Photo: Life-Sized, Modern Sculpture Adaptation based on the Oil Painting “Yellow Hat Woman” by Edward Hopper. Created by Mr. Brainwash. Mr. Brainwash Museum. Beverly Hills, California. (August 2023)

Nestled in a non-descript corner where Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Boulevard intersect, steps away from Rodeo Drive in the city of ...

Herbivores are the predators of the plant
Smokes rising to make the sun burn up
Demagogues are the creditors of the cant
Scopes rising to make the sun blow up
Everdreams are the janitors of the grant
Slopes rising to make the sun roll down.


NaaN (Now, always and Never)

Hello and welcome to Panel by Panel, an analysis of panels from comics right here on The Duck and exploring what they do, how they work, and what we can learn from them.

This week we will check out a panel from the webcomic Redneck by user Metsuke. This is ...

I don't wanna be remembered; I wanna be forgotten


MEMORY and MEMORY LOSS in FICTION

Playing with memory and memory loss is a handy device for fiction writers, from soap opera-type melodrama to exciting-but-thought-provoking stories like The Matrix, and in all kinds of stories betwixt and beyond.

Like any ...

So, ladies and gents, friends and furries, yes, 13 Ghosts is the movie that haunted me as a child and to a point, still haunts me. I’ll never look at bathtubs the same.

BUT BEFORE I GET INTO THE MOVIE REVIEW, if you are reading this, and I kind ...

Silencing unpopular ideas, famous individuals with a large platform, and entire thought processes has been on the rise. Last week, forty-two episodes went missing from a well-known podcast’s archive leaving several listeners wondering why the episodes were removed.

Popular podcasts are a media form that carry a lot of ...

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 ...

Last Friday, I accepted an invitation to attend a lecture/open mic/live guitar/spoken word performance presented by an artist who made the occasion more interactive and allowed for audience participation and the creation of new forms of expression.

The speaker instructed everyone to bring a piece of paper ...

Understanding the importance of the dialogue between two characters (or an internal monologue) is crucial for writing conversations in comics. It is true that comics are written differently than real world conversations because it removes a lot of the idiosyncrasies that happen in real-time conversations. However, learning to apply techniques ...

When an uninvited call girl’s attempt to make easy money is foiled because of a sleeping client, a large scale sting operation planned by the police is also derailed. Brothels, sterile hospitals, and a time set three-hundred years in the future make this the perfect backdrop for Superintendent Inspector ...