood films to life.

I was only a baby when Jim Henson's musical fantasy film, Labyrinth, was released in theaters. The fact that there were once home videos of me singing along to “(Dance ...

If you want to decent job of it, creating and using weapons in fiction can be quite tricky. There are a lot of pitfalls that newbies and even long time veterans of creating fiction fall into.

1. Number one is simply copying what others have done without understanding it yourself ...

A mysterious raven-haired woman is battling a demonic beast. The creature's grotesque, hooved body lunges before it gets stabbed in the torso by a large blade. The next few panels show Danaya waking up from her nightmare. Was it all a bad dream? It looked and felt so real ...

"New in town? The women here are usually ball breakers or vampires."


Trilby is a small town girl from Iowa ready to make the big move to New York City. However, this Midwestern belle has a deadly secret of her own that may be more complicated than just Skittles and ...

Last time, solo heroes, teams of two, and trios were the order of the day. Today let's talk quartets, quintets, sextets, septuplets, octets, and…uh…neuf-tets…?
More possibilities for self-contained drama/comedy/conflict exist with groups of four or five. There are several ways to begin building such a ...

Cast of an obscure 1970's science fiction flick. Current whereabouts unknown

One of the challenges…and maybe one of the greatest pleasures…of creating a series is populating it with a cast of heroes. I know I spend many weeks or months tinkering with characters and deciding who they ...

A light pink woman descends from the sky and winds up in a psychedelic land of blue dinosaurs and strange alien creatures. This super heroine is made of candy and creates a whole new outfit complete with a pink tie just by using her mind. Her super powers include incredible ...

Leon the Zombie, Ciau the Alp, and Jewel the biker chick set out to conquer the post zombie apocalypse world through the power of their music! But they get sidetracked along the way… In fact the only form a band when they get sidetracked into that! This is a hilarious ...

CHARACTER SHAPES
I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated something-or-other.
Characters derived from basic shapes can give a very strong impression of their basic personality type. This can help the ...

image by Walt Simonson

I read a lot of Marvel Comics back in the day. The Hulk, Spider Man, The X-Men…it was actually the ORIGINAL X-Men I really loved (which I read in reprints). Right around the time I was discovering those old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men stories ...