Having decided that shock value is needed in your comic and you must scare, disgust or generally traumatize your audience in some way in order to get the emotional reaction to serve your theme and your subject matter, how do you decide when and where to draw the line? (note ...

How Much is Just Right when it Comes to Shock Value?
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Aug. 12, 2017ART IMITATES LIFE IMITATES ART
HyenaHell at 12:00AM, May 19, 2017
As all y'all probably are well aware, I am a hilarious genius. All cartoonists are hilarious geniuses; we have to be! Well, half the time anyway- the other half we spend hating ourselves and overcompensating for our inadequacies. It's a storied and well-documented tradition dating back to the ...
The Art of Constellations
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, April 17, 2017
Ursa Major constellation from Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius
The night sky in southern California has been clear the last couple of nights. When I look up at the sky I see Orion the Hunter and the clear dots that make up the Big Dipper. The night sky shows different constellations ...
UHG I CAN'T EVEN
HyenaHell at 12:00AM, April 7, 2017
We've all been there: all of the sudden, the trajectory of your own life seems to thwart you from your ambitions! Maybe it's obligations to schoolwork or your day job; maybe your partner or family; maybe you wind up homeless or awkwardly crashing on a series of couches ...
Them's the rules, bub.
HyenaHell at 12:00AM, March 3, 2017
Well last week we had chaos and disruption, so reckon it's high time we reestablished some order around here. And to do that ya need rules, right?
Rules. Yeah… Oh boy.
Well fine, we ain't got to call it “rules”; we can think of it as a set ...
When the Hero Fails
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Feb. 25, 2017
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 ...
This Year's New Resolutions (a bit late)
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Feb. 6, 2017
At the start of the new year, I decided to make a couple resolutions. The first was that I am not going to buy any new clothes this year because I invested in a sewing machine because I plan to sew my own outfits from fabric.
The second resolution is ...
Language Learning through Comics
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Jan. 20, 2017
A little comic by Vasya Lozhkin: “I will take revenge”
Earlier today I was reading this article about an immigrant to Canada who learned English with the help of comics, and who now creates comics himself. It got me to thinking about what a great resource comics are for learning ...