It’s something so often encountered and/or mentioned in stories (be they comics or novels or film) that it’s becoming in itself a cliché: Heroes aren’t interesting because they’re straight arrows. Villains are fun because they’re the ‘bad boys’, the ones that can do all ...

Every good story (true, fabricated, or more typically, somewhere in between) here in the City That Forgot to Care, begins with a thoughtful pause, a drawn out “Well,” followed by the phrase “what had happened was…”

“Who drank my beer?”
“Dude, what happened to your face?”
“Why are you carrying ...

Kingdom of the Red Rose is the tale of Griffin, one of the 5001 grim reapers who ferry souls from the earth to the nether realms.
In the opening chapter we learn what vhoices Griffin has made that led him to be demoted.
The comic is of a very high ...

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Today on the Quackcast we interview Hyena Hell!
You might remember the bombastic, punkrocker HyenaHell for her comic The Hub
She used to be very active on all of DD (forums, comics, everything), before life issues took her away from DD. But she was still a prolific poster on ...

Short stories in comic form with a mighty sting in the tail! Fluke has illustrated a variety of one and two page stories from different writers, they all have a slight Twilight Zone look and feel to them. They're quite easy to get through and well leave you affected ...

art by Sandy Jarrell


The Hated, Part One - Villain Heroes

I've picked up all the “new” versions of the Archie universe and enjoyed them to different degrees for the most part. Sometimes there are a few laughs. Or some nice artwork. Or just the fun of seeing the characters ...

Just the name inspires awe, a level of attention and gravity. Because it was a name before it became a noun: she was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge and retribution against those who committed any kind of hubris.

In stories though, a character that takes the position of nemesis ...

To me this is one of the most fascinating elements of storytelling. The idea behind Chekhov’s Gun is to employ parsimony in the information comprising a plot and content: If something isn’t essential to the story, just don’t include it. Little by little, it became more “if ...

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What defines evil in fiction?
I say the simplest one is bad guys are selfish, good guys are selfless.
That is massively over simplistic but it's a good easy template for basic hero's and villains. Basic ones
I was just doing a quick thought experiment to work ...

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 ...