So last week I talked about the basic principles of dialogue, so the recipe to the cake itself. But now I’d also like to talk about that cake’s icing and trimmings- what will make the dialogue we’re writing be fun and distinct and pop in our comic ...

In any work of art where storytelling is concerned, dialogue (should) play a central part. The relatability of the characters hinges on how they behave, and a lot of that behavior is verbal, especially in movies, theatre and comics (but also books. And everything else.)

So how do we create ...

Logan Copyright 2017 20th Century Fox

Like any loyal X-Men fan, I made my way to the theater to watch Logan during its opening weekend last night. Before the screening, I had been watching reviews that mentioned the film's “R” rating and how it traded its wide audience in ...

Failure is the stepping stone to success. That’s what I teach my students and my clients, and it is true, right up there with “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”: If you learn why you failed, you won’t fail again the same way- and that brings ...

Time doesn't really exist in comics. Someone can blast through multiple pages in seconds, or linger on one panel for years. Well, that would be rare. But you see what I'm saying.

What if you want to make your readers slow down? To give your pages the pace ...

In the beautiful, verdant and luscious village paradise of Pyll’ar, young sorceress Roxy goes about her daily routine, but this day things are to be a little different… A strange pale man with black hair arrives to fight a terrible beast, and fails. Roxy takes in Ronig and nurses ...

For several years I've been doing a comic called Typical Strange here on the Duck. And I'm still doing it, I swear!

The characters are a fairly diverse assortment of different temperaments and personalities, and the adventures they've had and will continue to have will hopefully be ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

LISTEN!

Using accents and different languages in comics can be a challenge, or at least a challenge to represent. Some people will actually have their text IN a different language or even a made up language in the case of aliens, and they'll have translations in a footnote. Some ...

UPDATE: Friday 11:59pm PST
I was able to speak to Amazon customer service directly and the issue should be fixed now!

UPDATE: Friday 11pm PST
All payments have been processed but our account is still suspended. I've contacted Amazon AWS support about it and I'm waiting to ...