Meet Greta, a good humoured, earthy, pipe smoking woman with a great big box backpack and stylish leather travelling clothes. Greta is an apothecary, she travels the lands curing ills and writing down creatively horrible ailments in her apothecary book. On the way she meets a rather stuck-up knight on ...

image by Banes, influenced by lots of things

When I came up with the characters and stories that became my webcomic here on The Duck, I knew it didn't come from a vacuum. But for the most part, it was only after writing and posting stories for several years ...

Apparently the difference between “terror” and “horror” was first expressed by writer Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), who said that Terror is the dread and apprehension about something happening, while Horror is the actual encountering the frightening thing.
Maybe this is what they mean when they talk about “suspense” vs. “horror”. Have ...

Autumn has officially arrived. It feels like a different season even though I do not live in an area of the world where the tree leaves are turning vibrant shades of yellow and orange. The scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin spice, and all the warm cozy feelings are back. Yes ...

LISTEN!

-Cover art by Tantz Aerine

We had a Quackcast about creating your world a while ago, but that was mainly in terms of writing. Some people touched on the visual aspects, Falopian Crusader among them, and Usedbooks showed us her city map.
For this Quackcast we discussed creating the ...

Usually I try to keep my newsposts geared towards art/writing/comics, but this week I have politics on the brain!

Here in Canada our election is only a month away (October 19, 2015 – get out and vote, Canadians!). I just spent my evening at a packed little cafe where ...

You know that idea about a frog in a pot of water getting cooked before realising that the water had been gradually increasing in temperature until it was rapidly boiling? Well last week, I was the frog and my room was that pot of water.

September has been the hottest ...

I usually write comic scripts with a pretty specific idea of what each panel will look like when drawn: the setting, who’s doing what, facial expressions, and so on. What I almost never do is write any of that down. Except for specific actions that characters have to respond ...

image by Walt Simonson

I read a lot of Marvel Comics back in the day. The Hulk, Spider Man, The X-Men…it was actually the ORIGINAL X-Men I really loved (which I read in reprints). Right around the time I was discovering those old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men stories ...

LISTEN!

What's best? One big climax, multiple small ones, early, or delayed? How much should you work UP to a climax? What about anticlmactic events, how important are they?
Climaxes are really important in stories. Often you work up to them over the course of a whole series, but ...