I recently watched a concert of Ed Sheeran singing “Thinking Out Loud” when the camera panned to the person playing the piano and it turned out to be Chris Martin from Coldplay and the song finished with a duet. I sat there thinking, “Wow, that really worked.” Collaborating with another ...

Summary:
Amar the Barbarian mindlessly fights for his life is a barren snowy wasteland against viscous orkish foes, and he LOVES it. The trouble is, he doesn't even know he's caller “Amar” yet, that comes later… Something really big and strange is about to change in his life ...

A friend of mine, many years ago, showed me a cartoon that was fascinating, funny, and horrifying. In my memory, it was the first anime I'd ever seen. I'd forgotten most of it over the years, and would try to find it once every so often, without knowing ...

You know that idea about a frog in a pot of water getting cooked before realising that the water had been gradually increasing in temperature until it was rapidly boiling? Well last week, I was the frog and my room was that pot of water.

September has been the hottest ...

Like I've mentioned before, I was…and am…a big Archie fan. As a youngster, I would pick up a digest from the grocery store checkout line whenever I had the money.
I would usually flip through the digest before buying, to see if there were any stories drawn ...

Summary:
What would you do if you were plucked from your life by mysterious aliens, stored by them in zero G till you were needed, and then had your face peeled back, bones inserted, your hand skin pulled off, your finger bones stitched together, your skin turned blue, then you ...

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Pitface joins Ozone and Banes again for the second and last part of the climax cast! It's the climax of the climax casts!! We discuss what people think about climaxes in stories, their own and those they watch or read. It's hard to write up to climaxes ...

“Save ALL your work. Never throw your old art in the trash!” was a repeated mantra from all my art teachers over the years. The reasoning behind this idea makes sense: Old art is like a time capsule for fresh ideas and it can be a great addition in a ...

image by Walt Simonson

I read a lot of Marvel Comics back in the day. The Hulk, Spider Man, The X-Men…it was actually the ORIGINAL X-Men I really loved (which I read in reprints). Right around the time I was discovering those old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men stories ...

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What's best? One big climax, multiple small ones, early, or delayed? How much should you work UP to a climax? What about anticlmactic events, how important are they?
Climaxes are really important in stories. Often you work up to them over the course of a whole series, but ...