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 ...

CATHARSIS
from the Best of Banes Collection


A writing instructor once gave me brief advice on how to write a story, structurally speaking. It was 1/4 Act One setup, 1/2 Act Two complications and rising stakes (I think), and about 1/4 An Act Three “cathartic ending”.

I ...

Hello everyone, I'm your new article writer here on DD, Amy! And while we are on the topic OF introductions, what finer time would there be to discuss that very thing than in this very inaugural article? No better time, says I!

Introductions are hard. It's the first ...

One of the great things about the original Star Wars movies was the strong sense of a grand, adventurous, and terrible history before the movie started. So much is hinted at through Obi Wan Kenobi about the Jedi Knights, Anakin Skywalker, great friendships, laser swords, and terrible war and loss ...

LISTEN!

This Quackcast was based on an idea from Banes. We chat about designing a group of characters with complementary temperaments. In Banes' own words:
“I like the idea of the line between a logical, left brained person and a creative, right brained person, crossed with a spectrum of a ...

Sexy Cinnamon girl, cool Bodhisattva, rampaging Rumpzilla, and weird Ink LaRue are part of the cast of this crazy, cheeky comedy comic strip. The adventures they get into are really quite saucy and not for innocent eyes. Cinnamon girl is a buxom, incorrigible wild-thing, barely restrained by Bodhisattva who's ...

One of the toughest tropes in any kind of narrative work, from novels to comics to movies is the Sacrificial Lion - but not for what might be an obvious reason: having to axe a top tier character. It's because the trope is something that will affect and carry through ...

You’ve got your story, your drawn your buffers and you are ready to set your child free and loose in the world. But wait? What name do you put on it’s tag so people know who it ultimately belongs to? Naming a work can be incredibly frustrating and ...

A couple of days ago Banes gave us a wonderful article on the issue of who to please- yourself or the audience, and how that can go very right or very wrong.

So that got me thinking that we should also talk about the dreaded silence. You update a page ...

It's hard enough drawing things we can see… what about those we can't see? How do you portray invisible things in a webcomic like magic, wind, earthquakes, scorching heat, invisible people, and so on?

One way is to draw the invisible thing's normally, only making it seem ...