Absolute Boyfriend: Volume 1

So, you’ve got this amazing story idea bouncing around in your head—yay, go you! But now comes the big question: how do you actually start the thing? You want that first page to blow your readers away, right? Let’s talk about one of ...

If you are setting a story in the past it can often be hard to get everything from the little things to the big picture right, especially if it's a period you haven't lived through yourself. Even then, your memory can play tricks on you.

It doesn't ...

Photo: “A Page of the Tuesday Funnies Used to Wrap a Mason Jar at the Thrift Store”. The San Diego Union-Tribune. (February 2025)

Gleaning for vintage supplies at the local thrift store, I made out with an assortment of cream coloured typewriter papers weathered by age from card stock cotton ...

I'm having to write a short speech to give at a friend's memorial service next month, and I'm finding it difficult. It's not the words that I'm struggling with, it's more the entire concept of what I'm doing. So, as a distraction from ...

Photo: “Mies Couch”. Drawn by Plymayer. (January 2025)

I rewatched two-thirds of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, skipping over the first film of the series to focus on the latter two. The trilogy consists of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight each film spaced roughly a decade apart. The ...

The road to Hell that is paved with good intentions feels like Heaven, which is why the road to Heaven feels like Hell. Uehara, prisoner of the Tengu Clan, has had the same recurring dream from a long forgotten past. Zato Garuda, Uehara’s former sensei, delivers an in-person message ...

The telling of stories, in a big way, is about working emotions. A major reason stories have the power they do is that the great ones wring emotions out of us, and take us through some kind of emotional journey.

In a movie or TV show, things are different than ...

Alfred Silver Fuzzbutt Hordak Meowgi, a crown-wearing feline known as Alfie, lives in The Apartment with two human roommates, Kat and Luke. Kat is a collector of rare odds and ends such as a Count Rugen poster from The Princess Bride to Sean Connery’s original hairpiece from James Bond ...

I was thinking about different filmmakers and how varied their processes can be. Stanley Kubrick was famous for doing multiple takes - sometimes dozens of takes and sometimes much more (!)

Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood will do one or two takes and that's it.

On the show Seinfeld, there were two takes ...

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. We return to our workshop series this week. First, some housekeeping.

As established last time, our page submission comes from xalienrath from the comic IWATSV. Specifically, we are looking at the update “3 ...