I love Christmas Eve. Possibly more than Christmas Day. Both are great fun, and reuniting with friends and relatives I rarely see is delightful of course.

But the quiet anticipation of Christmas Eve is where it's at. For me it's usually a day off work, wrapping (occasionally running ...

Last time, solo heroes, teams of two, and trios were the order of the day. Today let's talk quartets, quintets, sextets, septuplets, octets, and…uh…neuf-tets…?
More possibilities for self-contained drama/comedy/conflict exist with groups of four or five. There are several ways to begin building such a ...

My love for art - and narrative art in particular - began well before I had ever laid eyes on a comic book. As a child, my parents and my grandparents worked selling books for publishers. Every few weeks we would get a big box of sample books and it would be ...

Cast of an obscure 1970's science fiction flick. Current whereabouts unknown

One of the challenges…and maybe one of the greatest pleasures…of creating a series is populating it with a cast of heroes. I know I spend many weeks or months tinkering with characters and deciding who they ...

One evening, during a town gathering centered around a glowing tree of light, a mysterious cloaked stranger shows up and removes all the light from the tree before fleeing. The switch to darkness unleashes grim shadow monsters to chase after the townspeople and sends the blue-skin toned community into distress ...

In the movie Annie Hall, the main character writes a play and uses it to give his failed relationship a happy ending.
There are countless stories where awkward, nervous protagonists…perhaps courtesy of awkward, nervous writers…win the battle, defeat the villains and get the gorgeous girl.

An unknown number ...

Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys

That happens to be a line from one of my favourite albums, a combination CD/graphic novel from an obscure now-defunct South African hip hop group.

I think it’s pretty easy to understand how a South African group would come to that conclusion. When I ...

this picture is only somewhat related to tone…but it has a costumed baby!

In my early days doing the Quackcast with Ozoneocean, we spent some time talking about story genres. I remember how we ignored whether something was a comedy, drama, or horror, because those aren't stories, but ...

The Giving Tree, Story and Illustration by Shel Silverstein

I remember reading along with certain children's books that became very near and dear to me as a young kid. Over the years, I revisit the story and it begins to take on a whole new meaning as my perspective ...

Yesterday evening my friend and I donned our prettiest dresses and went to see The Marriage of Figaro. Neither of us had ever been to the opera before, and we weren't the only ones - it was “student night” where they sell cheap tickets to the final dress rehearsal, so ...