I was reading a critique of a series, a successful series, of novels. I think it's an urban fantasy/horror thing where the main character has a specific paranormal ability, limited, but useful in her detective work. She had a love interest, who was maybe on and off, but ...

I was supposed to write the last post on my ‘toxic’ character design series, but I've been deep cleaning the house all day and I'm exhausted. My brain refuses to think so that post will need to wait till next time. Instead, I'd like to talk about ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week I wanted to try something different. I'd like to ask you all some questions. I have plenty more panel analysis articles, but I also want to mix things up.

I ...

When I first started putting together my story idea for Typical Strange many years ago, I imagined it to be an animated series. With a lot of time and effort and learning Toon Boom software along the way, I had a pretty strong idea of the main characters, and a ...

Tough love is so cool, eh? It's going to magic the “whining” right out of you, won't it? You just need to stick out through the harshness, and then when you reap the benefits, you'll realize your tough loving benefactor had the right idea. You'll be ...

Site redesign update, NEWS!

The 3 main things we have in this update are pagination of comments on newsposts (will apply to comments on comics etc too), themed placeholder thumbnails for comics that don't have them, and the implementation of a logo that resizes dynamically with the screensize! I ...

Die Hard was a surprise smash hit back in the day, and became famous in some circles as a template for screenwriters to pitch their stories (“It's Die Hard on a bus”…or a boat, or a jet, or in a house).

It's also talked about as a ...

So last time, in Part 1 of this discussion of …sunnier villains or antagonists, we had left off talking about how toxic positivity is all about the toxic person's comfort. And that this need to impose a certain behavior, dogma, and/or approach to reality in their environment leads ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week's topic is special, covering an ending to a popular comic on The Duck. It is also unique, as I will not show the page for spoiler reasons. I'll be ...

Shmuck Bait is the name, I think coined by one of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul writers, where a cliffhanger or shocking ending leads the audience to believe something major has changed. For example, the appearance that a major character has died. But when the next episode/issue/book ...