It may just be my impression, but usually when a story is set in a dystopian setting, the dystopia is played straight. However, when the characters encounter or start off in a utopian setting, they almost always will end up realizing that the utopia is actually a mirage, and in ...

Now, the good Professor always follows up his “Good News, Everyone” with decidedly bad news. But for this week, that can wait. And I was going to spend the first part of this newspost looking at some of the more depressing stories about books from around the world, but end ...

It's Resurrection Saturday today! What better occasion then than this to talk about the resurrection trope?

Usually, cancelling out a character's death is not a good thing to do in a story. It undermines the weight of the stakes involved and/or the sacrifice or seriousness of the ...

Batman and Robin are fighting crime in the real world!



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/11/police-deliver-vengeance-on-gamblers-while-disguised-as-batman-and-robin

Two police offers in London used Batman and Robin costumes to allow them to get close to illegal gambling operators plying their nefarious trade on Westminster Bridge.






Batman has a long ...

As creators of stories, be they novels or graphic novels or comics, we all have heard the adage “write what you know”. It's been drummed into our minds to the point that its cold fingers have our impostor syndrome in a deathgrip every time we venture our to write ...

Comics and their creators have actually been prominent in the news recently.

There was the comic book creator Rebecca Burke who was was detained in ICE detention facilities in the US for a couple of weeks due to some problems with the type of visa she was trying to enter ...

Absolute Boyfriend: Volume 1

So, you’ve got this amazing story idea bouncing around in your head—yay, go you! But now comes the big question: how do you actually start the thing? You want that first page to blow your readers away, right? Let’s talk about one of ...

If you are setting a story in the past it can often be hard to get everything from the little things to the big picture right, especially if it's a period you haven't lived through yourself. Even then, your memory can play tricks on you.

It doesn't ...

I generally avoid using current events in my articles about webcomics, but this time I can't help it. Signalgate has been living rent free in my mind ever since the editor in chief of the Atlantic broke the story.

There are many reasons for that, most of them not ...

No matter what the characters in your story might be doing–fighting crime, resisting alien invasion, surviving in a harsh radioactive wasteland, or just working in an office–sometimes it's fun to remove them from their ‘regular’ activities and place them somewhere different and out of their social comfort ...