I was watching the 2015 series of Poldark the other day and I noticed something strange;
None of the characters have the moral grey areas and twists that we expect of characters in modern stories, where they behave one way but it turns out they were thinking the opposite all ...

Emotional Charges and Diminishing Returns

Many writing methodologies suggest mapping out the emotional change of each scene. The scene either starts positive, and goes to either negative or “extra positive”, or starts negative and goes to positive or “extra negative” by the end of the scene.

So if a lovelorn ...

Feedback from your audience has always been important- from the renaissance palace parlors to enlightenment salons to the modern art galleries, how much the audience is pleased by what the creator procures is central.

But in the age of the internet and webcomics, where comics are updated page by page ...

One of the greatest comic book stories ever written, by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are known as the main architects of the Marvel Universe. But there was a third originator of that landmark creation:

Steve Ditko was an artist who originally worked as a ...

LISTEN!

In this Drunk Duck Quackcast we chat about the importance and the process of reviews! Good ones, bad ones, why they all matter, and also why they often don't! ;)
Reviews are an interesting animal, they're a parasitic form of entertainment. They rely wholly of other forms of ...

Chihiro and No Face from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away and Studio Ghibli

I was driving home from work this evening and an unusual, rather old fashioned looking car with bright high beams began following me on my route. When I made a turn, I looked in the side mirror ...

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 ...

I think I spent my Saturday night the same way as plenty of other people did–in a movie theater watching a film based on a book by Stephen King (and No, I am not talking about The Dark Tower). It is still September since the last time I checked ...

SINGLE PAGES vs. The GREATER WHOLE

I'm at a nice place in my webcomic right now. Well, it's nice as the writer, at least.
The characters have a nice history now, with some adventures behind them, some established relationships, and a stable of supporting characters who can be ...

Just the other day was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg, originally).

Jack “King” Kirby drew comics from the 1930's for various companies and co-created many characters for Timely Comics, notably Captain America (co-created with Joe Simon). Cap was one of the few Marvel ...