I've spent a lot of this year dealing with the fallout of the death of a close friend. For whatever reason he picked as his executor a woman that none of the rest of his friends and family get along with. Actually, that's downplaying it. Most of them ...

Writing unsavoury people
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, June 5, 2025Quackcast 742 - ex-special forces!
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, June 3, 2025 LISTEN on our player!
Or Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com.au/podcasts/24f85853-5d63-44ac-885f-da23db0a53ad/the-quackcast
It seems like every single “badass” in TV, Movies, books and comics is “ex-special forces” or something like it these days. It's become a meaningless cliche. Writers use it as a shortcut to show ...
Quackcast 739 - Deferring to Experts
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, May 13, 2025 LISTEN on our player!
Or Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com.au/podcasts/24f85853-5d63-44ac-885f-da23db0a53ad/the-quackcast
Artwork from Key of Dreams
When you're working on a project with other people, a comic collaboration for example, it's usually best to decide on different roles for everyone according to what they ...
Heading the Hiatus Off at the Pass
Emma_Clare at 12:00AM, May 3, 2025
So, there you are, staring at that dreaded page with the words nobody wants to see: “I’m going on hiatus.”
Sometimes, it’s just a quick break, and you bounce back in no time. But other times… well, not so much. Don’t worry, though! I’ve got a ...
Where's Willy?
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, May 1, 2025
One of the world's oldest bit of sequential art (which people like Scott McCloud and Will Eisner tell us are just comics in a proto-form) was in the news recently. The Bayeux tapestry is a 70 metre long, 50cm wide embodied cloth that while not containing the panel divisions ...
On Utopias
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, April 26, 2025
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 ...
Books in the News
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, April 24, 2025
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 ...
Back from the Dead
Tantz_Aerine at 2:02AM, April 19, 2025
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 ...
When Life's Too Crazy for Fiction
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, March 29, 2025
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 ...