Episode 331 - Retconning your work
Jul 10, 2017
Starwars, Ender's game, Captain America… All these are great examples (or bad ones) of “retcons”. But what IS a “retcon”? What it means is that you go back and change an established work by adding new information that has the effect of changing it in a small or significant way. You might do it in your comic, or a director might do it to a movie series, like George Lucas did famously with Star Wars: introducing concepts like “midi-chlorians” as an explanation for the force, having Han shooting Greedo second, sticking Hayden Christiensen in Return of the Jedi, among other things. A lot of the time this has the effect of pissing off audiences who've consumed the story and enjoyed it because it alters or even destroys the understanding they've built up based on it and the relationship they have wit the work. Retcons happen frequently in the comic world because publishers have to keep their franchises interesting and saleable to audiences, so origin stories get updated all the time for example. A huge recent retcon was Captain America revealing he'd been a long time sleeper agent for Hydra, which has the effect of messing up stories going back over 50 years… The writer Orson Scott Card had a great deal of success with his novel “Ender's Game”, but for some reason he can't stop retconning it, going back and adding and editing new bits and re-publishing it every few years, and most egregiously penning prequels from another character's perspective that retcon the original story entirely. As web comic creators we have the role of god-author so we all have the temptation to retcon at one stage or another. Can it ever be a good thing? Is it worth pissing off readers who have an emotional investment? Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Optimum: the future is here and it’s in space! This tune is so upbeat, positive, fun and futuristic, it really exemplifies the cute colourful graphics of Skreem’s comic.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Lostandfound - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2017/jul/04/featured-comic-lostandfound/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
PitFace - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Featured music:
Optimum - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Optimum/, by Skreem, rated E.
Episode 279 - Meet the Mutants!
Jul 11, 2016
Our very own heavily mutated Pitface put up a guest post about her fellow mutants, filling in for HippieVan while Hippy is away fighting the mutants in Japan wearing a tie-dyed sailor suit and riding a Volkswagen battle mecha, as you do in Japan… anyway, as a member of the anti-mutant police force, I had to drag in Pit for questioning! And that's what we did for this Quackcast. Banes and I interrogate Pit on the subject of mutants! Mutants are a forgotten race at the moment: Mutants are the zombies of SciFi in a way; a mob of anonymous monstrous minions who exist to menace the heroes and be gunned down in their thousands. But they're also so much more… Unlike zombies, mutants have a lot more personality and humanity, they can also be far more demonic and revolting than any zombie, they can be any shape, size of configuration. Mutants are so much scarier and adaptable than mere zombies, because unlike zombies they're not always degrading and falling apart, no, mutants are evolving constantly, they can get larger, gorier and more terrifying, i.e. The Thing. For mutant pathos witness the Mars mutants in the original Total Recall: There's a man with a baby in his chest and we feel for him and respect him. We have superhero mutants too in the form of the X-men. Can't forget them! But remember also that “mutants” are also a very real thing in this world, unlike zombies, in fact we are ALL mutants in one way or another, not just those special people with a conjoined twin or extra nipples or genitals or whatever, all of us have our own exciting DNA variation! I have a big nose, crooked lower teeth and pasty white skin myself, I'm practically a Morlock. So what is YOUR “mutation”?
Episode 278 - Maturity and the whisper game
Jul 4, 2016
Quackcast 278 is a strange bird! We have TWO things in it! TWO! Not one… but TWO. First we play the whisper game, inspired by Ms Pitface. So what we did was one of us said something into the camera with the sound down and then everyone else had to guess what we said. Out of all of us Banes was he best. I got ONE right, but as a general rule I was the worst at it. Pit and Tantz were ok… The fun of it was the silly guesses though. It's a great parlour game for your drawing room. The second part is where we talk about MATURITY. Banes has finally become a man and he shows it by dominating us all. The guy's a beast! Seriously though, there are some interesting lessons about being “mature”… it's not all about that quote “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things”.. no, this is more about how you deal with other people, not how you present yourself and what you do with your free time. Plenty of adults don't play with “childish things” but they're less mature than most toddlers. It's an interesting subject! Gunwallace's theme for Bruno Harm is an appropriate Rockford files style intro for a guy who thinks he’s Peter Gunn. Added comedy lines featuring Banes and me!
Episode 267 - The DD Community asks Banes
Apr 18, 2016
In Quackcast 266 we interviewed the mad Mr Banes… We turned a giant battleship spotlight around and shone it directly into his eyes and bombarded him with high explosive armour piercing questions until he eventually failed under the onslaught, keeled over and sunk down into the depths, drowning all his brave seamen… Wait a minute, Banes isn't a ship, I got carried away with my metaphors. Anyway, that was then and this is now! THIS time we turned it over the the community instead (Pitface's idea), and they asked him all crazy insane questions. Banes answered with good humour like the amazing guy he really is :) Gunwallace gave us an amazingly cool 1980s videogame and metal themed turn for Satan Ninja 198X!
Episode 217 - Sexy and attractive characters
May 4, 2015
For this Quackcast we thought we'd explore what makes characters sexy and/or attractive: Men or women, it doesn't matter, original characters, or from TV, comics, films, radio, games, whatever. How do you make a sexy character? What's a good example of a sexy character? What makes a character sexy? We had a LOT of people telling us what they thought and we had some pretty strong opinions ourselves! Also, you will LOVE the sexy Roxy Music sounding theme tune for The Flower and the Nose by Gunwallace.
Episode 201 - The Improvisationcast
Jan 13, 2015
Pitface joins the duo of Banes and Ozoneocean once again, this time for the Improvisationcast! Pitface and Tantz Aerine do a lot of writing together when they work jointly on their script for Brave Resistance, but in order to further exercise their creative and collaborative muscles they also practise a turn by turn writing style where they improvise a story as they go. They start off with their own comic characters, one writes an intro and a bit with their character and the next one carries on after with their own character and also weaving the first person's character into the story with them, and so on. In the end you can produce a startling organic story that has forced you to examine the way your character would react to totally unfamiliar situations and stimuli. In this Quackcast we all experiment with this by doing an improvised play with characters we make up on the spot, to very mixed results....
Episode 198 - Fallopian Crusader to the rescue!
Dec 22, 2014
Merry XXX-mas! For Quackcast 198 Banes and I interview our second ever adult comic creator, the venerable Fallopiancrusader, on the anniversary of his comic being hosted on DD no less! His comic, "Rimjob" is as hard-core as they come. It's a spoof of the story in the videogame Skyrim: Khthonis, an orc woman is set for execution along with some other prisoners, the way she escapes though is quite a lot different to the events of the game! Fallopiancrusader is an amazingly talented and experienced artist, as you can see from the amazing realism and artistry of his artwork on Rimjob, in fact it's very difficult to find more artistic porn. A graphic designer by trade and skilled at many styles, one of Fallopiancrusader's reasons for creating Rimjob was simply to experiment with a new style! I think you'll agree that he succeeded admirably. If you haven't read Rimjob yet it'll be a rare treat for you. Rimjob is a NSFW adults only 18+ comic so if you're not singed up with the site and you're not 18+ you won't be able to view it. If that's the case though I've included links to two images Fallopiancrusader made for the DD awards so you can see his artistry at depicting his character Khthonis. Also: enjoy the brilliant Bladerunner style theme Gunwallace made for Holon!
Episode 192 - Voyage of the Broken Promise
Nov 9, 2014
This week on the DD Quackcast, I, Ozoneocean the High Exalted Grand Fleet Admiral of the 5th Quarter of the Galactic Central star system and Emperor of the 15 non-aligned beach planets, am interrogating the vicious space pirate Patrick Bradley of PBandJ. He was beamed aboard my flagship after my troops captured him and his wily bikini-clad crew of buxom vixens in a clever ambush! PB works as the husband part of a husband and wife team to produce the "erotic" poser comic Voyage of the Broken Promise: a space opera about pirates, revenge, and sex! Imagine Star Trek, Farscape, or Babylon 5, except they don't cut away for the erotic bits. Space love unbowdlerized! PB cites Milo Manara, Richard Moore, and Star trek, among other things, as his influences. PB is a very interesting and talented guy, primarily a writer he's done professional work on table top RPGs, published radio plays, and even written for The Matrix Online game! Please listen along while we explore the mind of the creator of an adult poser comic. - I think this is the very first interview we've ever done with the creator of an Adult comic!
