I was surprised and saddened to learn just the other day that Rene Auberjonois passed away at the end of last year. Even before the upheaval of the pandemic hit us, I think life was busy and a bit chaotic, and I just missed it.

I'd been a fan ...

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The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the ...

Greetings, citizens!

Superpowers coming from magical abilities or fantastic technology are essential to many stories in the fantasy and science fiction genres. They can show up in other genres, too, like horror and of course, superhero stories (are they science fiction stories? Science-Fantasy? Heroic Fantasy? Whatever - most of those folks ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

When you're creating the look of your fictional world what can really help you in the design of the look and feel of it is coming up with a “Design Language”.
What I mean by this is the theme of the overall look of things and the reasons for ...

Happy June 1st everyone!

I have been youtube-crawling today around the cinema pop-culture side. And as I was watching assorted comments and commentary on a whole lot of YA (i.e. Young Adult) and children's books and TV/film/animation series, from Harry Potter to The Last Airbender to ...

“Don't worry, Bart. It seems like every week something odd happens to the Simpsons. My advice is to ride it out, make an occasional smart-aleck quip, and by next week, we'll be back to where we started from, ready for another wacky adventure. ”

-Lisa Simpson


In most series ...

Over the holidays I watched a couple of programs that made me think of “non-traditional heroes”

We've talked about antiheroes multiple times around theduckwebcomics.com of course.

One of the programs was a series called ‘Happy!’ and the other was the movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” by the Coen Brothers ...

When Superman returned to the big screen ten years ago or so in “Superman Returns”, the movie was intended to be a direct sequel to the two original movies with Christopher Reeve. I was surprised at how mopey and depressing the movie felt.

Which is to say, the movie felt ...

Last week, Steve Ditko passed away at the age of 90. Legend? Titan? Master? I'm not sure what kind of descriptor to use for this guy.

He was one of a very small group of people who shaped the Marvel Universe, which rocked and redefined the comics world, and ...