Somethings that are part of the landscape can disappear overnight. Spring still arrives on time and the grass and bugs don't care. The fountains turned off to save water. The lights in the vending machine turned off to save power. And the memories of the dreams of the future ...

It never really occurred to me how many of our heroes are orphans.

Superman was the last survivor of a planet that perished. He was adopted by loving Earth parents, but he's one of the iconic orphans in fiction.

His counterpart Batman, of course, lost his parents at an ...

This character can be insufferably annoying.

No, this character is insufferably annoying, but it's up to you whether that's to the other characters or the audience. When written correctly, the prattler can be comedy gold or a swift ticket to the most delicious kind of schadenfreude: watching the ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week we are checking in with the scavenger hunt launch in the last post, where I asked you to find specific examples of a panel in your work, and we have some ...

We talk a lot about Franchises here because those have been the big, widely known movies/stories in the culture in recent years.

But it's not all about Franchises - one thing that a standalone story can do, and occasionally does, is have an ending that changes the world forever ...

So as some might know, my 12+ year-old webcomic Without Moonlight is about to end!

Ok well its first volume is about to end. I have probably something like 3 more volumes to go.


If I live long enough

Still though, it is basically one book done, and it does ...

Hi everybody,
Since I can't get anything done until right before the deadline I've decided to just keep hitting refresh on the front page and click on stuff til I find something to comment on. I'll pick 3 comics again.



1. Afterworld Part I (2007) by Dan ...

I watched an interview with Ira Behr, the writer and showrunner on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. He talked about his days in the DS9 writer's room. It was the 90's, and the early days of the Internet. Even in those days, Star Trek discussion was flourishing online ...

Villains are tremendously important for a story. They set the framework and standard for a lot of things in an unsaid but definite manner: how far your villain is willing to go sets up audience expectations for how big and how dire the stakes will be in the story.

If ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. We'll be getting back to panel analysis in the coming weeks, but for my return to writing after a brief health break, I want to do that challenge I discussed some time ...