While binge watching Schitt’s Creek, I started to see the emerging love story between Alexis Rose, Mutt the bad-boy, and Ted the veterinarian. That was when I wanted to discuss one of my favorite comic tropes of the alpha male versus the beta male.

In Spiderman, Harry Osbourne is ...

We've talked many times about story structure and different elements of it. But what about structure that's specific to web comics?

If someone does a “gag” or standalone series of strips, it's one thing - but there are still questions to answer. Like, do you have a character ...

I Was Wrong - The Character Arc

Last time I was here I talked about “The Old Warrior”. It's one of my favorite character types and story elements.

This time I'm going to go into another trope/theme that almost always works for me: The realization of a character ...

Make it So Again

There are certain story templates that we see played out over and over throughout the years, decades and centuries.

One of my favorites is the one where the Old Warrior or the Old Master is called out of retirement to rejoin the fight for one last ...

The Mysterious Stranger


This is about ‘the mysterious stranger’ in fiction. Well, one of the variations of that, at least. I'm not talking about the mysterious stranger who becomes the MC's lover in a romance novel, or the mysterious stranger who knocks on the door or gets into ...

what? we're over?


The show Supernatural is ending its run at season 15, which starts up sometime this year.

It's a really impressive length of time for a live action TV show - but when I heard about the finale, I had the same sort of vague surprise - the ...

“Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

The school year ended last Thursday and I have already ...

There was an episode of the show ‘Supernatural’ a few years back where Dean met with the literal personification of Death. This Creature - one of the most powerful, if not THE most powerful, would take human form once in awhile (or when some ancient agreement demanded it). He would sometimes ...

May 2019 is right around the corner, and it marks a massive milestone in superhero comics - the 80th birthday of Batman.

His looooong running comic, Detective Comics, releases issue #1000! This is the second superhero comic to reach this impressive place - last year was Superman's 80th, and Action Comics ...

One of the best types of villains are those that you love to hate. Despite how much you would love for them to shuffle off the mortal coil, they continue to captivate you with their malice and determination and you know that when they do leave the plot, whether deserved ...