Episode 285 - Ride the wave of the Anti-heroes
Aug 22, 2016
Comedy anti-heroes are a great deal of fun. My faves are characters like Tankgirl and Flashman; they can be selfish, greedy, violent, lustful, out for their own needs first but they still manage to do the “right” thing and vanquish the bad guy along the way regardless, or a character like George Costanza from Seinfeld who's jealous, pathetic, cowardly and greedy but we still love him anyway because identify with him and root for him against the unloving forces of the universe. To be a GOOD comedy anti-hero you have to keep the audience on their side though and that can be a tricky balancing act, you have to surf a number of factors (especially in a long running project), since to actually BE an anti-hero they need to have things about them that an audience would normally despise, these need to be counteracted by things like sympathy and pathos, traits we strongly identify with, intelligence, luck, charm, humour, sexiness, coolness, allowing them to win sometimes, or even redeeming some of their anti-hero behaviours occasionally. Get that balance wrong and they can so easily completely lose audience favour and sour the rest of the story/show/film. Pitface, Tantz, and Banes weigh in on this with me. And there are more opinions in the forum thread from which this evolved. Gunwallace's musical theme this week was for Pestilent. It's thoughtful, haunting, reminds me a little of a classic horror film soundtrack. Pretty scary!
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
High Explosives Playmobil - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/High_Explosives_Playmobil/
Links:
Anti-heroes thread - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177552/
Media mentioned
Suits
Always sunny in Philadelphia
Trailer Park Boys
Seinfeld
House
Deadpool
Tankgirl
Flashman
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Areine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/
Genejoke - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Genejoke/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
Pestilent - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pestilent/, by Internecinevisuals, rated M.
Episode 257 - Accents in Comics
Feb 8, 2016
Using accents and different languages in comics can be a challenge, or at least a challenge to represent. Some people will actually have their text IN a different language or even a made up language in the case of aliens, and they'll have translations in a footnote. Some will use pointed brackets to represent the different language, some will use different fonts, and some won't bother showing that there is a different language being spoken at all. We spoke to Tantz Aerine and Pitface about this because that's something they both have to tackle in Brave Resistance and Tantz's solo comic Without Moonlight because it's very central to the plot: Tantz uses different colours for the languages. Pitface phonetically represents different accents in her comic Putrid Meat quite expertly. However, there can be challenges to phonetic representation when you get it wrong, most frequently in the case of Irish and Scottish accents! This was inspired by a newspost by Hippievan! Listen ad enjoy Gunwallace's audio interpretation of Aidana. VERY Pink Floyd!
Episode 207 - A question of bodyshape part 2
Feb 22, 2015
In Quackcast 207 we talk about bodyshapes in comics again; as a follow up from the chat we had about it in Quackcast 205 we thought we'd let the community weigh in with their thoughts... so Banes and I could get the chance to practice our voices. We wanted to know what others thought about the subject of about bodyshape in comics; Ones that they draw, read, or have just seen and think that it needs commenting upon. These Quackcasts were inspired of course by the images of athletes from the 2002 book "Athlete" by Howard Schatz. The photos show various athletes who're at the top level of their respective sports, it also shows that they have wildly different physical attributes: there IS no one ideal, and there IS no “normal”. This got us to thinking how body shape can define a character as much as facial features, hairstyle, clothing etc. Anyway, people had their say and it was enlightening! Also, Gunwallace's music this week was for FUNK! And funky it was, give it a listen.
Episode 205 - What about bodyshape?
Feb 9, 2015
This week Banes and I were inspired to talk about body shape in the depiction of figures in comics, inspired by some famous images from photographer Howard Schatz's 2002 book, Athlete. In it there are photos of many athletes who're at the peak of their sports and yet their bodyshapes are vastly different, subverting the idea of an "ideal" bodyshape or what it means to be a top athlete or even fit. too often bodyshapes in comics follow a very narrow range, not getting much past what we think of as the current popculture ideal. We all know that idealised model shape is a problem and yet we all still perpetuate it, most of the time you can only tell most "realistic" characters apart by their hairstyle or costume, especially in superhero comics. And that invents a second problem: the myth of the "normal" shaped body as opposed to the ideal- there IS no such thing as normal, and even the ideal is always changing throughout the ages. There's even a lot more to body shape than the famous categories: Mesomorph, Ectomorph, and Endomorph, or Skinny, Pear, Athletic, Hourglass and Apple. We also have a beif mention of how stylised characters (Sponge Bob, Calvin and Hobbes etc) are exaggerations of these shapes and differences.
Episode 183 - Work Life balance
Aug 15, 2014
This Quackcast topic was inspired by a newspost by Kawaiidaigakusei who described a short autobiographical account of her own experiences managing the difficult work/life balance of doing webcomics online and at the same time having a normal life otherwise. How do you balance those? What do you sacrifice to keep a comic going? Is it worth it? In this Quackcast we discuss those aspects, as well as some saucy banter to begin with...
Episode 130 - The Art of Comicbook Movies
Jun 24, 2013
Banes and I talk about some of our fave comic book movies! That is, comics that have made the creative transition to the medium of film. We missed out a LOT but what can you do? It's a popular field. We discuss many modern superhero comicbook films like Watchmen, Batman, The Phantom etc, as well as non-superhero comicbook films like Brenda Starr, Modesty Blaise, Ghost in The Shell, Tank Girl, Asterix, Conan the Barbarian and so on. We talk about the different approaches they take to represent a vast comicbook cannon in the short space of 1 and a half or two and a half hours that a film goes for: sometimes they go for the origin story approach, sometimes they'll spoor the character, sometimes they'll depict a normal everyday representative adventure to show, and sometimes they'll show a condensed version of the entire story.
Episode 115 - A New Order
Mar 4, 2013
Skool has temporarily reformed from her evil ways to come onto the Quackcast with Banes and Ozoneocean to talk about some changes to the newsposting and feature schedule. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *WITH SLIGHTLY LESS TRAFFIC to the site we think it’s better to give one feature an entire week’s focus and spotlight to get as much attention as possible, having it on Wednesday makes sense because it’s the middle of the week, Skool and I will both try and give a bit of a take on the week's feature, if not in the blurb, certainly on the Quackcast! And please remember to give us your feature suggestions! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *MONDAY NEWSPOSTS are now Skool’s space: Monday will be her place for posting her unique brand of skoolness...fun, interesting personality blog posts, not just standard news posts necessarily! Skool is in charge of our Tublr thing, but she also posts a whole lot of her own stuff in her Tumblr accounts. She can bring some of that picture flavoured magic to the newsposts instead to entertain with her personality, give the site more of a face. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *THURSDAY'S NEWSPOSTS will be Ozoneocean's pale reflection of Skool's magnificent greatness. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *FRIDAYS ARE A NORMAL NEWSPOSTING DAY, but we're going to widen what can go up for DD member newsposts! NOT just 25 page milestones. now we'd like you to tell us about uupcoming projects, news about special things like a comic being published, or comic having special coverpages or crossovers or other newsworthy stuff so we can get the word out and advertise your work for you! Even things like New character introductions, Introductions of new comics that’re just starting, Clever ads for long running already established webcomics or related items like comic Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Youtube, twitter accounts etc. As long as it's not spammy we'd like to know about it!
Episode 65 - Men and Women in Tights
Feb 20, 2012
Banes and Ozoneocean round off the topic of superheroes, beating that wonderhorse to death well and truly. There's a lot of reminiscing here about ancient superhero pop-culture and along the way we discuss silver age and golden age comics, supervillains, second stringer superheros and why the remain that way, the gender and culture appeal of some characters, evolution of superheroes towards realism and grit, then webcomic superheroes, especially those on DD, and then finish up with why we like superheroes. Sidekick Captain-Ozone continues to echo disturbingly from the void while the real hero, Ultra-Banes, continues to bring the humour. We decide that it all comes back to Superman and Batman, who are the ultimate prototypes for the two main types of superheros: super, good, and perfect Vs normal, flawed, and human.
