Happy New Year’s Eve!
Thinking about the new year that is just about to begin, I thought to talk about beginnings in stories, and especially in webcomics.
How a story begins, the very first pages of it, are key for catching the audience’s attention and keeping it. The ...

Beginnings
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Dec. 31, 2016Your Self-Insert is Everywhere
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Nov. 26, 2016
I came across a little blurb the other day about Mary Sues, and fanfiction, and how the writer of a fanfiction is basically writing a fantasy, inserting themselves as the character at the center of attention, immaculate, glittering and perfect. Basically everything you want to smack into a different galaxy ...
No Hugging, No Learning
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Nov. 18, 2016
Recently I wrote a throwaway character for my comic based on a real-life friend of mine. In short, he’s a loveable misanthrope. And because he’s based on a real human being, I felt like I owed the character something: he won’t grow, or change, or become a ...
Controversy Has its Uses
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Oct. 29, 2016
art by yours truly
So I was thinking… in this day and age if you get on any type of social media, you are going to be punched repeatedly with CONTROVERSY! HERESY! HEATHENS! LIBERTARDS! CONSERVOTARDS-OR-HOW-EVER-THEY-ARE-CALLED-TARDS! …and so on. On blogs and tweets and even more so on youtube, making a ...
Incomprehensible Notes to Yourself
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Oct. 7, 2016
I think we all do this – you leave a quick note to yourself with some great idea you’ve had, or something you need to remember to do later on. Days, weeks, or months later you re-discover the note and you have no idea what your past self was thinking ...
Thought Bubbles: Outdated?
HippieVan at 12:00AM, Sept. 16, 2016
One of the really cool things about comic making is that we have so many tools at our disposal that people who tells stories in other mediums don’t necessarily have. One of those is the ability to show a character’s inner monologue without interrupting the external narrative or ...
Lackadaisical Nonsense
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Sept. 5, 2016
“If you want to get through the work week, then you need to allow some time in your schedule to do something completely mindless.”
“How about playing board games like this one? Scrabble is pretty fun.”
“No.”
“What about yoga?”
“No, that still does not count. In yoga, you are ...