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 ...

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 ...

Two road traveling adults and a dog named Derrick finally make it to Yellowstone after adventures across the United States. Eventually, after years of tracking marmots solo, Uncle Derrick is joined by younger dog, Nova, because team sports are best played with a companion. Who knew canines were skilled in ...

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 ...

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 ...

Ax, single father of two young children, spends his days navigating a space ship to sort through space debris. Janus and Callista, along with their babysitter, Julia, fear Ax’s line of work especially after the loss of their mother. One day, Ax receives a weak S.O.S. signal ...

Invicibility shades and your rests fall in a bin
Invicibility creates what few guests calls from within
Watch your memory slide, forward and counterwise
As the crowd fades into their vertical grins

Visibility flows and your next comes to a scene
Visibility shows what effects rises so clean
Hear your ...

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 ...

Time is something that affects us all and as we age we become more aware of it because it seems to speed up, things become less permanent, and we become aware of our own mortality and mortality in general. Humans are a very long lived species as things go but ...

In designing a good villain character there's a wide range of paths one can follow. From the grandiose villains that want to take over the world and live in volcano islands, waiting for the hero to fall into their elaborate death trap to humanized villains with complex backstories that ...