Having decided that shock value is needed in your comic and you must scare, disgust or generally traumatize your audience in some way in order to get the emotional reaction to serve your theme and your subject matter, how do you decide when and where to draw the line? (note ...

We’ve heard it and experienced it many times: For a creator to make an impact, to truly etch his/her message in the brains of his/her audience when it comes to art, from novels to films to comics, imagery with a high shock value is employed or simulations ...

So we come to the end of this long litany of presentations on Jung’s assorted archetypes that craftsmen of the narrative arts have used since time immemorial to weave their yarns.

And what better way to end with the crowning jewel in every story, from books to movies to ...

Aight! It's that time again, ain't it? Now we been talking a lot about rules and limitations and discipline and approaches to making your comics and making them better. This week we're gonna step away from all that for a spell and talk about how not making ...

No pic for this one. I'll add one later if the fates allow!

I was a big fan of all the Indiana Jones movies back in the day. When the fourth one, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, finally came out, it was exciting times! Harrison Ford only seemed ...

art by yours truly

So I was thinking… in this day and age if you get on any type of social media, you are going to be punched repeatedly with CONTROVERSY! HERESY! HEATHENS! LIBERTARDS! CONSERVOTARDS-OR-HOW-EVER-THEY-ARE-CALLED-TARDS! …and so on. On blogs and tweets and even more so on youtube, making a ...

When independent movies became big in the 1990's, there was the sudden realization that a lot of flaws could be forgiven in visuals, acting, and production value when the story being told was original or compelling. They could still be effective and popular…sometimes with massive numbers of people ...

I think most of us who live in or near big cities have been to comic conventions. But despite having such a huge concentration of artists here, we seldom seem to talk about broader arts communities. I’ve always been a casual patron of local art galleries, but the curatorial ...

Pop culture is being visited by its own past. There's no denying the excitement surrounding the reappearance of the original Star Wars and X-Files characters after an absence of years.

We all know our mainstream entertainment is stuffed with more and more sequels, remakes, reboots, soft reboots, reimaginings, reintegrated ...

It is finally Spring in many parts of the world. It is actually Summer in some of the luckier parts and it is still snowing in certain regions (apologies Northeastern United States). Whatever the case, this is the time of year that people like to throw away old stuff and ...