The old frenetic push to any creator to be ‘original’- especially, though not limited, in literature, in comics and the arts in general is nothing new. It pretty much is the first question anyone has when trying to assess a work of art: is it original?

Often, for the answer ...

“If you want to get through the work week, then you need to allow some time in your schedule to do something completely mindless.”
“How about playing board games like this one? Scrabble is pretty fun.”
“No.”
“What about yoga?”
“No, that still does not count. In yoga, you are ...

Military Varient is an honest portrayal of military life from an infantry Marine during the post-9/11 years. The comic follows a slice-of-life comic strip format from the perspective of Detone, who was only eighteen-years-old when he decided to enlist because he wanted his life to have adventure and to ...

I'm all in!
Poker reference.

We've all read comics that grab us and get us invested completely in what's going on. And we've read others that don't do it for us. Most are probably somewhere in between, with hits and misses. Such is life.

And ...

A lovely illustration from The Pirate Balthasar.

Initially, I had planned this week’s newspost to feature a selection of my favourite women characters on DD. But I realized as I was composing my list for this newspost that I was essentially just making a list of protagonists from my ...

I remember the first time the idea of deadlines made any kind of impression on me. I was maybe fifteen and a substitute teacher told me a bit about higher education and that a professor had told her to take all the time she needed to finish some project or ...

It is midsummer, somewhere in the British Midlands and sometime in the mid seventies. It is almost midnight. In a suburban semi-detached house, a teenage girl and her young brother are awaiting the return of their parents. A young man of impressionable age waits with them as they bathe in ...

This newspost was inspired by this week's Quackcast on testing your writing and knowing your characters. In the comments, KimLuster posted a Mary Sue test and discussed her annoyance in finding that one of her characters scored highly.

So what is a Mary Sue? Everyone sort of knows one ...

The tradition of creating handmade gifts began sometime in elementary school when it was not only appropriate, but expected, to give our parents original creations. Eventually, a handmade knick-knack has a difficult time competing with the latest smart phone or drawing tablet and is pushed aside to make room for ...

Comics are a great medium for action-heavy stories, but showing inner conflict without massive walls of text can be difficult. The other day I picked up a very disappointing graphic novel version of “Frankenstein” - it read like an illustrated summary of the book, not reflecting any of the angst and ...