Hello, everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week I am going to be looking at a panel from the webcomic FCL55 that I think does a great job developing an aesthetic through balancing details within the design. FCL55 is ...

I was thinking about the power of books in fiction - like, secret journals, diaries, and such.

In the show Supernatural, the brothers found a lot of information, help, and intrigue in their father's journal of his monster hunting exploits. I will say that it got harder to believe later ...

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 ...

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 ...

Site redesign update, NEWS!

Alexey will now begin to tackle comic page templates, making them conform to the new style. Em has come up with two templates for us to start to work with (compact and standard size). These will be the standard default, unedited templates, but they will also ...

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 ...