

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...
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and Show Notes:
Featured comic:
All Unicorns to Battle Stations - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/All_Unicorns_to_Battle_Stations/
/>
Work life balance newspost:
Here - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2014/jul/21/the-balancing-act-of-the-real-world-and-creating-webcomics/
/>
Special thanks to:
Kawaiidaigakusei, featurer, newsposter and supermom - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
/>Banes, stressed out wage slave - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
/>Gunwallace, Japanese salleryman with hidden musical talents - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
/>
The musical theme this time was for Dinnersaurus Rex - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Dinnersaurus_Rex/ by Bemirry.

Episode 179 - Token representation in comics
Aug 11, 2014
There's no question in my opinion as to whether representation of different kinds of people in fiction matters. Having spent my childhood poring over superhero comics in which the girl's job is usually to turn invisible and press a button or something, I remember being impressed and delighted by some of the badass female characters in The Spirit. Lady-people could be cool, too?! Is it insulting when comics add token characters to their line up, or does it really make a difference? And what makes a token character anyways? -HippieVan. Banes, HippieVan and I focus on the subject of token representation in media, mainly comics. This discussion was inspired by a newspost HippieVan made in response to a new character in the Archie comic, which got a lot of interesting responses.

Episode 177 - Charby the Vampirate forever!
Jul 28, 2014
Guess who we had on THIS week? It was Amelius and Evil Emperor Nick! The husband and wife powerhouse behind some very popular comics on DD including Charby The Vampirate and Cwen's Quest. We haven't had them on since Quackcast 10 and 11 which have unfortunately been totally wiped from the interwebs... But that doesn't matter so much since you can hear them both afresh now and they have some goo stuff to say, including talking about the newly revamped version of Charby on charbythevampirate.com that's only up to 50 or so pages as well as the new related project Here there be monsters. We apologise for some slight technical difficulties, but Amy and Nick were good sports anyway and it was a an enjoyable interview!

Episode 172 - The QuackQuiz!
Jun 23, 2014
Come on down, it's Quiz time! For this week's Quackcast we had a quiz based on DD comics, as a friendly, fun way to try and promote them... there's even a bit of Drunk Duck history mixed up in the questions. Just a smidge. We had three contestants taking part for the honour of telling everyone else to suck it; Archaeologist Amazon Adventurer Artist Pitface, Psychologist Freedom Fighter Lawyer Comicer Tantz Aerine, and Scientist Philosopher Comic Group Leader and all around boob-fancier Abt Nihil. They all competed to the very limit of their abilities, striving for dominance against each other, employing every dirty trick in the book and even some new ones... So please listen to the first ever DD bottomless Quiz! Oh, and there's even some titbits about the totally mythical married life of Ozoneocean and Pitface.

Episode 170 - The REAL Chatcast!
Jun 9, 2014
Kawaiidaigakusei came up with a great idea for a call-in show… That didn’t entirely work out so we did a “Harassment show” instead, where we phoned various duckers till we could finally get someone to talk to us. Seriously, we were desperate! All the people we called utterly destroyed us on our running fridge gag… Tantor tells us about the neolithic days of webcomics and the early days of DD! Such comics as User Friendly and watching porn comics on an Amiga! Kawaii hit us with some profoundly interestings questions on making money vs doing what you love, the madness of creative people, and how much your creative product can influence you emotionally and how much it needs to in order to get you interested in creating it. And finally Mr Neil tells us about using Mark Crilley’s how to draw videos, his great superhero comic Dasien, and an artist’s need for feedback from other creators in order to stay interested in their work. He also talks about his work with Kittyhawk, author of SGVY.

Episode 167 - Anatomy of a Villain
May 19, 2014
Today we talk about villians! Kawaiidaigakusei made a newspost about villains that generated quite a bit of interest so Banes and I had her on to chat about them and read out some of the things our community members had to say. Kawaii can introduce the topic in her own words: I used to take the side of the cheerful, positive, and heroic protagonist in films and comics when I was much younger. As I got older, I wised up to the idea that being a protagonist is relative to biases of the storyteller. Now I rewatch those same films with a renewed perspective of what constitutes “good” and “bad”. Lately, I have been finding that more and more, I am a fan of villains. I believe the reason we are seasoned to differentiate heroes and villains at a young age is to train our super-ego about rules and societal expectations. It teaches every Goffus that they should aspire to be more like Gallant. But living a hero's lifestyle by-the-book can be as boring as vanilla. For the record, I love vanilla, it is GOOD, but it does not make it any less boring. Emulating the characteristics of a supervillain feeds our id. It just feels good to break the rules. Give villains a chance. Afterall, without a villain, there would be no need for a hero.

Episode 163 - Hip to be shark!
Apr 21, 2014
HippieVan, one of our wonderful news admins, made a newspost about the latest Archie comic sales tactic/plot device, killing off Archie, in the context of "Jumping The Shark", and it was quite a popular topic of discussion. Jumping the Shark is the term we use for a TV Series (but it could be anything), that has reached a bit of a creative desert so the writers attempt a silly stun or the introduction of a new character or theme or something that breaks the narrative and the story dynamic, all in an attempt to re-energize the failing series. Sometimes it works, but often it's a sign that the thing is on its deathbed. And that's what Hippie joined us to talk about: Shark jumping! In the meantime, we find a shark of our own...

Episode 156 - The Abt Nihil and Pit Face Bottomless Hero Alliance
Mar 3, 2014
Today we welcome a dastardly new bad guy alliance between three powerful super villains of Duck City: Ozone Evil, Pit Dastardly, and Abt Destruction! In their pirate lair aboard the bottomless pirate ship, the trio revel in their shared passion for bottomlessnessnessnessitude. Abt and Pit go on to chat about getting comics published in paper form, the Hero's Alliance community project, and the Mega City 2:2135 Judge Dredd fan comic project.