Kim is not a sociopath - but her many nuances make her most intriguing…and she has a scary side


The secret sociopath.

A story trope in fiction that can make for a shocking ending when done well, or probably an eye-rolling one
when not, is the secret sociopath.

A character ...

Pets are intimate companions that get us through the day. Cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, snakes, fish, you name it- they help us in their own way. And yet not many characters in fiction or comics tend to have them. I for one don't include animals at all in my ...

Welcome to…
The DD Fashion Spotlight!
Number 25.

Hpkomic is sharing the load with Friday newsposts, so we alternate each week. My turn this week!

Kumiko, Maria, and Elda are all dressed as maids, in a very typically manga style. This is solidly a manga trope which comes from a ...

Character Motivation

One thing I appreciate in well written stories is the hidden motivations of characters. Well written characters, just like real people, have contradictions to them. Desires and needs that are sometimes in conflict with each other.

Story structure tells us that a character has to WANT something. The ...

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Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while ...

A million things have already been said and talked about regarding an artist's inspiration. A million more will be. From debates on what constitutes inspiration vs. poaching or plagiarism to what makes an artist inspired by other artists' work.

But what I want to talk about is not exactly ...

Hello and welcome to Panel by Panel, an analysis of panels from comics right here on The Duck and exploring what they do, how they work, and what we can learn from them.

Let's start with our panel in question this week. This one comes from the webcomic of ...

On a recent episode of Better Call Saul there was a plot element that caused some discussion/criticism.

Mild spoilers for Better Call Saul ahead.

There's a character on this show, Lalo, who was set up to be almost - almost - more than human. This is not a superhero show ...

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David's always right - Introducing Hpkomic! Hpkomic has been with DD since the earliest days, he's a comic artist, writer, English teacher, and podcaster. He even ...

No, this article isn't about the mythological beings. I wouldn't want to steal any single one from Andreas Helixfinger's awesome Sunday article series.

What I want to talk about is the metaphorical unicorn: a character that is too good to be true, too unlikely to be found ...