So we love our clever villains, our smooth criminals, the conniving sly characters that use their brains to thwart the heroes and be a real menace. Like the riskiest game of chess, the hero has to match that kind of villain in strategy and smarts as well as determination, prowess ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week I am tackling a reader request! I was pleased to find a message in my inbox here on the Duck from J_Scarbrough asking me to look at and share some thoughts ...

The 15th Annual Drunk Duck Awards are taking off and the ride is only going to get more tubular from here—Come one, come all! Every Duck is invited to participate. This year’s awards theme “At the Therapist” was brainstormed by Tantz Aerine, “in which a door that leads ...

Hey all! Wasn’t in the mood to put up another poem for this Sunday post, so I’d thought I instead dedicate this Sunday post to something I’ve done recently. Last Tuesday June 6th it was Swedish National Day and the day before that day I spent the ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. We return to our regularly scheduled program this week, where I find interesting panels and wax philosophical about them. Previously we did a scavenger hunt which was a lot of fun, but we ...

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Rumours can be damaging stories deliberately spread to harm people, they can grow organically of their own accord. Salacious rumours replace truth and stick around in history ...

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 ...

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 ...

Photo: “Windmills through the Passenger Side Window”. Photo taken by me. (June 2022).

“When June came
The grasses headed out
And turned brown,
And the hills turned brown
Which was not a brown
But a gold and saffron
And red—
An indescribable color.
And from then on until the next ...

One of the most frequent ways to make characters stand out in fiction or myth is to give them a staggering, amazingly powerful ability. Something that mere talent doesn't give you. Something miraculous, larger than the largest life, unique and insurmountable:

Like a dude that can part an entire ...