

Episode 725 - Your fave comics as a kid
Feb 3, 2025
We're chatting about the comics you liked as a little kiddo this week! The topic was inspired by a thread in the DD forums. This is always a fun topic and I always have to mention Asterix because it was so amazing. This week Tantz had to bow out but we have Gunwallace to replace her, and Banes is back! Gunwallace is a fellow Antipodean, that means he and I share many of the same cultural touch stones, particularity the comic Footrot Flats. (Tantz is still on the Patreon only video)
Topics and Show Notes
Footrot Flats is a newspaper comic by the New Zealand creator Murry Ball. It's about a working sheepdog called “Dog” who lives on a farm owned by Wal, a single guy who works hard, drinks beer, and loves rugby. It's a comic that Australians saw as very “Australian” because it played into the mythological rural, working class image that we invented for ourselves, New Zealanders who have a similar history and felt the same, hence the shared popularity of this amazing very classically Kiwi comic from New Zealand.
Footroot flats comics be seen in many great collected works as well as an awesome animated film from the 1980s called “Footrot flats: The Dog's tale”. I fondly remember it for the hit theme song sung by New Zealand singer Dave Dobbin, “Slice of Heaven” which is one of my favourite ever songs. Gunwallace has even designed a cocktail inspired by it. I will list the recipe here and I urge to try it while listening to that song!
Cocktail recipe!
Slice of Heaven
— Dave Dobbyn & Herbs
50 ml Beerenburg jenever herbal gin
20 ml Drambuie
2 dashes bitters
Half-fill an Old Fashioned Glass with ice, pour ingredients into glass.
Add dashes of bitters. Stir gently. Garnish with a slice of orange.
We used : Sonnema Berenburg, Drambuie, Peychaud’s Bitters
-New Zealand Music Cocktails by David Tulloch & Michael
Sutorius
The comics you enjoyed as a kid are determined by what was available to you at the time. For me what I recall most are the newspaper strips like Modesty Blaise, Mandrake the Magician, Wizard of Id, Crock, B.C., Footrot Flats, Hagar the Horrible, Peanuts, Blondie, Denis the Menace (British version), Andy Cap, Torkan,The Far Side, Garfield… The comics I actually bought were the Commando war comics, Scrooge McDuck, Mad Magazine, and The Phantom, which was very popular in British Commonwealth countries. I loved Asterix but would only get those from the library. Looking back a lot of those comics were quite influential on my art style and even my outlook on the world in some cases. My character Pinky has a LOT of modesty Blaise in her look, and I can see that I thought of myself as Torkan!
Which comics did YOU like as a kid, which can you say STILL influence you now?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Snake in the Office - Chaotic, sexy, rocking, snake charming to layers of groovy electric guitar and a piano tiptoeing around with a charming little tune tying it all together like a fine Persian rug! A sinuous synth clarinet impersonates a snake charming flute while giving us a lovely 1920s feel.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Slice of Heaven, theme song to Footrot Flats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0pWejAnLUQ
/>Forum Thread - What comics did you grow up on? - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179874/
Featured comic:
Rebellion the monster inside us - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/jan/28/featured-comic-rebellion-the-monster-inside-us/
Featured music:
Snake in the Office - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Snake_in_the_office/ - by Athorist, rated T.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 662 - Drunkduck tales
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Webcomic communities have different cultures, but why and where do they come from? DD's culture is pretty chill, we're reasonably neutral and accepting of a wide range of ideas and perspectives, we're egalitarian to a very high degree, we don't do cliques, we don't exclude, we don't tend to jump on culture wars… We don't like tribalism of partisanship. So why are we like that?

Episode 619 - Artificial culture
Jan 23, 2023
Talking about AI again but this time our subject is different: Does it have a negative influence on culture? AI creative tools in the hands of an actual skilled creator opens up amazing possibilities. Real creative people will be able to use them as the tools they are, to mix and match with their own knowledge, talents and many different creative sources to produce novel and interesting things!

Episode 594 - Grow up! Or don't...
Jul 31, 2022
The Manchild can be a fun character or they can be pathetic. They're a staple of comedies because they're an adult that gets to act immature and childish, without the restraint and responsibilities imposed by adulthood. This can make a great contrast; “The adult man acting like an immature child”, John C Riley and Will Farrel have always done that extremely well, as did Chris Farley back in the 90s. It can be be portrayed as pathetic and sad when the person can't seem to be able grow up or take on any responsibilities. They're often characterised by people with “childish” interests, like the cast of the Big Bang Theory, or with a childlike love of something like sports like Kevin in Kevin can F Himself.

Episode 412 - Hiatusssss D:
Feb 4, 2019
A huge thank you to the fantastic Amelius, creator of Charby the Vampirate! We mined her great newspost on the topic of the comic hiatus for this Quackcast. When you're reading a comic and it goes on Hiatus it's an awful thing… suddenly all progress stops and you don't know for how long it will be gone for. Some authors are great, they'll reach a point where they can't work anymore for some reason or they'll take a little break, but they will tell you they're going on a hiatus and when their comic will return- and Lo, it comes back exactly when they said it would. Crappy authors will say they're going on a hiatus and never return.

Episode 337 - Interview with AmeliaP of Kings Club
Aug 28, 2017
This week we interview the artist and creator of the comic Kings Club, AmeliaP! Her comic was featured and Gunwallace also gave it a theme tune that was featured in Quackcast 335. AmeliaP is a talented professional comic creator and game designer. We couldn't interview her directly because she's not confident enough in her spoken English, so what we've done instead is read out a written interview that I did with her especially for this Quackcast. Amelia has some surprising and valuable insights for comic creators. You can read the full text of her interview bellow. Gunwallace's theme for the week was for Abejitas - This tune bounces in like a wild thing, spinning and buzzing crazily, full of black striped yellow techno sweet honey madness and rapid wingbeats of energy, this will sting you into full awareness!

Episode 305 - Chekhov's phaser
Jan 9, 2017
Chekhov's gun is the principal (as I understand it), that if you have some item, fact or piece of information introduced into your story that you draw specific attention to, then you'd better use it some how later on in your story. The simplest example is a gun: if it appears as a prop lying around in your story AND you draw attention to it, then by the end of the tale it should have gone off. This is because you've set up the parameters for your story in the mind of your audience and they develop certain expectations, if you confound those then they'll be disappointed and think that your story was poor. Having a “gun” on stage isn't so important here, it's the fact that you drew attention to it somehow. It doesn't have to “go off” either, as long as it plays a role in the story somehow. You can trick the audience very easily with these sorts of devices, making them think one item or piece of information will be vitally important, only to make it important in a way they wouldn't expect or to use it to hide the fact that some other thing was important instead. So that's our topic of conversation today! All based off of Tantz's newspost on Saturday. Gunwallace's musical theme was for Grow Up. It's repetitive, relaxing, punk reggae instrumental, with fuzz guitar. A lazy evening on a warm summer beach.

Episode 296 - What came before?
Nov 7, 2016
Tantz Aerine, Banes and Pitface join me, Ozoneocean, to talk about back stories, histories and all that extra knowledge you can come up with when creating your story. It can inform your comic story in a really clever way… but don't be tempted to vomit all that knowledge out on your unsuspecting audience! They'll hate you for it. It' a really great idea to come up with a detailed history and you can be really proud of it too, but you have to know how to present it to your audience, i.e. through your character interaction and the flow of your story. Gunwallace's featured music for this week was… THE LAST PICK UP ARTIST! This has a nice dry, rock feel, heavy guitar. This is music for cruising in a muscle car.