Today its another technical comics making focused cast, suggested by Tantz Aerine! We cover our notions about how to maintain character consistency and consistency in general, plus a bit on speech bubbles and the text in them. I was SOOPER tired towards the end though so I wasn't all there mentally but the guys carried it through admirably.

How do you maintain character consistency? The industry standard is to create a “bible”… basically you put all your character info in there. All the descriptions and traits and also sketches of them from all different angles and in different outfits, doing different things, lots of facial expressions, hairstyles etc. If you do that then you have a document to refer to each time you need the character, so you can look back on it and always be consistent. It's a lot of work to create one of those, but it saves a lot of time as you go. Unfortunately Banes, Tantz, and I all gave up on character bibles after a single sketch (waaay too much work), so the way we maintain consistency is to do things like remember the relative heights of characters and make such we look at previous pages while we're making the current one. How do YOU do it?

Apologies for the weird sound in this one! I may have forgotten to put the microphone close to my face.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Thrud Goddess Of Thunder - Big fat beats and an epic sound! This one really brings the thunder! It’d be great as the intro tune to a professional wrestling match. It builds anticipation perfectly and really slams home and delivers on its promises. Epic sounds! Maybe this could be the new Quackcast theme?

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Game Punks - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/mar/14/featured-comic-game-punks/

Featured music:
Thrud Goddess of Thunder - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/THRUD_Goddess_Of_Thunder/ - by Takoyama, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

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Today we talk about an unusual type of villain, a secret type of bad guy and a particularly nasty one: the person who maliciously does nothing. This is a person who COULD intervene to resolve a dire situation or save someone, they could do it easily; they know how, they have the means, they're not scared or unsure, and it doesn't mean much risk to themselves, they just choose to sit back and watch the person die or the situation collapse… either because they know the result will benefit themselves or they're just curious to watch the person die or the everything turn to crap for the victim or whatever. Either way they COULD easily intervene but they choose not to.

The simplest way to characterise this villain type is that person in the elevator, waiting and looking out at you while you're running for it. They don't do anything, or maybe they pretend to press their finger on the “door open” button, but they really don't… You run but it's too late, the doors close and the lift leaves. That bastard could have helped but they didn't! That's the funnier version, the more chilling is the person who sits and watches while a person drowns or chokes to death near them.

That took us down the road to talking about Phil Collins' song “In The Air Tonight”, which doesn't really have anything to do with this topic but people like to think that it does, and then we started talking about Genesis and how we couldn't remember any songs from when Peter Gabriel was the vocalist. :D

Do you have a fave secret villain who watches? or do you like “In the Air Tonight”?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to TinasStory, called “Welcome back Tina's Story”.
It's a groovy rocking dance track that’s full of celebration, energy and joy, which makes it a fitting theme to honour the return of Tina’s story to DD! Tina's Story has previously had a theme back in Quackcast 213, a nice little classical number.


Topics and shownotes

Links

From Tantz's Newspost on Friday about a new type of villain - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/mar/10/good-people-do-nothing/


Featured comic:
Oswald the Overman in the Lesser Planes of Hell - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/mar/07/featured-comic-oswald-the-overman-in-the-lesser-planes-of-hell/

Featured music:
TinasStory - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/TinasStory/ - by Zenia, rated A.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Character design is a fun process but not without its challenges. Do you design the character or their story first? I've followed both of those approaches, they have pluses and minuses. On one hand when you create the character first that can make it a real passion project, you make a cool character and then create a story for them to live in and be themselves. But that can also lead to Mary Sues, wish fulfillment and self inserts, which makes for a weak story. Creating characters to fit a story can sometimes lead to using a lot of stereotypes and ending up with fairly generic and bland characters, which can make for a dull story. So it's best to use a bit of balance and judgment.

In this Quackcast we all talk about how we developed some of our own characters, particularly how Banes and I came up with the characters for Bottomless Waitress. Nicky was an interesting example. Banes' outline for her was a rugged, queer woman truck driver, short haired, average height, average build etc, but when it came for me to draw her I had my own vision for an extremely tall muscular, person; she wore bootleg jeans, a tight white tank-top and cowboy boots, a tattoo on one shoulder, pretty eyes with a strong Italian nose, hair dark shaved short at the back of her head with a long blond fringe at the front. I was thinking of Gina Gershon in Bound and Lori Petty in Tank Girl. It was a fun comic to design for!

Lucky Patrons at the $5+ level get to see us talk about character boob design for the Patreon video XD
How do you go about designing your characters?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Sunday Punch! Gunwallace says: I know I've done a theme for Tag Forester before, but since it got featured I made one for the current story (Originally Tag got a theme in Quackcast 464). There’s a mystery to be solved… There is always a mystery to be solved when you’re Tag Forester, detective. He’s out there on the mean streets, alone, looking for trouble to prevent trouble, taking his life in his hands and taking the world by the balls.

Topics and shownotes


Featured comic:
Sunday Punch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/28/featured-comic-sunday-punch/

Featured music:
Sunday Punch - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sunday_Punch/ - by Rickrudge, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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HPKomic is a great guy, he's been on DD since almost the beginning. He alternates the Friday newsposts with me, he focusses on the intricacies of comic panels. This time he asked people to talk about their own processes though and I thought this would be a good topic for a Quackcast!
So on this comic podcast we're finally talking directly about making comic pages, who would've thought?

Tantz, Banes, and I all have our own methods and it was fun to talk about the differences. The key method I learned early on is to have one “sexy” panel and anchor the page around that. It could be a sexy character, an exciting scene, a giant mecha, a cool establishing shot or whatever, just as long as it grabs the reader focus and make them really want to look at the page and find out what it's all about. I anchor all the other stuff around that. It also means you can get away with less imaginative art and angles in other panels if you like.

It was also interesting to chat about how the long scrolling format has enabled artists to be more creative with storytelling but has meant the death of some of the more artistic traditional techniques of panel structure from traditional pages- which I really like to use. How do you make your comic panels?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to American Pantheon - Down grimy stairs, duck your head into a dark basement dive bar. Blue smoke curls lazily up towards the dusty, slow moving ceiling fan. A grizzled, craggy faced man with shadowed eyes sits alone nursing a glass of whisky, a battered pork pie hat on his head. He throws you a gap-toothed smile, clears his throat and lets out a racking cough…
Cool, slow jazz…

Topics and shownotes

Links

HPKomic's newspost on comic panel creation - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/24/panel-by-panel-let-me-ask-you-something/

Banes' newspost on the differences between writing comics and prose - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/22/prose-v-comics/


Featured comic:
Sell Outs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/21/featured-comic-sell-outs/

Featured music:
American Pantheon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/American_Pantheon/ - by Serg19, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Arrogance is a fun subject. Related to cockiness, hubris, assertiveness, self confidence and pride.
It's a fantastic trait for a villain and it's really fun to write. Heroes are often arrogant too when they need to learn a lesson in order to become a better person, it's super common in stories. We're all a bit arrogant ourselves about our skills, our knowledge, where we come from, what we look like etc. It's a universal trait! It often strikes when we think we know better or know it all on a subject: the human tendency to over-reach and to speak for others.

The famous Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of arrogance: basically, when you know a little about a subject you tend to imagine you know a LOT more about it that you do. Whereas when you know a lot about a subject you know enough to know that you also know that there's so much more that you DON'T know. Beginners think they know much more than they do and experts tend to know more than they realise.
But people mistakenly think that Dunning-Kruger only affects stupid people, when in reality it affects everyone all the time. No matter how clever you are there are a million things you are not an expert in and can never be, and you will overestimate your knowledge without even knowing it. I'm doing that right now with Dunning-Kruger :)
A good word for these people comes from Greece: Sophomore. In English it means a beginner, but in Greek it means “wise fool”; a person who knows just enough to think they're wise on a subject but not enough to know the limitations of their knowledge.

So who are your fave arrogant characters? Rick from Rick and Morty is surely one. He can back up his arrogance with actual knowledge and skill though, which just makes him an a***hole. Scaramouche from the Commedia Dell'arte is a famous example, so is Blackadder who's some what based on him. One of my favourite arrogant characters was also from Blackadder; Lord Flashheart and also Captain Flashheart (both played by Rick Mayall). They're hilarious in their overblown image of themselves. Arrogance can add charm and comedy to a character or it can make them insufferable and repellent. Do you like arrogant characters? What about arrogant people?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Kirth Space Bounty Hunter - Almost sounding like a space-age version of traditional Chinese music, this is a fascinating piece. It’s upbeat and yet slightly mournful and quite evocative. All in all a joy to listen to.

Topics and shownotes


Featured comic:
Simple Complications - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/14/featured-comic-simple-complications/

Featured music:
Kirth Space Bounty Hunter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Kirth_Space_Bounty_Hunter/ - by RobertRVeith, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

This is when the writer leads you to think something big has happened in the story, like a character dying or falling in love or winning a big prize or something, only to have the character alive in the next part, or the prize or love never mentioned or addressed- this is “schmuck bait”.
The writer gets you invested and excited for something but cops out, leaving the audience frustrated and cynical. This was common in older episodic things where the episodes are intended to be seen in any order, so the writers couldn't have continuing arcs and development across a season. It's also common in bad writing where the writer builds things up a lot for an events but then loses their nerve or just doesn't posses the skills to properly resolve things.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Return of the Old Gods - Tonnal, dark, Intimidating, heavy sounds enveloping and surrounding, warning of doom-filled portents, and solemn premonitions. All created by fully electronic tones. Gunwallace: This one came out more to my liking. Sort of Fripp & Eno lite with some 70s sci-fi.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes's newspost about Schmuck-bait here - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/08/shmuck-bait/

Featured comic:
The Return of the Old Gods - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/feb/08/featured-comic-the-return-of-the-old-gods/

Featured music:
Prince of the Moonlight Stone - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Return_of_the_Old_Gods/ - by RabbitMaster, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Toxic positivity can take all sorts of forms, but I think it's most easily recognised by someone telling you to be happy about something when you just don't feel it. It's a really odd, nasty, weird feeling when a person tells you you're basically not allowed to be grumpy or even neutral, you MUST be happy. How many times have we all been told to “smile” by someone?

I think it's interesting when it involves pop-culture:
When you're not allowed to criticise things or dislike them. People do this with nationalism, politics, brands, products, cars, celebrities etc, but it's really telling with pop-culture. The whole “Shhh, just let people enjoy things” meme: It has a good side but also quite a big dark side as well. Being relentlessly negative and stomping all over other's enjoyment of things is a real dick move, so yes, let them enjoy the thing. The dark side of that is when people use it to shut down ALL criticism.
I've been in groups where they ban people for saying anything at all bad about certain shows or the characters in them, even as a joke. That's quite a toxic environment. For example, not only must you like every Star Wars movie and not make fun of any of them or any character, you must also like all the TV shows whether it's Lego Star Wars, Clone Wars, or even the games. Disliking any can “ruin someone else's enjoyment” so you get a ban.

Then there are the people who stomp into the middle or of a group happily dedicated to the enjoyment of criticism and use the “…let people enjoy things” line on them, not realising that they're refusing to let those people enjoy what they were into. Yes, people shouldn't be dicks about things, but people shouldn't be super “positive thinking” thought-police either, which is worse because it induces stress and pushes people out of fan communities.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Succubus - A quiet, contemplative, slightly mournful tune, delicate in piano, is suddenly swamped by a red wave of horror and chaos as the music is ripped asunder and this new sound gouges deep into your ears.

Topics and shownotes


Tantz's Toxic positivity - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/27/character-trait-toxic-positivity-toxic-acceptance-part-1/

Featured comic:
She Used To Be Fractal - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/30/featured-comic-she-used-to-be-fractal/

Featured music:
Succubus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Succubus/ - by Coydog and TheDeeMan, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

My idea was to talk about social pariah characters, people who it's socially acceptable to laugh at, despise, or even hate. They can be the uncool people, the dorks, the dags, the idiots, the overweight, the ugly, the old, the out of touch, the over the hill… On the extreme end they could be monsters and criminals. Generally they're written pretty two dimensionally as a collection of cliches, but when the writing goes beyond that to lend them humanity is when it goes to the next level.

I'm not talking about underdogs or members of minority groups because people should already know better than to write them as stereotypes or to laugh at them for being what they are. I'm not talking about “punching up” or “down” or sideways either.
A good example would be one of those Mansplaining “M'Lady” characters: a fat, young white guy with a thin goatee beard, in a black stingy brim fedora hat and black trench coat, worn over a t-shirt and cargo shorts. It's socially acceptable to universally despise that person, and it can even feel good to have someone like that who everyone is allowed to laugh at. Other examples are the Boomer, the Karen, the angry vegan woman, nerds, pervs, trainspotters, Furries, Bronies, and Treckies.

My conjecture is that an ordinary or bad writer just uses them as is and leverages the popular social derision surrounding them for humour. While a really good writer goes beyond the cliches and gives the character some humanity. Dwight in the US version of The Office started out as a character we loved to hate, but as the show wore on and he gained more humanity he became an immeasurably better character. King of the Hill is a show entirely dedicated to the sort of people pop-culture gives us permission to mock and deride and yet it shows us their vulnerabilities which makes them so much better than the characters in Family Guy who are similarly despised people but with no other dimension.

One of the main faults of the second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, is that the characters are mostly all built around cliches we're supposed to despise, and they don't go beyond that. I liked the film but it wasn't as clever it thought it should be

By all means start off with a boomer, Karen, angry vegan lady or a Mainsplainer, pick the low hanging fruit jokes, get all the easy laughs, but then turn things on their head. Go deeper. Show them as more than a simple cliches, more than a cutout! That will enhance your story supremely, make your characters more interesting, the drama more effective and your jokes funner.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Prince of the Moonlight Stone - Mysterious sounds of the cold, snowy, moonlit, pine-forest… Percussion heats up and leads us down into the steaming jungles in the valleys below, away from the cry of the wolf and the savage bite of the cold mountain winds.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Explorer Chronicles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/24/featured-comic-explorer-chronicles/

Featured music:
Prince of the Moonlight Stone - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/_Prince_of_the_Moonlight_Stone/ - by KillerSandy, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

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!

Culture is invigorated by people making novel things, but the way these creative AIs are designed they produce essentially only derivative content. This can be tempered by the human factor of the person using it, especially if they come to it with a lot of background skill and if they don't intend to simply “stop” with the AI produced art but rather intend to use it as part of a larger process. However, because this technology mostly attracts non-creative people most AI produced creative work is not creative (be it writing, video, music, games, or visual art). The commercial pressure to produce the cheapest and quickest products will mean that creative people are largely pushed out of creative jobs and replaced with non-skilled, non-creative people using AI tools, which will have a degrading effect on culture produced in the commercial industry.

That can have a negative impact on culture as a whole, especially as younger people grow up with it as the norm, not knowing anything else.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Meatware - Grinding, red, churning, twisting, growling, processing, heavy, liquid, viscous, thick, fibrous, chunky, fatty, sinewy… a heavy electronic sound that gets you deep in your bones.

Topics and shownotes


Tantz's AI newspost on culture - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/20/the-ai-problem/

Adventure thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179254/

Featured comic:
American Pantheon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/16/featured-comic-american-pantheon/

Featured music:
Meatware - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Meatware/ - by TheJagged, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

The Saying goes that The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence. Envy and jealously are destructive, negative feelings that either lead to bad outcomes or just make you feel pretty crappy. It especially affects creators! We get down about our artwork, our writing, the popularity of someone else's comic etc and we wish WE were as good as them and wonder why we aren't… maybe we're just not as good? If we could only just have their talent, their luck, their skill then WE'D be awesome too. it's just not fair…

Banes heard a pretty cool solution to this on a podcast once. The idea is that you CAN have those things you're envious off, you can have all of their cool traits, popularity, all the good stuff, but ONLY if you're also willing to accept all the crap in those person's lives as well. Would it really be worth it? To swap your life completely with theirs and not to be yourself any longer?

Or in a more realistic sense, you can look at those people who're beautiful and thin, or big and buff and muscular, those people with fantastic guitar skills, parkour champions, amazing athletes and dancers, and envy what they have… But YOU can have that as well, YOU can be like that, you just have to put in the thousands of hours of work it requires to have those skills, the thousands of dollars of beauty products, training and surgery, physical complications, the injuries, all the struggle and privation, all the denying yourself of life's many pleasures, tasty foods, TV watching time, time with friends and family… Because that's usually the true cost of the things with envy in others. The difference is that they're prepared to pay it.

Even super wealthy people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos paid a cost to get where they are: would you be prepared to make those bad deals, to cheat and scam strangers, friends, family, exploit others for your own personal gain again and again and again, are you prepared to wear that on your conscious and your soul? If so then the billionaire life is for you. :)

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Silences Echo - A sophisticated piano jazz bar, with a faint touch of latin rhythm… almost a tango. People dancing close, tension in the air, the energy is crisp and flowing with this short, punchy tune!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' excellent and encouraging newspost on his Cure for Jealously - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/11/the-cure-for-jealousy/

Featured comic:
Meatware - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/10/featured-comic-meatware/

Featured music:
Silences Echo - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Silences_Echo_/ - by Hykarige, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Adventure is a fun genre! Not as many things get made for it these days but it used to be hugely popular in the past. It's one of my favourite genres and this is what we're chatting about for the Quackcast. What IS adventure? I think it usually involves a whole lot of different things like exploration, action, discovery, heroic protagonists, rivals, travel, exotic places, fights etc. It can be set in the past or in the modern day. Good examples are The Mummy, Indiana Jones, the original Tomb Raider, the two new Jumanji films, Strange World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ducktales, Tailspin, Jungle Cruise, Uncharted and so much more. I'd love to know your faves!

Adventure stories have a basis in reality, real life explorers like Sir Richard Francis Burton, Marco Polo, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. And from this background there's a negative connotation in the adventure story DNA: because it comes from a world of colonialism and imperialism. Adventure often involves an emissary from the known world in the west going off to the unknown world in the east, Africa, or South America to see exotic places and discover new things, which of course are not exotic or new to the locals that actually live there!
But even so I think it has a valid rationale because these things were largely unknown and exotic to the wider community in the west and this was the way they found out about them. Adventure stories also work perfectly well from other perspectives- the adventurer can originate in Africa, China, Polynesia and wherever else and they can be exploring Europe or any other part of the world and it works just as well.

No theme from Gunwallace this week because of the holidays, so more best-offs! These are the two themes Gunwallace made for Bottomless Waitress from Quackcasts 423 and 490 -
- Theme number one is such a happy sounding, Southern, joyful track, filled with banjo and layers of guitar, twanging away… bringing notes of sunshine, natural wood, the light glinting softly through tree leaves and making dappled shadows on the ground… Perfect for an advertising jingle!
- Theme number two: Revenge of the banjo! We start off with a tractor roaring into life and a banjo opening us up to the sounds of rural Midwest America- wide open corn fields, golden wheat, grain silos, quiet back-roads, haystacks, big red barns, and a kinky little diner where the coffee is bottomless and so are the staff!

Topics and shownotes

Adventure thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179254/

Featured comic:
Arkin Blade - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/jan/03/featured-comic-arkin-blade/

Featured music:
Bottomless Waitress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Bottomless_Waitress/ - by Ozoneocean and Banes, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
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- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Happy 2023! This was the last Quackcast of 2022 and the FIRST Quackcast of 2023! I was recording during 2023 while Tantz, Banes and Pit were still stuck in 2022 because of the time difference between us, so we straddled the years!
We had the full crew here of myself, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pit Face! We chatted about what we did with comics in 2022, what movies we saw and the issue of “AI Art” and how it impacts actual artists. It was a really cool talk!

What movies did YOU see in 2022 and what big changes happened to you?

It was lovely to see Pit again and you can see us all in great detail in the new video format on our Patreon video for those clever $5 and up supporters :)

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Short changed - Snappy, happy beat, with a joyful repealing piano tune. This is such a simple piece but is so nice and happy and friendly! This makes a lovely new start to the new year ^_^

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Withdrawn - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/27/featured-comic-withdrawn/

Featured music:
Short Changed - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Short_changed/ - by Kiddermat, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
PIT_FACE - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Happy Life Day! Hahaha!
Merry Christmas for 2 days ago… This week we're talking about the “Christmas specials” that populate entertainment media this time of year. No particular reason for it, it's just because it's seasonal! It's not always Christmas focused there are the occasionally hanukkah things as well, and in the northern hemisphere this is the season for traditional winter festivals afterall.

What are your fave “Christmas specials”? Do you like them when webcomics do them? I always used to love the one that Kittyhawk did for her Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuki comic https://www.facebook.com/montrose.is/

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Nocturne 21 Volume One - Darkly introspective with an Asian influence. It reminds me of an unfinished Hong Kong skyscraper in the1980s at night- wind whistling through the open floors, the lights of the city below and around but not inside the shadowy, debris strewn depths of the skeletal structure, smelling of concrete dust and epoxy. There’s a slow, considered pace to this compelling piece.

-As a Christmas present all Patreon members get to see our video, not just the $5 and up members, AND it's better quality so it's NOT painful to watch haha!

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Neville Magicians Rabbit - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/20/featured-comic-neville-magicians-rabbit/

Featured music:
Nocturne 21 Volume One - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Nocturne_21_Volume_One/ - by Hirokari, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Inspired by Banes we did a Quackcast on SUPER TEAMS! You know those groups like the Justice League, the Avengers, the Suicide Squad, or even Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy from The Journey to the West (Monkey Magic is my fave version). These are super powerful characters on their own but together they're even more awesome because their strengths and weakness complement each other in interesting ways. DD had its very own super team in the form of the Heroes Alliance, where a lot of DD creators got together to work on a shared universe. And back in the 2000s DD had a “Civil War” even with Keen Space (AKA Comic Genesis), where a huge number of our creators and theirs participated in something like a DC Vs Marvel crossover battle.

So what are your fave team ups?

This week our Patreon Video is available to all our Patreons (not just the 5$ level), and it's also MUCH better quality because we're using Zoom now finally!
https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck

There was no new theme for the week because Gunwallace and his whole family are ill with CoVid! So instead I deiced to do a “best off”. I included 6 of my fave tracks from 2022 that Gunwallace created. Get well soon man!! The Quackcast topic starts after the music at about the 17.30 minute mark.


Topics and shownotes

Links
Inspired by Bane's newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/13/super-teams-are-the-baum/
DD's very own super teamup, Heroes Alliance - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Heroes_Alliance



Featured comic:
Domestic HellLand - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/13/featured-comic-domestic-hellland/

Featured music:

From 567 - Ark Hunters - Notes cascading and calibrating, before committing and tumbling down and along in a continuous torrent, a cataract of notes, flowing and bursting outward. Accoustic and electronic, guitar, violin, piano and percussion vying continuously.
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ark_Hunters/ - by Tombag, rated T
25th of January

From 572 - Eva of Asgard - Thunderclaps, followed by a slow, steady downpour that gradually increases in strength before collapsing into a furious, chaotic storm of electric guitar driven hard rock! An electric guitar strikes like lighting, illuminating the entire piece in sharp relief, till the metal tempest blows itself out and fades away.
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/EVA_of_Asgard/ - by Synwells, rated T.
1st of March

From 576 - Caveston - Authoritative violin pronounces and directs. A four stringed general deciding the course of action, laying out the battleplan. Electric guitar listens well and leads the squad on a furious audio assault! Storming forth and prevailing in a mighty show of shock and awe.
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Caveston/ - by Caveston, rated T.

From 582 - Rat Test Blues - Gunwallace doing his own thing here! The dangers and worries of CoVid-19 are universal, and New Zealand is no exception. Here Mr Gunwallace gives voice to his and all our apprehensions when faced with a malady when there’s a pandemic about… “Do I have Covid or just a cold?” Only the Rapid Antigen Test can say for sure. Awesome blues number, that guitar roars and sings and Gunwallace’s vocals are perfect.
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ - by Gunwallace, rated N/A
10th of May

From 589 - Into the Bookwoods - A folksy calming journey into dark green, misty, warm depths and golden lit fields in afternoon sun. An acoustic driven piece with the pleasing sounds of plucked wire strings!
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Into_the_Bookwoods/ - by Kvalhissir, rated ?
28th of June

From 600 - Brittany Hyperstyle - Bouncy, pop bubblegum bubbles of light and joy floating, rising and falling in sweet smelling convection currents. This sound is pink and powerblue with a sheen of iridescence. Synth electronica that’s fun, light and happy!
- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Brittany_Hyperstyle/ - by Shampoo_Venom, rated T.
13th of September




Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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The 1930s were quite a uniquely influential time for a number of reasons. The 1930s were the very last days of the old world before the new one was born in the apocalypse of the 1940s. Old empires, kings, colonialism- forces that had shaped the planet for decades were about to be shattered for the good, thankfully. New technologies were on a rapid rise as things were spiraling closer and closer to global war, Air travel was becoming a reality even as the old ocean liners were still the main means of transportation connecting the continents, people were building cites around the realities of car travel. Cinema had changed drastically with the advent of the talkies. and so much more!

I grew up during the 1980's when the aesthetics of 1930s were being revived in fashion, film, and architecture: pastels, art deco, modernism, shoulder-pads… some of the most influential movies had a very strong a 1930s influence: The Star Wars trilogy with its scenes inspired by Triumph of the Will, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon film reals and old cowboy films, the remake of 1932's Scarface, the Indiana Jones movies, Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy, the Conan films that made a star out of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The influence was all over the British New Romantic pop music movement, the style of Michael Jackson and Madonna, and on TV with noir detective shows. All these things continue to have a legacy today.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to She used to be fractal - A quiet, chillout, relaxing track to spaceout to and go zen… A slow cruise into nothingness, white on white. It’s as clean as new glass and as smooth as a polished stone. Gunwallace says of it “Channelling my inner shoegaze spirit”.


Topics and shownotes

Forum post about the role of the 1930s - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179231/

Featured comic:
Nocturne 21 Volume One - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/dec/06/featured-comic-nocturne-21-volume-one/

Featured music:
She used to be fractal - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/She_Used_To_Be_Fractal/ - by CartoonAdventurer, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

There are times when you need to give your brain a bit of a break, that's when comfort shows come in handy! Movies and TV shows you can watch again and again- you can appreciate them every time and they don't get old. The tension never gets too much for you because you already know what's going to happen. You can just relax and enjoy the familiar story, revelling in the company of characters you know and visiting their world once more. They're great for creating to as well because you don't have to worry about missing anything important.

I have quite a lot on my list. Often it's older stuff but there are newer things as well. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, Romney and Michelle's High School Reunion, The Life Aquatic with Steve Siszou, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, Conan the Barbarian, The Office (US version), Parks and Rec, the Richard Sharpe series, The New Girl, The Duellists, and much more. For Banes it was things like Friday the 13th part 2, Back to the Future 2, Terminator 2 and more.

This is a great season for comfort shows, especially the Christmas themed ones. What are your fave comfort shows and why?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to This theme is unsettling, creepy, on an angle… off-putting. It's a journey into a strange dimension. The lights are dim and won't turn to full brightness, it's grey and shadows abound, what are the strange sparkles in the darkness? A heavily splintered dark wooden door slams shut. This is a perfect late 80s horror film sountrack! A mix of electronic and orchestral sounds are layered to make this scary, demonic piece.


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
The Return of Jake Sunrise - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/30/featured-comic-the-return-of-jake-sunrise/

Featured music:
House of Other Worlds - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/House_of_Other_Worlds/ - by Hartchamber, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Doppelgängers was the subject of our Quackcast today. What are they? Generally they're evil duplicates of people. Originally if you saw one it was supposed to be a portent of impending doom, but they've since evolved through pop-culture to be mirror people who envy the originals and want to kill them and replace them. There are MANY other kinds of Doppelgängers too now: Future versions of people, clones, robots, virtual copies, alternate universe versions, spirits, demons, helpful lookalikes, and more.

We asked people on the forums and a newspost about the subject and their responses were really interesting! We included many of those in the cast. Links to them bellow.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to City of the Sun - Golden drops of sun, falling like heavy liquid plasma, dripping down and illuminating everything around the, converting it to bubbling, flaming, energy… spreading heat and a fury of chaotic magnetic flux… This is a beautiful, contemplative digital piece that starts slow and slowly ramps up its energy into a wall of noise.


Topics and shownotes

Link to Banes' post - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/23/dont-i-know-you/
Forum post on Doppelgängers - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179226/

Featured comic:
Silences Echo - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/21/featured-comic-silences-echo/

Featured music:
City of the Sun - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/City_of_the_Sun/ - by Topnug, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so the saying goes but it's absolutely true. There is a layered subjectivity to it based on personal preference, the cultural standards of your community, the ethnic traits of you and your peers, prevailing global fashions in appearance, the dominant archetypes in the media and so on. All these things combine to form our personal subjective ideas of beauty. You can see this yourself if you look at paintings, statues, masks, frescoes and other artifacts that have been produced by all the diverse cultures on earth over thousands of years: there IS no standard, eternal, objective of beauty.

Years ago a plastic surgeon thought he'd cracked the secret. He wrote a book about the idea of a mathematical, objective beauty model based on symmetry. Of course any artist could have told him it was absolute nonsense for any number of reasons, but popular books based of pseudo-science gain a lot of traction among the majority of people that don't tend to be able to think too hard about these questions and crave easy solutions.

There are two competing, rudimentary forces at the base of the idea of beauty:
One part is based on conformity: becoming the most generic, simplistic, ordinary, average version of something. Symmetry is a big part of that. This is what that sort of cosmetic surgeon specialises in. We can surmise this comes from the drive to find things that look like us (i.e. our tribe), and is the best representation of “us”.
The second part is based on novelty: What makes this person stand out, what makes them different and unusual.
And then cultural standards, popculture, fashion and many other factors add layers of complexity to these.

*A note on symmetry:
Part of the mistaken notion that inflated its role in “beauty” was the idea that it's an indicator of health or “good genes”, which is false. The reason for symmetry in bodies is just to make the coding simpler. Recent studies have confirmed this: just like when an artist wants to save time by using a mirror or copy, pasting and flipping to make a face or body, nature does it for the same reason.

We talk about it in much greater detail in the Quackcast! Who do you find beautiful?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Phineus Teen Wizard - Thrumming 80s groove. Synthesised neon soft pink glow in the midnight blue fuzz. We’re going back in time… roll up the sleeves on your red leather jacket, slip on your fingerless gloves, lace up your hightops, get on your BMX bike and peddle back through the decades to 1983!


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
The Faceless Comics Set 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/15/featured-comic-the-faceless-comics-set-1/

Featured music:
Phineus Teen Wizard - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Phineus_Teen_Wizard/ - by Phinmagic, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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So how do you like comedy that makes you cringe? You know that really awkward humour where you feel embarrassed for those involved and almost in physical pain for them? You feel really bad for them… It could be cruel pranks, or jokes based on lies or misunderstandings that are just carried way too far. Personally I find them hard to take. It CAN be great like in the original version of The Office, but even that was REALLY hard to watch at times.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Stick Figure Apocalypse - Relaxing, cool funk groove that cruises along dreamily, hitting turbulent waters hallway through, with a wildly discordant patch of sonic confusion, startling us out of our revere, before slipping back into the same quiet groove again and fading to silence.


Topics and shownotes

You can still see our Halloween video, which is normally a Patreon only perk!
Here - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-73979608?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator

Featured comic:
Eternity Dreams - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/07/featured-comic-eternity-dreams/

Featured music:
Stick Figure Apocalypse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Stick_Figure_Apocalypse/ - by MattDavise , rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

There are all kinds of relationships and they're great fodder for stories. The most typical is when two characters are getting INTO a relationship- all that will they/wont they stuff. But characters could also be ending a relationship, or maybe ending one in order to get into another, they could even be in a stable, long term relationship, although those aren't quite as common in media. My favourites are the ones where sex and attraction isn't a factor: relationships between family members, co-workers, friends etc. For some reason when it's platonic I find that a lot more compelling than sexual tension, especially when there would normally be the potential for sex- i.e. two unrelated compatible people with the same sexual and gender preference.

What are your favourite kinds of relationship in stories? Shipping, Love triangles?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Angel Academy - A little like the Ghost in the Shell movie theme. This music sores high through the stone vaulted ceiling of a vast cathedral tower, reaching the heavens and beyond. Golden rays of sun shine down from celestial silver tinted clouds. Thundering drums, breathy chorus intoning like the notes of panpipes, and all the sounds echo and reverberate imperially.


You can see our Halloween video from last week, which is normally a Patreon only perk!
Here - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-73979608?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Blessed Days - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/nov/01/featured-comic-blessed-days/

Featured music:
Angel Academy - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Angel_Academy/ - by Sketchydrawer, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Happy Halloween! Our topic is horror Sci-Fi. Sc-Fi brings with it a whole lot more interesting things you can do with horror and scary stories and there are so many great examples, from the worlds of HP Lovecraft, Alien franchise, Dead Space, Doom, Warhammer 40K, Event Horizon, the Cell, the SCP universe and more. We were inspired by Bane's newspost about horror and technology and all the cool responses he had. What's your fave horror SciFi?

As promised, here is our Halloween video. Patrons got access to it a day earlier, on Halloween - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-vid-73979608?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Game Punks - A hyperspeed punkish howling grind, ploughing into bedrock, ripping through concrete, burning through the forests, and drilling through time. Raw, rocky, hard, and gritty!


Topics and shownotes

Horror and Technology - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/oct/26/horror-and-technology/

Featured comic:
Joanna Ghost Hunter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/oct/25/featured-comic-joanna-ghost-hunter/

Featured music:
Game Punks - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Game_Punks/ - by TroyVS, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

How do you write scary scenes for comics? Banes loves horror so he come up with this subject, plus we're coming up to Halloween! Listen to find out what we come up with.
How do YOU write scary scenes though, what are your tips and tricks?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Diary of a girl with a third eye - The mystery of the occult, battling dark forces, a gritty darkness that swallows light whole. This tune has a wonderfully eastern sound, mixed with a darkly gothic rock feel.



Links:
Horror comedy comic - Slaughter at Camp Notamoovi (NSFW) - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Slaughter_at_Camp_Notamoovi/

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Vampire Girl - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/oct/18/featured-comic-vampire-girl/

Featured music:
Diary of a girl with a third eye - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Diary_of_a_Girl_with_A_Third_Eye/ - by Wizard Worm, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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When creating fiction we always have to stylise experience in many and various ways in order to communicate with the viewer in a way that's meaningful to them because it's usually impossible to simply show them the exact reality of something and expect that same meaning to carry through.

A great example is a fight scene: when you're involved in a fight or close to it, it can be pretty affecting. Your body releases adrenaline, your pupils widen to take in as much as possible, your brain is on high alert so it narrows in on just the action and notices everything that it can, this makes time seem to slow and fight last much longer than it actually does. To the person involved or the close spectator everything is more dangerous, epic, and impactful. However, to a more distant viewer the fight is over in seconds, it probably seemed silly, stupid, even embarrassing and pathetic. So as a creator we have a whole bag of tricks available to us to convey the feelings of the participant or close observer to the audience- we slow down the action a LOT by making the fight last 10x times longer, we zoom in on the fighters, we zoom in on the fist that's doing the punching, we add SFX, VFX, tone and colour and a million other things.

That's just one example, most of reality has to be stylised in various ways in order for it to translate to a viewer in the way the creator intends. And we have many ways of doing this, some more extreme than others. Musicals for example are highly stylised but the singing and dancing is generally not just for show, it communicates meaning just like the rest of the less flamboyant parts of the story. Even something like a documentary, reality TV or a sports broadcast have to stylise reality in a way to more effectively communicate and engage with viewers; through camera angles, clever editing, cutting etc. Pretty much nothing is simply presented as is.

This is the reason I defend the art of Rob Liefeld: objectively it does not depict reality, he puts giant shoulder-pads on characters, too many pouches in silly places, too many teeth in grins, broken backed bum-popping women, huge nonsense guns that are just random assemblages of tubes with a handle and trigger, anatomy that has only a passing acquaintance with the human form- And yet it's not what the art shows, it's about what it evokes in its communication with the viewer. The bum-popping women mean “sex appeal”, huge guns mean destructive potential, giant should-pads equal power and strength, pouches equal action, toothy grins mean determination of purpose. All these things communicate directly with the viewer without having to be spelled out, and in the 1990s that was very successful for him!

I think it's very important to understand the stylisations we have to learn to use in order to properly translate our meanings to our audiences. Not just for comics but for books, movies, plays etc. Reality is never presented directly, not even in news broadcasts or 3D VR, or security footage, it's always stylised and modified in some way.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to AGENCY - High up in a helicopter, swooping in over a vast metropolis. Endless rows of buildings fly by underneath. Sophistication, towering glass skyscrapers, vast canyons of concrete and steel… It’s music for the big, cold city. Pulsing 80s synth tracks,


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Drunk Duck Awards 2022 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/oct/04/featured-comic-drunk-duck-awards-2022/

Featured music:
AGENCY - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/AGENCY/. - by JediAnn Solo, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PIT FACE - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

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Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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What happens when the victim becomes the victor? Most of the time it's like the classic line from The Who “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”, typically revolutions (and elections), that promise change don't really deliver, the new people use it as a chance to get revenge on their enemies, take advantage of things the same as the last guys, and do everything they can to cling to power. The true exceptions are rare and special, i.e. Vaclav Havel and the Velvet revolution.

We decided to apply this to fiction and characters- What happens when the underdog gets the upper hand? Do they use it as a chance to take revenge, are they gracious and magnanimous, do they become the bully themselves, do they betray their ideals? How they handle their power is very interesting and says a lot about them. There are characters like Walter white, a downtrodden highschool teacher, who rises to power and becomes a crime boss. A similar story is told in Scarface, 711 Ocean Drive, and The Godfather. The new Netflix series “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” has a smaller scale take on it with a bullied youth becoming a super powered cyber-warrior criminal. In these stories the character arc is well portrayed and it's interesting to watch their moral fall even as they rise through the ranks of evil.

However, it can become a little more muddy when a character is written as honourable and good and yet they still use their sudden power to get revenge in a petty way. This simple act can be a powerful indication of hypocrisy and moral weakness, or just really bad writing. Of course that doesn't apply to all acts of revenge, only when it betrays a character's ideals or is OUT of character.

How do your characters handle a turnabout in fortunes? Do they use it as a chance to take what they can get and bet the bad guy themselves, do they get revenge, do they throw away their ideals, do they stay true to their character, are they magnanimous?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Crimson Stars - A creepy, gothic horror techno landscape of winking red stars and the pale blue trailing lights of ion drives in deep space. This is a cold world of blackness, danger, and vampires! The music really sets the scene.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Dave Skunk Comic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/20/featured-comic-dave-skunk-comic/

Featured music:
Crimson Stars - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Crimson_Stars/ - by Commissar_Tarkin, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Kawaiidaigakusei- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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If something affects or disturbs you so much that you want to respond to it through a story that you write, that can be a pretty powerful form of inspiration! But it depends on how you handle it. For example, Stephan King's acclaimed novel Misery was inspired by nasty interactions he had with fans after he published a fantasy novel. This story was very well received and even turned into a popular movie.

And then there are other ways to handle it… Popular fantasy author JK Rowling felt personally attacked by responses to her public stance on social media that transwomen aren't really women, so she incorporated the episode into a fictional story (a detective series she writes), where a creator had to deal with unfair and extreme criticism. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, but the way she handled it was less inspiration and more just a rant about her own experiences only slightly fictionalised. It was so poorly done that it even disappointed fans of her detective series that have no stake in her social media battles.

There are good ways to handle rants like this in fiction and bad ways, and we're going to talk about both! Have you ever used a negative real world expereince as inspiration for a story? I know I have, but I always keep it subtle, unlike some.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to GOP Nuts - Gunwallace note: “With apologies to Vince Guaraldi” - Why? Because this is such a cool, jazzy “Peanuts” sounding theme and Vince Guaraldi was the master behind the themes for the animated version of Peanuts… which is what the “GOP Nuts” is stylistic parodying in its spoof of the American Republican party!
It’s an easygoing theme driven by the low notes of a piano, a breathy flute, brush tapping on the drums, a cheeky, warbling trumpet, a plucked double bass, and a zoo full of goats!


Topics and shownotes

Links
Tantz's newspost about elegant rants - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/02/venting-your-frustrations-needs-elegance/

Featured comic:
Brittany Hyperstyle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/13/featured-comic-brittany-hyperstyle/

Featured music:
GOP Nuts - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/GOP_Nuts/ - by Rawdale, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

There's a lot of buzz about so called AI generated art at the moment using programs like Dall-E, Neural blender, Dream studio lite and so on. People use text prompts, i.e. “flying clockwork fish balloon” and the AI generates “art” based upon that. It usually does this by using actual art and photography created by real people, and visually mixing them to create a new image. Some results are much better than others.

The main issue with the approach is that the AI like all AI is dumb: it has no awareness, no understanding, it can't think, it can only serve up the most superficial interpretation of the prompt text. 100% of the “meaning” or “art” a viewer sees in that image is their own imagining, this in itself is never a good indication of art. But this also means that the AI has no capacity to understand the visual language it's speaking so it just provides you with a poor facsimile of art, which is all it can ever do due to inherent limitations.

For example, ask it to create a pirate image based on certain parameters. All it will be able to do is create a pastiche of already created images on the subject, like a bad deviant art image by a poor artist. A good human artist would think about the subject in terms of the ethnicity of the pirates, the type of vessel they use, how ratty or decorated their clothes are due to their time at sea, the body hair, tattoos, piercings and injuries on the pirates, the time of day and where the light comes from, the style of clothes and weapons due to the period, geography, and culture of the pirates etc. All that means something and will have a significant influence on the image (you can apply this to any other scenario too), while AI can only produce generic pretend art.

Unfortunately people don't understand these significant limitations and expect AI to do more than it can, (in all fields, not just art). AI is a useful tool when used correctly and when you properly understand its limitations, but when you don't it creates havoc. Which is why AI assisted systems tend to be so shit- like auto-correct spellcheckers, Google search algorithms, Facebook and Instagram image checkers, YouTube copyright checkers, “smart” chat-bots that big companies use as help systems etc. If we have people mistakenly thinking AI can replace artists or graphic designers, then we're in for a tsunami of boring, generic, meaningless design and the world will be a blander place because of it.

Try not to be fooled by the “idea” of art, when you see an AI generated image remember there was no thought behind it, no meaning to the placement of figures, style of clothes, body posture, mistakes etc, and the stylistic choices are simply stolen from human artists. It's a system that specialises in creating pointless parody pastiches.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Brittany Hyperstyle - Bouncy, pop bubblegum bubbles of light and joy floating, rising and falling in sweet smelling convection currents. This sound is pink and powder blue with a sheen of iridescence. Synth electronica that’s fun, light and happy!

Topics and shownotes

Links
Forum discussion that inspired the topic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179155/?page=1#latest/
Dream studio lite - https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/dream/


Featured comic:
Vast as the Night - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/sep/06/featured-comic-vast-as-the-night/

Featured music:
Brittany Hyperstyle - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Brittany_Hyperstyle/ - by Shampoo Venom, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Source material is something that we can love and respect, but it's just as often disregarded, degenerated, and denigrated, especially these days where it seems like everything you see is an adaptation or even an adaptation OF an adaptation or worse. I think it's important to go back to the sources so you can see what was truly great about the original to begin with. It can help you see what was lost in the adaptations and to discover new and important meanings and ideas that you never would have guessed at.

This Quackcast topic was inspired by a video by the Youtube based culture critic Georg Rockall-Schmidt and his video titled “Nevermind The Source Material”.

I'm sure there have been a lot of times for all of us when we've consumed an adaptation of one of our favourite books and we've thought it was lacking. But have you ever done the reverse? Have you seen an adaptation and then hunted out the source material to see what all the fuss was about, to see where it all started? I've done that quite a few times myself and it's usually pretty rewarding. I really loved the film version of Tank Girl, it was anarchic and captured a certain alternative 90's zeitgeist. The original comic series though is a very different beast! The movie has a lot of heart and pathos, but the comic is far more cynical, nihilistic and sardonic with a much harder edge. They both have the same sort of style, but the point of view and sense of humour of the creators is largely absent from the film.

Many of us know Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the film and TV versions, especially starring Colin Firth. Mr Darcy in those versions is seen as the prototypical sexy, rich, tall dark and handsome man that women lust over, who Elizabeth Bennet eventually wins… It's seen as a great romantic story with a strong heroine. What's lost from the source material is the fact that it's a romantic comedy over the top of a satire on British mating rituals of the country gentry. Rather than an aloof, desirable bachelor, Mr Darcy is actually a pathetic, shy man who hides his acquired social anxiety behind a mask of snobbery, although he's good at heart. And all throughout, Elizabeth's real goal is not to win a man and a big country estate, rather it's to survive and retain her place and pride among her piers.

The Adams Family is a much adapted piece of work. There was the TV series, a cartoon series, a TV movie, the 90s movies, and now a Netflix series, but what was the source material? You'd think it was Charles Adams' comics from the New Yorker, but that's not actually fully true. The Adams Family was actually created for the 1960s TV series starting John Astin, Charles Adams worked with the creators to develop the characters. His comic was simply a bunch of single panel jokes with unnamed reoccurring characters, it wasn't till the show that they acquired structure, names, personalities and a world to exist in. Most people today have no idea that the 90's movies that are seen as so definitive are simply short summary parodies of the 60s TV series. The latest Netflix version is basically a pale copy of a pale copy. It would take far too long to explain what has been lost in the translation- I am sure the Netflix series will be good in its own right but we should never let later adaptations overshadow usurp superior source material.

Have you ever gone back to uncover the source material for something and been pleasantly surprised? Or maybe even disappointed?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Mega Maiden and the Chop Chop Princess - Heavy, deep bass synth thunder dueling with percussion and synth guitar in a fierce fight for dominance, which turns into a dance battle to the death with the bass synth landing the final, decisive blow!

Topics and shownotes

Links
Georg Rockall-Schmidt - Nevermind The Source Material - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlD63pcwjgE&t

Featured comic:
Crimson Stars - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/30/featured-comic-crimson-stars/

Featured music:
Mega Maiden and the Chop Chop Princess - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Mega_Maiden_and_the_Chop_Chop_Princess/ - by Teh Andeh, rated.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

What makes a character two dimensional? What makes them three dimensional? Does it matter that they only have two dimensions to them? This was an idea that GeekyGami posed and so we thought we'd explore it in the cast. My own theory is that a character that is purely archetypal, tropeish, or cliche, with everything about them flowing from that archetype, and they never go beyond their archetypal traits- that makes them 2D.

An example for this could be a “nerd” character who has their trousers pulled up too high, a pocket protector, short sleeved collard shirt tucked into their undies, thick rimmed glasses with tape in the middle, slicked down dorky short hair, pimples and greasy skin. They can't talk to girls, they're super smart, they're arrogant to anyone who they see as less intelligent in math or the sciences, they can't do sports, they're uncoordinated, they're often bullied, asthmatic, easily injured and talk in a high pitched voice. They only like Scifi and fantasy and they play dungeons and dragons all the time… etc. That's a moronic cliche, but it's often used. If they stay perfectly true to that no mater what happens or changes around them physically or socially then in my opinion they're 2D.

2D characters are not always a negative thing though. Not every side character needs to have more to them. Even primary characters can get by as simple 2D cutouts if the story needs them to be that way. You always do what's right for the story rather than sticking to rules or biases about what you should or shouldn't do with characters… Intention is the main thing! You don't want to inadvertently make a 2D character when they're not meant to be that way.
What do you think makes a 2D character?


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Scorned - In the words of the man himself: Went for a Sex in the City meets the Underworld kind of vibe. I would say it’s a cheeky salsa rhythm that drives you to shake and dance, which then takes a terrifying leap into a gothic baroque circus of doom!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Forum post - Hawk and Flo Ice Cream Truck of Doom part 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179142/

Featured comic:
Hawk and Flo Ice Cream Truck of Doom part 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/23/featured-comic-hawk-and-flo-ice-cream-truck-of-doom-part-1/

Featured music:
Scorned - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Scorned/ - by Damehelsing, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Today we're talking about a technique in storytelling that we're calling the “revelation”. Inspired by Banes doing an article on the weird trope in movies of having a character discover newspaper stories about the villain that suddenly reveal the true stakes of the story and kick things into high gear. There are other types of revelation in stories though and they're used in different ways.

The revelation technique can be used in the midpoint of a story as a way of showing the true scope of what the protagonist faces, which signals a corresponding urgency in the story, a rise in tension and an increase in pace - when done well! When done badly, as in the recent Marvel movie Eternals, it has the opposite effect- killing tension and diffusing the energy of the story. A revelation can be used towards the end of a story to show a twist which makes you reevaluate the entire story and look at it in a different way as in Unbreakable or The Usual Suspects. A late revelation can also be used to enrich the story by revealing extra details about a character and sweetening the story after the climax. And then there's the typical Marvel movie way of using super late revelations in the form of Easter eggs which give an audience a sense of anticipation and reward, uncovering secret things about where a story will go next!

A good revelation can add a lot of spice to a story and you're usually pretty safe in its use. The Eternals is a weird exception, where they really messed up this easy technique, TWICE, and cut the power to the story. Watch it and you'll see what I mean! Do you know any stories where a revelation ruined things?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Hawk and Flo Ice Cream Truck of Doom part 1 - Flicker, flicker, hypervelocity turning and spinning, action and movement. Techno synth keyboard, strings snapping drums moving faster than thought.

Topics and shownotes

Links
Banes' newspaper revelation newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/16/the-horror-newspaper-revelation-scene/

Some of the stuff mentioned in the cast:
The Eternals - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9032400/
The usual suspects - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
The Guest - https://asianwiki.com/The_Guest_(Korean_Drama)
La Mante - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6467482/


Featured comic:
Them There Hills - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/16/featured-comic-them-there-hills/

Featured music:
Hawk and Flo Ice - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hawk_and_Flo_Ice_Cream_Truck_of_Doom_part_1/ - by HawkandFloAdventures, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Leaders are not born, they're created… literally in the case of fiction, created by creators of comics, books, movies, and other media! For this Quackcast I was inspired by two things: a video on Leader Characters by the satirical YouTube channel Terrible Writing Advice, and the Disney movie Lightyear, in which the lone wolf classical hero figure learns how to lead.

Lots of traits are useful for leadership: Charisma, experience, age, rank, communication skill, empathy, compassion, dominance, and confidence among others, and different styles of leadership work better in different contexts. Take for example the military paradigm of the lieutenant and the sergeant - a lieutenant is typically the lowest ranking commissioned officer, they're a beginner. They're young and they're not experienced but they outrank enlisted men and non-commissioned officers who might have more experience than them. The sergeant is usually one of the highest ranking “non-commissioned officers”, they're usually older than the lieutenant, who outranks them, and they have a LOT more experience. This creates an interesting leadership dynamic- the lieutenant learns from the sergeant but they also lead in a different way from them. The sergeant is better at leading the soldiers and knowing what to do from a practical standpoint while the lieutenant is better at theory and interpreting with higher level orders, eg. “Our orders say we have to take that hill and meet up with the other squad near the river at this map reference, so I want to split the squad…” etc While sergeant will actually be able put all that into practice a lot better than the lieutenant could.
- (Said by a non-military person, so this could be very wrong)

Fiction is full of leaders, good and bad. Most Scifi tends to have a military influence so it all has a very familiar military hierarchical setup. Star Trek is especially known for its “good” leaders, who're inspiring, clever, brave, full of empathy, experienced, and wise. The perfect foil to them is Zapp Brannigan from Futurama who was specifically created to be the anti-Star Trek type leader with all the very worst traits that any leader could ever have. He's a horrible person, sacrifices troops meaninglessly, has a poor grasp of strategy, and takes advantage of his position for self-gratification and self-aggrandizement, all of which makes him beautifully entertaining as a character! He's one of my fave leaders in fiction, on a par with the 90s Star Trek leaders Jean-Luc Picard, Captain Benjamin Sisko , and Captain Kathryn Janeway.

Leadership is a huge subject with lots of other aspects. Politics is a massive subsection in its own right! And we can't forget that it's the followers who actually give the leader power and if they choose to desert then that power can vanish… We cover all this and more in the Quackcast. Who're your fave fictional leaders and why?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Waves Inside - Clear ocean. Orange blue pink. Liquid metal swells. A calming, hypnotic synth journey over 1000 kilometers of smoothly textured sea.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Terrible Writing Advice, Leader Characters - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawvXdBYlAI

Featured comic:
Mydan Post Beginnings - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/09/featured-comic-mydan-post-beginnings/

Featured music:
The Waves Inside - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Waves_Inside/ - by TheJagged, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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How do you describe your work to sell it to people? Writing blurbs is a real skill! You generally have to avoid doing these four things: Underselling, Overselling, Selling the wrong story, or Revealing too much. It's quite a tricky balance to master. I've been writing feature blurbs for comics here on DD for many years now (about 16), so I've developed a technique but even I haven't mastered it!

- Overselling is when you promise too much, more than the work can ever provide. It might help you attract an audience but it'll probably piss them off when the promises aren't met.
- Underselling is when you downplay the work too much so that it doesn't really sound interesting and discourages people from checking it out at all.
- Selling the wrong story is when you advertise things about your work that it's really not about, like advertising it as a love story when it's really about violent action. You'll just attract the wrong audience and lose readers.
- Selling too much is when you reveal major plot points and crucial story elements. People don't usually want to look into a story if they already know how it's going to go.

My technique with featured comics is to use a standard format. I introduce the main character and and the issues facing them in their world. Then I talk about the art and the story style. I do this so I can personalise the story for people, centering it onto that character or characters. Mentioning the issues introduces some stakes so people start to wonder how the character will deal with those. Talking about the world of the characters gives everything a context, a playing field unique to them and their situation. Talking about the story style, genre etc filters things to the correct audience, as does the mention of art. This works for me because I have to do it over and over hundreds of times, another style might work better for you. :)

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Sad W - Hurry up and wait! All the loose energy and stress of a Friday afternoon when it’s almost time to go home but your boss throws an urgent last minute job onto your desk. Hurry, hurry, quick, finish! Damn, you made a huge mistake, do all that bit again. Hurry! This is a modern sounding, high energy, track, thrumming with urgency.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Forum post - Writing spoiler free blurbs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179116/

Featured comic:
Remedial Magic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/aug/01/featured-comic-remedial-magic/

Featured music:
Sad W - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Sad_W/ - by Sstavix, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
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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.

This trope was particularly dominated by male characters until recently when female characters have finally been able to join their ranks. My theory was that the majority of writers always used to be males and so were much better at portraying women from an external perspective; i.e. as what they mean to males: desirable, caring, scary etc, rather than an internal perspective showing what it's like to BE them, as they did with male characters. A good example of this is the Simpsons where Homer is usually a manchild while Marge is generally a responsible mother who holds the family together.

But now we see more instances of women allowed to be silly, immature, pathetic, childish and funny, just like their male counterparts and it's really good to see that balance being restored; All about Steve with Sandra Bullock, most Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson films, Muriel's Wedding, even Fleabag depicts a womanchild character, although in a very self critical light.

In the end though I think the trope resonates with us because we are all really still children inside, underneath the superficial trappings of adult responsibilities, restraints, and tastes are the same childhood exuberances and joys. The biggest, meanest, bearded, hairy man or the old white haired bespectacled woman are still the same kids inside that they were when they were growing up and this is something that we all have in common. The older I become the more I look back at the facile childhood aspirations to adulthood -things like wanting to drive, to drink, take drugs, fight in a war, lose one's virginity- as being the epitome of immaturity and childishness. None of those things are about growing up or adulthood in any way, in fact they're exactly the reverse. Adulthood is about responsibilities. The womanchild and manchild characters can allow us to vicariously enjoy adult life without responsibility, whether it's in a positive way like The Dude or negative like Zach Galifianakis' Alan in The Hangover series.

Do you agree? What are your fave Womanchilds and manchilds?


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Zeitgeist B-Side - Dizzy, dreamy, acoustic guitar, throwing moods and colour. This takes us from a minimal white apartment, to the twilight shadows of the evening in a forested wood. Night surrounds and pervades.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' Newspost Manchildren - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/21/the-manchild/


Featured comic:
The Waves Inside - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/26/featured-comic-the-waves-inside/

Featured music:
Zeitgeist B-Side - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/B_Side/ - by ISTKY, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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The risks of online creative success
We live in a wonderful time where you're able to turn your creative passion into a job that can support you just by using freely available online services like YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Patreon, Ebay, Paypal, Etsy, Webtoons etc. You can start with nothing more than your computer or phone and end up with a thriving business based on your passion project. It's not easy, achieving enough success where you can quit your day job still tends to take a lot of work, but once you get there it can be amazing. However, that's not the end of the story unfortunately.

The services that you use do not have too much compassion or care for their creators. They are not subjected to the same regulations or legal responsibilities as traditional businesses. They are not neutral services that you can use to build a business around and always have the same expectation of stability.

To use an analogy- it's like a business park office complex offers tenants free space and basic services if they set up their businesses there. So of course you leave your previous rented office spaces because it's pointless managing two locations. In return for the use of the space and services you help bring in multiple new customers who want to see you, but they're able to also redirect them to their other tenants and show their advertising to them as well. That system seems to work great for both of you, till they decide they want to redirect all of your regular customers to their other tenants because they don't like what you do for their image anymore; or they decide to shut down your offices which erases all the money, time and effort you've put in to making your business a success…

If that happened in the real world, you could very easily have a legal case against them. But there is zero recourse like that in the digital world. Instead they pretend that they're just providing free tools and nothing more, and so they have zero responsibility for the real world investment of money, time, and energy that people put into their work to build their audiences- Audiences which are the real capital and what Google, Facebook, Instagram, Etsy, Spotify and all the rest REALLY need the hard work of the creatives for. These “free” services use the effort of the creatives as a free resource to build and maintain a larger user base that they exploit in various ways; data-mining them, trading personal-information, up-selling subscription services, and selling their time to advertisers.
So they DO have a lot of ethical responsibility to their creative user-base, but not a legal one because the law hasn't caught up yet unfortunately.

There have been many thousands of instances of creators being shafted because the service they used suddenly screwed them over. Patreon, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Tumblr, Paypal, Facebook to name a few have all carelessly harmed creators/users in various ways.

So, you can become a huge success, but you can also have that success robbed from you by the very system that you used to start yourself off. How do you combat this? You could try lobbying politicians to bring accountability to these large companies that control the internet, but more realistically there are sensible precautions you should take: Don't quit your day job- always have a real source of real world income; Don't put all your eggs in one basket- use multiple services and sites and accounts for your work if you can; Try and own your own domain name so you can point users to a new service if your old one betrays you. I'm sure there are other ways too.

Lastly, we can sort of put The Duck Webcomics in this category too since we offer a free service to creators and we benefit form the audiences those creators bring in. However, we haven't changed our rules for over a decade, the service were provide is fully stable, our entire motivation is about maintaining a good neutral place for creators to host their comics, we don't make any profit on the site, and we don't mine our site audiences in any way at all: no data-mining, no selling of information to marketers, no up-selling of subscriptions or other services. But even so you shouldn't just put all your eggs in our basket either because no site is 100% reliable in perpetuity.


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Cribal Series - Raw, wiry electric guitar weaves in and out in an exotic tangle, threading around this tune to create a barbaric themed melange from a distant time and place.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Black Parade - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/19/featured-comic-the-black-parade/

Featured music:
Cribal Series - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Cribal_Series/ - by Trebuxet, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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History is happening faster now. With the growth of universal high speed communication and cheap world travel, culture and technology move at unprecedented speeds. Because of these factors the rate of change is different to what it was at any time in the past. This is an objective and verifiable truth rather than subjective perception: the current speed and quality of global communication has never been possible before and that has ramifications for how the world changes.

This topic was inspired by Banes's newspost last week about how a huge stoush on American late night TV only a little over ten years ago is now unrelatable history; something that was so important then is largely meaningless now. A fight over TV time-slots lacks meaning for us now because time-slots are irrelevant, not to mention most people would rather stream than watch TV. And yet at the time it was vitally important, as it would have been in the 60 years or more before that.

My cover image references phones and how they've changed at an ever increasing rate over the years. They've changed so fast and so universally that you can date when something was made to a granular degree just by seeing a phone, to the year. In the past you could read an old comic or see an old TV show and there weren't that many differences to the present day because things changed slower. You could see that fashions and the styles of things had changed but mostly it was still all very relatable and you could not easily pinpoint the date of something to the year it was made from only a single item of tech.

The pace of change means that many stories happen in ways today they couldn't in the past, but it also means much more things from the past are harder to relate to for people who've had no direct experience of them in the historical contexts they came from…
What are some of the things you recall that have no meaning today?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to FrayFall - In the words of the maestro: “Still in a soundscape sort of mood. Calmness, but demons lurking is what I was going for”… And this is what we get with a seemingly serene landscape of slightly pulsing tones, fading in and out and overlaying one another like the calls of distant whales in the green-deep open ocean… But the thing about depths is that you never really know what’s lurking down there, just out of sight.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' Newspost about modern period pieces - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/11/you-call-that-a-period-piece/


Featured comic:
Book in Hat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/12/featured-comic-book-in-hat/

Featured music:
FrayFall - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/FrayFall/ - by Frae, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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The Superhero movie cast last week was popular, I wanted to chat to Tantz about different types of superheroes. We all know that the same kinds of superheroes seem to popup and reoccur in multiple forms all the time, even within the same worlds, i.e god-like superheroes like Superman, Captain Marvel, Omni-man, Homelander, or Magical types like Doctor Strange, Zatana etc. It was a fun chat about all the categories and subcategories we could think about!

There are so many heroes that fit in multiple groups and of course there are way more categories than either Tantz or I could think of. Here are the ones we thought of; God types (i.e Superman), Speedsters (Flash), Magical devices (Shazam), Supernatural (Ghost Rider), Humans who use tech (Batman), Magic users (Dr Strange), Mutants (Wolverine), Angels (actual angels as superheroes), plot-armourerd human contextual heroes (Judge Dredd), Heroes enhanced with tech (Spiderman), Disabled heroes (Oracle), Strength types (Hulk), Heroes WITHOUT secret identities (not that many), Gritty (The Punisher), Guns (The Punisher), Military (Tankgirl), Rich people (Ironman), Immortals (Wolverine), and so on!

Tantz and I are both pretty ignorant though. If you know more please say! It's not the categories that are the interesting part though, it's how many heroes basically fill the same roles. Like, how many Superman style “god” types are there for example?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Shadow Born - Low sun glinting through gaps in the slow moving silhouette of a freight train shuffling past into the clitterly clattery distance, losing itself in evening twilight shadows as day sinks away to night… This is a soundscape of shadow, winter and darkness, rendered with atmospheric, rhythmic, layered synth sounds.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Goldstar Of Wishes and Miracles - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jul/05/featured-comic-goldstar-of-wishes-and-miracles/

Featured music:
Shadow Born - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Shadow_Born/ - by GunPowderRum, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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I wanted to do an easy and fun one this week and just chat about our fave superhero movies, starting with our firsts! For me and Banes it was Superman with Christopher Reeve. It's a real classic, full of positivity, hope, and optimism, all with bright colours and classic iconic imagery… In that way it's a bit like many of the Marvel films and the more popular DC offerings like Aquaman and WonderWoman, but without the overbuilt and over-defined muscles!

Reeve was handsome in an almost alien sort of way and quite well built but his muscles weren't pumped up to the extreme like they are on pretty much every single modern superhero movie character, which is quite interesting when you think about it. His suit was very simple- no crazy little irrelevant textures that are there for no clear reason, no finicky details and effects, it was just bold and flat like in the original comics. Starkly iconic!

The superhero films that do better always seem to be the ones that are completely unapologetic and unironic in their portrayals. They don't try to make their heroes “realistic”, they don't deconstruct them, layer on drama, get rid of the over the top costumes, tone down colours or superhero abilities. Superhero films that aren't ashamed to be superhero films tend to succeed. You could say that the other side of the coin is when things are taken too far as in Batman and Robin, but that was an obvious self parody rather than a film in love with the idea of superheros.

One of my own personal faves is Captain America: First Avenger, because it shows the true superhero origins in the real historical context as well as actually showing that superhero doing his day to day missions after getting his powers (fighting the Nazis and Hydra). Too many of the films just give as an origin story and then a climax, they never ever actually show us what the hero “does”: They ONLY show a simple progression from birth of the hero to challenge hero faces to hero overcoming challenge. The fact that it gives us a proper historical context can't be overstated - It means you get to see the world in which the very idea of the modern superhero was actually created, the world that gave birth to these superheros is actually on show!

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Space Pack - A gentle dancy progression, leading into more and more urgency and danger. Very Scifi and slightly spooky, with a little explosion at the very end… But is it really the end?

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
DNR - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jun/28/featured-comic-dnr/

Featured music:
Space Pack - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Space_Pack/ - by Stingy, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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A and B stories… And C, and D etc. It seems that it's more popular than ever to have stories with multiple concurrent threads. This is when you have a main story and a bunch of other sub stories all happening at the same time. These might come together at the end of the story or they might peter out. We don't get many stories just made with just an A-plot and nothing else these days.

I used to think it was the mark of a superior writer, but it's really not at all, it's just another in a long line of techniques that has its uses and missuses; most annoying of which is when cutting to the B story takes the momentum and energy out of the A story or it changes the tone of the overall story in an unfavourable way. While a good use of a B story could be to give the audience a momentary rest from the stress and urgency of the A story, while retaining the momentum.

The multiple thread story structure is most obvious in sitcoms, but it's really everywhere and when it's good you don't tend to notice too much. Do you write stories with multiple subplots? Can you name a story that's just an A plot and nothing else?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Into the Bookwoods - A folksy calming journey into dark green, misty, warm depths and golden lit fields in afternoon sun. An acoustic driven piece with the pleasing sounds of plucked wire strings!


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Shadow Born - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jun/21/featured-comic-shadow-born/

Featured music:
Into the Bookwoods - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Into_the_Bookwoods/ - by Kvalhissir, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Our very own Tantz made a newspost last week about the idea of “Heroes” who are really villains… or at least they're actually villains who think they're the hero, but come to realise that they aren't. Sometimes that makes them change their ways and they seek redemption, maybe even becoming a true hero. Sometimes they just lean into and embrace their true villain nature.

There are many examples in stories: Disney's Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Lord and Captain Flashheart in the Blackadder series, Zapp Brannigan from Futurama, Stan Smith in American Dad, even Ace Kinkaid in my comic Pinky TA. They're fun characters… It can make for more complex villains, nuanced heroes, or just subversion of audience expectation.

A real life example came to me when I watched the nastiness of the Russian invasion unfold in Ukraine and realised that they used all the same justifications as our countries did for our invasions and occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. We're ALL “the baddies”, no one is immune from self delusion and self righteousness.

Start Audio - Better Call Saul
End Audio - The Burbs

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Cassie York in the Purple Nowhere - A sophisticated, classy, adult, dancey, jazzy piece mixed with some sharper, harder edged rock. It’s a well made, pretty dress sword with an extra hard edge. Decorative and yet practical.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost about a hero being the villain - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jun/03/when-the-hero-is-the-villain/

Featured comic:
Space Pack - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jun/07/featured-comic-space-pack/

Featured music:
Cassie York in the Purple Nowhere - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Cassie_York_In_the_Purple_Nowhere_Part_I/ - by AidenGrunge, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

How do you keep on with your creative output when something happens to you? When you lose function or are impaired in some way, how do you adapt or relearn so you can keep on as you were before? Maybe you can't and have to change to another medium that's a better fit for your abilities? Comic creator Bravo1102 once talked about how he moved from drawing to using action figures to make his comics partially because of his eyesight. My own eyesight has suddenly started to go bad and I'm having to adapt to that, and Tantz tells us how her deteriorating eyesight forced her to work digitally.

The four of us have had limited experience at dealing directly with impairment, but we've had our moments and all of us know many people who've faced more significant challenges. On numerous occasions I've suffered paralysis to my thumbs lasting many months (alternating sides, not both at the same time), in order to keep on creating I had learn to used the mouse in my other hand (which I still do today), and create a brace made of bands and ties so I could hold my pens and brushes. But that was a minor inconvenience compared to the situation faced by Pitface's mum, Karen Hillard Good, a noted illustrator and artist known for her commercial work and children's books. Last year she experienced a stroke which paralyzed half of her body as well as causing some cognitive impairment. She's had to adapt to her changed physical abilities, relearn how to use her body to create and overcome the challenges facing her.

As we age and life happens to us there are many things to which we have to learn to adapt, not just physical impairment but mental too. It's just as difficult to adapt to things happening with your mind, like not being able to concentrate, memory issues, depression etc. Are there any physical or mental issues you've had to learn to adapt to so you can continue to create? If so, how did you do it?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Sophomore - Sparking into action, the reverent tones of a groovy church organ play us into the roiling conflagration of this dancey little tune, full of heat and glaring orange light, this sound warms you through!


Topics and shownotes

Links

Artist Karen Hillard Good - https://www.facebook.com/Karen-Hillard-Good-Studio-Art-444025792286012/
Bravo1102 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/bravo1102/

Featured comic:
The Sophomore - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/31/featured-comic-the-sophomore/

Featured music:
The Sophomore - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Sophomore/ - by MrPenguin, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Adaptations of one thing into another is an interesting process. What's lost, what's gained, what modifications do you have to do to make it happen? As webcomicers we do it all the time in many ways, we have to adapt our influences into ideas, adapt those to stories, and adapt those to images and comics, which isn't trivial! It's often quite difficult to transform the written word into narrative sequential art- what portion of the writing gets directly turned into images, what's cut, and what becomes dialogue? For me about 20% is cut, 78% becomes art and 2% becomes dialogue or captions.

We chat about film and story adaptations as well of course, War of the Worlds (HG Wells) in particular, since it's become several different movies, artwork, video games, a radio play, and a really excellent prog-rock concept album among other things. All those adaptations take different approaches, Orson Wells' radio play version updated it from the late 19th century Britain to his present day and location and framed it as a developing news story, making clever use of the medium it was playing on. Most cinematic versions have followed Orson's style, but the concept album by Jeff Wayne stuck with the original historical setting which made the story much more interesting, tragic and compelling.

Another more current and different take on adaptations is the “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” movie. This is a live action and CG animated hybrid film version of the 1990s Disney adventure cartoon series which featured a crime fighting rodent team. The usual approach to those adaptations is to simply update the origin story, stating from 0 and set it in the present day using current animation technology to make the characters look as real as possible, the original media is treated as lore and inspiration but is not cannon to toe movie. This movie however took the opposite approach: the original cartoon is treated as a real TV show that the characters (who are shown as actors), stared in, and this movie shows their lives 30 years later. The animation is a mixture of 3d CGI and pseudo 2D cell animation, plus pseudo stop motion claymation and the film is largely used to parody and spoof animated adaptations in general, so it’s perfect for this topic!

So what are you fave adaptations? Where dp they go wrong or right? And how do you go about the process with your own work?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amie Armageddon. Hard to describe this one, it sounds like a great pop-song you’d hear on the radio or as the theme song to a big budget movie. Echoing tonal vocals, evocative, layered, sounds… It sets a scene and then expands upon it. Just a really lovely piece of electronica.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/23/featured-comic-amie-armageddon/

Featured music:
Amie Armageddon - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amie_Armageddon/ - by Machineheadstudio, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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We start off with the idea of talking about art techniques, tips and tricks we've mastered and could help people with but the cast turned into a discussion about drawing male and female characters- also trans, androgynous, etc. There's an art to representing gender in imagery! It's super important to remember that the way we see gender in art is mainly culture based rather than an innate biological reaction and the perception of gender in art is different according to your cultural background. It's basically a visual language that everyone learns, but as an artist you have to learn to actually “speak” it, and that's not as straight forward as you think.

A rough example of of how culture based our perception of gender in imagery is:

- In most Western art the “male” is the default. We take for granted that a figure is male in art unless it's augmented in some way, the most basic version is the stick figure. These are men. To make a female stick figure you add long hair, a dress or boobs. Some or all of that, it doesn't matter. And this scales up to other representations. A natural, more realistic depiction of a female person won't always read as a woman in art unless they are “feminised” in some way, i.e. a prominent bust, removing angles and lines and adding soft, rounded features, featured lips, larger eyes, thin waste, wide hips, long legs, large thighs, styled hair, thin neck, large head. And doing any of that to a male figure is a way to “feminise” them or blend their gender.

-In comic art from places like Japan and Korea it's the opposite somewhat, especially manga. The female form there is more of the default. Male characters involve a lot more augmentation to create a “masculine” effect, sometimes bordering on caricature, as can happen with female characters in Western art. A generic male manga character would typically read as more “feminine” if dumped straight into a western context.

In times past the focus was more on primary (genitals), or secondary (beards, boobs etc), sexual characteristics, i.e the Venus of Willendorf (a very female form) and male figures with disproportionately sized penises. While early Egyptian sculpture is pretty androgynous in his regard, male and female are not well differentiated, the main focus is on the build - eg. men having slightly broader chests. Early Greek sculpture even more so with simple abstract forms representing “humans”. Much later on this changed into a more separated, codified style: men being heavy, muscular, bearded, women being soft and slim, with youth of both sexes being more androgynous. Interestingly genitals were very diminished in this art, penises were small and flaccid, while vaginas were never depicted.
Though it was a different story with the art intended for more secular, “common” consumption, which could show pornographic scenes (mainly 2D). Art featuring Satyrs or Priapus massively exaggerated the genitals for deliberate comedic effect. For them focus on genitals didn't indicate masculinity or femininity so much as comedy, stupidity, shame, or porn.



Basically gender in art isn't about genitals or genetics, it's all culture based and you need to learn the visual language of your audience to make yourself understood by them, as well as to confuse them or subvert their expectations!
What trouble have you had when depicting gender? I always run into issues myself. I make my women too angular and my men are too slim.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Gyor - Charged up, magnetically accelerating into clean, sweeping, panoramic electronic tones, momentarily overrun by a furious chaotic electric discharge, only to return to serenity once more.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Gyor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/17/featured-comic-gyor/

Featured music:
Gyor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gyor/ - by Tuxie, rated E.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Spoiler- we don't actually talk much about Yu-Gi-Oh! But I feel it's a good example of a pretty bad story- a so-bad-it's-good story, but bad nevertheless. The idea we're talking about here is that it's useful to look at bad stories and stick with them because they can really help you write better. They're a lot more useful than good stories because you'd rather just enjoy those and it's a bit harder to examine them for technical details, but with “bad” stories the faults stand out strongly. Instead of simply dismissing a bad story or making fun of it, it's more useful and valuable to try and “fix” it: try and work out why it seems bad and think about what would be needed to make it better, then think about how that applies to your own work. Maybe you're actually making many of the same mistakes?

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a little too much work to use as an example, but something like the Marvel movie Eternals is good because it only had a few flaws. Big ones, but also very good parts as well:

- Lots of telling rather than showing. A text dump at the beginning was just the start of that. It wasn't stylistic choice like in Star Wars, but rather something we need to understand what is happening. All through the film characters tell us about things rather than the story properly depicting them.

- Revealing the solution to mysteries too early and so it undercuts built up tension. Mysteries are really interesting and intriguing to the audience, even when they think they've solved them, it still feels very rewarding to have them revealed nearer to the end of the story. Revealing them far too early feels like you're being cheated and wastes a valuable resource. Eternals does this twice with very significant mysteries about halfway through.

- Having generic, cannon-fodder bad guys. This is true of many action stories especially from Marvel films, but it's particularly bad here. Saying any more would be a spoiler. But this is something that Yu-Gi-Oh! does far better.

- Leaving out information that would better make sense of story elements. We have the character Icarus refereed to frequently as “the Pilot” by another character who's never met him before, but we have no idea why. A deleted scene reveals why, but without that it makes no sense, you're just left to feel it's a pointless joke about the Icarus myth, which it's not.

- Not solving logic errors. The characters are supposed to be the basis for mythical figures in earth cultures but most are of different ethnicities to the cultures that worship them. This could have been easily solved in two ways: 1. the character “Sprite” could have been shown to have created illusions around them to make them seem like the characters of myth. 2. The character Druig could have been shown to manipulate people's minds to think they were seeing the mythical characters. The story does neither.

Despite all this and more there are many good points to this story and it would be possible to fix it through re-editing. I found it more rewarding and interesting to work out what exactly made this not such a good film and it helped to better highlight the good parts for me. It also helps me see what to avoid in my own writing and what I'm doing wrong. Try it yourself? Maybe you can tackle Yu-Gi-Oh! and let us know how that could be fixed?
I'm not brave enough.


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to - Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - A creepy red garden filled with writhing demonic monstrosities and horror! This electronic piece grinds and roars, sounding like an acidic, burning harpsichord spewing fury and vitriol in a crimson torrent.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Our movie critique thread does this somewhat - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/177412/?page=36

Featured comic:
Oni Streamer Builds a Mech - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/10/featured-comic-oni-streamer-builds-a-mech/

Featured music:
Malefic Demonic Apocalypse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Malefic_Demonic_Apocalypse/ - by Genejoke, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Let's go forward in time to the past so we can get back to the future and kill our grandfather and be our own ancestor while we step on a bug and change the course of evolution 200 million years in the future and doom the Morlocks to a date with Doctor Who, while Bill and Ted drive a Delorean in the Old West and save Fry's dog as it waits out the front of the Pizza place… Time travel is fun to talk about, but it's easy to mess up because paradoxes in plots pop up all over the place as timelines intersect and cross over and over, getting tangled and logically prevent events that have already happened from happening!

Here we chat about some of that as well as our fave time travel stories, like Dr Who, Bill and Ted, The Tomorrow People, Playing Beati Bow, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, Army of Darkness, Outlander etc. Examples abound! Time travel stories can allow us as an audience to visit a distant time with ourselves looking at the future or past through the eyes of the time traveller, or their naive helper like Marty from Back to the Future or one of Dr Who's companions. They can give us outlandish adventures or bizarre and complex mysteries that make the most of the time paradoxes.

Time travel is fantasy fiction for us because we can only go forwards at the same rate… but it exists in physics as a logical theory and paradoxes can be overcome in specific ways, so it's a possibility, just one that no one can work out how to usefully achieve. Which is why we have stories! So what are YOUR fave time travel stories and why?

This week Gunwallace has given us something different! Rat Test Blues - Gunwallace doing his own thing here! The dangers and worries of CoVid-19 are universal, and New Zealand is no exception. Here Mr Gunwallace gives voice to his and all our apprehensions when faced with a malady when there’s a pandemic about… “Do I have Covid or just a cold?” Only the Rapid Antigen Test can say for sure. Awesome blues number, that guitar roars and sings and Gunwallace’s vocals are perfect.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Sad W - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/may/03/featured-comic-sad-w/

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

David's always right - Introducing Hpkomic! Hpkomic has been with DD since the earliest days, he's a comic artist, writer, English teacher, and podcaster. He even participated in the second comicbook challenge that Platinum held way back in the day when they controlled DD, and came second! He was part of many community events, like the Drunk Duck Civil War (the DD answer to the comic book Marvel Civil War) and DD VS Comic Genesis, which was the DC Vs Marvel of Webcomics! In fact he has the oldest post on this version of the DD forums! After the site was fully deleted at the end of 2005, he was the first person back who commented with an offer of help to get things back online again. Bonus points if you can find it.

He's spent some time away but he's resurfaced again to actively participate once more and lend his experience and help with a newspost every second Friday. I will continue to do the Fashion Spotlight, but Hpkomic will alternate newspost with me to lighten my workload and provide variety.
In his time away from DD, HP broadened his interests into podcasting, doing the Chucky based “Kid's Stuff”, the supernatural focused “Supernatural Selection”, and writing for “Haunted MTL”, a Canadian horror website. So have a listen to this amiable and intelligent fellow regale us with his brilliance!

This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Ghost Network - Xylophone bones, tapping a happy tune on dried out ribs…grinding into a veil of deep red, steaming and chugging through into a cloud of mystery. This is a jaunty ditty crossed with a dark, heavy electronic piece for a very unusual mix.


Topics and shownotes

Links

HPKomic's links and links mentioned:
It came from the fridge - Hpkomic's start at drawing digitaly - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Warped_Archive/4889607/
Galactic Hub Serreven - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Galactic_Hub_Serreven/4958715/
Cosmic Dash -https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Cosmic_Dash/
RGBots - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/RGBots/
Supernatural selection - Supernaturalselectionpod.com
Dragoneers -hogan crossovers http://crossovers.dragoneers.com/

Featured comic:
Succubus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/25/featured-comic-succubus/

Featured music:
Ghost Network - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ghost_Network/ - by Ohnomelon, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Hpkomic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/hpkomic/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

The full team is assembled yet again! Tantz came up with the idea of having a look at fantasy worlds in fiction that have strong ties with the “real world” and how they function together. Her main example was the world of Harry Potter which has many strong connections to the real world and yet manages to stay very well hidden, which stretches plausibility a bit. The World of Casandra Clare's Mortal Instruments is similar in that regard, it's deeply tied to the mundane world and yet it stays hidden from it to a degree that isn't really possible.

There are many other fantasy worlds where the connections with the real world are much more limited and that makes their hidden nature more plausible, i.e. Oz, Neverland, Narnia, Xanth, Wonderland… This was a fun topic to chat about! We covered a lot of ground. We even touched on the world of Hellraiser as a hidden fantasyland. To make your hidden world more believable, don't make it so that there are heaps of people who experience it all the time or have it constantly influence the real world because asking people to accept that no one knows about it is a bit silly.

This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to COLD-BLOODED - Coils and coils of slithering intrigue, smooth scales kletter over dry sands, a powerful, muscular form wriggles through the shimmering desert heat towards the nuclear furnace of the hot, yellow sun. Heavy, synth, rhythmic sounds.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost about Fantasy worlds - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/22/the-problem-with-magic-worlds/


Featured comic:
Up the Pyramid - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/19/featured-comic-up-the-pyramid/

Featured music:

COLD-BLOODED - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/COLD-BLOODED/ - by Perrys_Hotter, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

BANES RETURNS! …to talk about boobs with the rest of us. The topic of the discussion this week was brought to us by Tantz's newspost on the 2nd of April about bosoms and how their shape and size doesn't matter. In the crusade against “sexualisation” in comics people tend to focus too much on big or “unnaturally shaped” boobs, but the truth is that any type of boobs can be fetishized and by reacting against one type you just cause a new form of exclusion.

The problem isn't boobs, it's that people fetishize them in their art too much and often inappropriately. It's fine to do that in certain kinds of work but not every time you draw boobs on any character in any context. It's not the shape or size, it's how you draw them! The “how to draw” breast meme guide annoys me quite a lot- it has good advice on how to draw breasts but where it fails is in telling you what “not” to do. The breast shape and behaviors that it says are wrong are quite normal for people with implants and those are ubiquitous these days for many reasons, so let's not tell people there are the right kinds of boobs and the wrong kinds.

We were also going to chat about toys that inspired us as kids and also the Will Smith slap, hence the title that Banes came up with, but we decided just to go with breasts instead.

This week: The unholy return of Banes!
Next Week: the DD Awards

This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Team 541 - A techno dance track that means business! It thumps out with a high speed futuristic military march, dancing in perfect stomping precision with a show of force and power.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost about boobs - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/01/i-want-to-talk-about-boobs/


Featured comic:
Ghost Network - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/apr/05/featured-comic-ghost-network/

Featured music:
Team 541 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Team_541/ - by Mg78, rated E.

Cover image by PitFace from - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/PUTRID_MEAT/5432145/


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Creation is a process with a lot of ups and downs: Agony and ecstasy! The easiest way to think of it is a simple inverted parabola- you start of feeling good about your idea and its potential. As you work though you feel worse and worse about it till you get to the nadir of the curve, then things turn around and you start feeling better and better about it as it finally comes together and you finally manage to finish it!

For most of us though the reality is more complicated and the longer you work on a piece the more ups and downs you have during it. This could occur during a single page, a single panel, an entire chapter or the whole comic. It takes me ages to do a page so I go through this process with every stage of the page creation- thumbnails, 3 different layers of line art, background drawing, and the colour process of every element of every panel.

The downs are pretty bad but the highs of creation are wonderful and that's what you're always chasing because creation feels good. Yes, drug addiction is an obvious analogue, but any experience that makes you feel good is similar; from surfing, to sex, to love, to watching a great TV show, or doing a lot of exercise. But creation is what we're doing here and I think it's superior to most activities because in the end you've midwived something that didn't exist before into reality and hopefully that will go on to inspire others.
How's your experience of the lows and highs during the creation process? Maybe for you it's all high, all lows or just neutral?


NEXT WEEK: The return of BANES!

This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Lord of Seasons - This is a requiem for a lost empire. Mournful cello builds a soaring subterranean tomb that we as listeners observe as the music leads us inexorably on through the twisting caverns and galleries. We feel uneasy and uncomfortable as if the spirits of this lost place are restless and hateful. Throughout all there is an impending sense of dread.


Topics and shownotes

Links

The Agony and the Ecstasy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Agony_and_the_Ecstasy_%28novel%29

Featured comic:
The New Butler - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/29/featured-comic-the-new-butler/

Featured music:
Lord of Seasons - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lord_of_Seasons/ - by ArmandoB, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Retro adventure heroes are an interesting and unique sort of hero. The trope was revived and crystallised by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, but it had existed long before then and continues to persist now in many forms. They're not without their problems But I like these characters. I love their outfits, their competency, intelligence, self sufficiency, and their penchant for exploration and discovery.

What is a retro adventure hero? Typically they're an adventurer, a member and representative of a powerful Western country, they like exploring, they're self sufficient, they can survive by themselves in the wild, they can fight, understand many languages, have arcane knowledge of and respect for native peoples and different exotic cultures, they tend to be very worldly and highly educated. This trope was inspired by real life examples, typically explorers from the 19th century, foremost among them was Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was highly educated, a soldier, an explorer, a swordsman and a shameless self promoter. With the explorations of Burton we have the romantic idea of a representative of the British Empire and Western civilisation delving into the hidden worlds of the Arab east and darkest Africa.

A partial influence for Indiana Jones was the story of GE Kinkaid and his 1909 find of the remains of a fabulous city accessed through a cave in the Grand Canyon… all sponsored by the Smithsonian institute. Of course nothing about the story was true and GE Kinkaid never existed, but it was quite inspiring nonetheless. My own character, Ace Kinkaid, from my comic Pinky TA was based on GE Kinkaid. Instead of going in the Indiana Jones direction of a “true hero” I decided to take a different tack- since the story was clearly made up and quite stupid (obviously designed to fool people), I made Ace Kinkaid someone who wanted to look like a hero but was in reality a con-man, only out for himself.

The most important fictional retro adventure hero is H. Rider Haggard's “Allan Quatermain” (I wrongly say he was Edgar Rice Burroughs' character in the Quackcast). He's another huge influence for Indiana Jones. There are many other popular fictional retro adventure heroes though: Brenden Frasier's character in The Mummy, Romancing the Stone, Lara Croft, El Borak, Steve Canyon, Biggles, Bulldog Drummond, John Carter, Dirk Pitt in Sahara, Flashman (though more of an antihero) and many more, even The Rock's character from the recent Jungle Cruise.

Why “retro” though and how can contemporary characters like Lara Croft and Dirk Pit be retro? Well there are a few reasons; number one is that they follow the clothing conventions of a lot of brown, leather, and straps; number two is that they have all the right competencies with fighting ability, self sufficiency, a penchant for adventure and exploration, visiting ruins etc, a good education…; number three is that they come from a retro world view of imperialism, so they can be a representative of the “enlightened modern world” going off to “discover” and explore exotic places - which of course aren't exotic or in need of discovery from the point of view of the locals.
This trope can still work just as well in a modern setting because we still continue to think like this, but it works best in the 1920s/30s for a couple of reasons: The aesthetic then is perfect, but this was also the end of the old imperial era. It marked the end of the time when we could still imagine representatives from “western civilisation” exploring unknown places, technology was at the highest point for characters of this trope (aeroplanes, machine guns, trains, steamships…), and many of the original adventure heroes were created in this period because we were romantisising the idea of adventure and empire while it was ending.

After the second world war scoured the entire globe and the last gasp of the dream of empire was shattered, the far reaches of the earth no longer seemed exotic anymore or to hold the same mystery. Retro adventure heroes had their hey-day in the transition from colonialism to post colonialism. We like them now for the romanticism of the image of what they were and the spirit of adventure and exploration, that's what we emulate rather than the distasteful idea of a colonialist imperial cultural ambassador, tourist, and thief.

Do you have a fave retro Adventure hero? If so, who? Do you even like the trope?


This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Caveston - Authoritative violin pronounces and directs. A four stringed general deciding the course of action, laying out the battleplan. Electric guitar listens well and leads the squad on a furious audio assault! Storming forth and prevailing in a mighty show of shock and awe.


Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
Caveston - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/22/featured-comic-caveston/

Featured music:
Caveston - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Caveston/ - by Caveston, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Fantasy creatures are cool and we're here to talk about our faves. One of mine is elves. I love them… Being quite elfy myself. Fantasy is pretty fun to play around with, you have the freedom to create anything but even so there are a few recognised and agreed on fantasy creatures that people stick with.

Tolkien is responsible for creating iconic versions of creatures like Dwarves and elves among many others but it was really the American students going to university in the 1960s and 70s that solidified things. These were RPG gamers. RPG games had always been popular with that crowd. In previous generations with the SciFi writers in the 30s and 40s it was naval based war games that they'd play on the floor with ship models. But in the 1960s fantasy was all the rage.

These RPG enthusiasts came up with detailed game systems like Dungeons and Dragons which created bibles of fantasy creatures of all kinds. This served to collate, define and refine fantasy creatures for pop-culture as a whole for the decades to come. This is why despite all the freedom, fantasy creatures across different stories and mediums don't changes very much.

So what are YOUR fave fantasy creatures? Here are some of ours, see if you can guess who's is who's: Naked, mysterious, secretive, powerful, necromancer witches; big veiny, musclebound, brutish, ragged trolls; Noble, brave, muscular, archer centaurs.
I also have to mention Tantz's fantasy book series The art of Veiling!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Little q - An intriguing safari through the dark, misty, damp, green humid jungle of human emotion. Ringing bells of synth vibraphone tones shine like spots of sunlight through the dappled shadows of expectation and obligation. Warm and comforting.



Next week's Quackcast:
Retro Adventure heroes. You know the sort, dressed in khaki, loose shirts and leather, going to exotic places, quick with a gun or a whip, exploring, fighting, doing what's right and adventuring. So we'll be chatting about the likes of Indiana Jones, Brenden Frasier's character in The Mummy, Romancing the Stone, Ace Kinkaid in Pinky TA, Lara croft, El Borak, Alan Quartermaine, Steve Canyon, Biggles, Bulldog Drummond, John Carter and maybe more!

Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
Welcome to my House - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/01/featured-comic-welcome-to-my-house/

Featured music:
Little q - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/little_q/ - by PaddyWolfe, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

I consider Drunk Duck (or the Duck Webcomics) to be the Heavy Metal of webcomic hosting sites, because like that excellent anthology comic publication we celebrate the oddballs. On DD we have comics of all different styles, many that would find it hard or even impossible to promote themselves anywhere else. We're open to all skill levels and all styles. We only promote things we consider to have high quality or high potential in our features, but we don't have a particular style prejudice, we don't only feature things that give us a homogeneous, unified look. We're proud of our variety! We don't gate keep or block anyone from access to our site and we feel that's one of our greatest strengths.

The inspiration for this cast was a thread Bravo1102 made about a mention in the “bad Webcomics Wiki”, about things that indicate a webcomic is “bad”. One of them was that it was hosted on a site like Drunk Duck. The commenters in the thread took exception to that, as you'd expect, coming together to rally against a common threat. I want to be clear that we in no way consider The Bad Webcomics Wiki a threat, it's just an entertainment site focusing on roasting webcomics, the mention of DD was probably made over a decade ago by people who've long forgotten about us now. However the community reaction was interesting and brought up many things worth talking about.

We're the granddaddy of hosting sites, and we're still fit as a bull. We've been around for 20 years (I never tire of mentioning that). Kids have started with us and come back to us as adults. Young adults have started with us and met partners through us. Members have had kids and now their kids have comics with us. Our older members have been with us right up to the end. DD members have gone one to have very successful money making webcomics, have careers in the gaming industry working for people like Rockstar, working in publishing, in Hollywood, working in professional comics for Marvel and DC, etc. Many started out with basic skills and were nurtured and supported by the community here till they developed their skills. And many professional comicers have hosted with us.

Hosting with us is far from being a sign that your webcomic is “bad”, rather it's a sign that you're an independent thinker; that you have something interesting to say that doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter mold of other places on the net. At DD you have a home for your creativity.


This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to A Lunatics Tale - Quick step and tap, tap, tap your foot into this funky conversion between Instruments! The light chatter of the electric guitar, the sensible burble of the bass, loud interjections of the trumpets, bombastic quips by the percussion, finishing with an intriguing conclusion from the synth.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Thread about Bad Webcomics Wiki - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179010/


Featured comic:
Atom Man - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/08/featured-comic-atom-man/

Featured music:
A Lunatics Tale - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/A_Lunatics_Tale/ - by BeckKeep, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Cults are weird. Unlike normal religions (from which many cults stem), cults are usually based more around charismatic individuals rather than simple doctrine. Which means the followers of cults can often get a little crazy because they're following the whims of an individual rather than boring old text from a book. And this is why religious groups with charismatic leaders (i.e evangelical Televangelists and hardline Imams), become crazy and cultish too.

Our lovely Andreas Helixfinger inspired this cast with an idea about how horrible cults can be in fiction. He made a newspost about that on the last Sunday of February. One of the interesting things I find about depictions of cults in fiction are the difference between how the right and left show cults. The rightwing version of what a cults is usually involves satanism, pentagrams, goats, human sacrifice, blood, knives etc. While the more leftwing version is of a creepily nice, ultra conservative, uptight group of people who live in perfect houses, dress very neatly, have their hair just right and are usually very rich, but under the surface they're all creepy murderers or sex fiends or demon worshipers or something.

Some of the fictional cults we mention in the cast are various cults in Warhammer 40k; the Chaos cultists, the Imperial cult, The machine cult, the genesteeler cults… It's funny how the Chaos Cultists mirror our real world cultish people: Slaneesh cultists are sex maniacs B&D, S&M people; Khorn followers are death metalheads; Tzeentch followers would be Q-Anon conspiracy theorists; And followers of Nurgle wold be antivaxers.
Some good fictional cults were shown in The Wickerman, Midsommer, Hot Fuzz, Randal and Hopkirk Deceased (the reboot series) has about 3 different cult episodes, Welcome to NHK has a brilliant depiction of a multi level marketing cult (Anime is FULL of cults), and Tantz mentioned a great Korean movie with a cult: Keuraim Peojeul.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Remedial Magic - Puddles and ripples of light and dappled shadow spreading outward ever wider and wider. Beads of light glow within, sparkles glitter and burn. This is a pleasantly thrumming piece of electronica that gently steps from note to note.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Evil Cult Newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/26/horrific-evil-cults/
Keuraim Peojeul - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15305982/

Featured comic:
ORIGIN by David Abiola Olukoga - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/01/featured-comic-origin-by-david-abiola-olukoga/

Featured music:
Remedial Magic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Remedial_Magic/ - by Sameth, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Last week we did a thing of the persistent myths of fiction- fictional conventions that we all just accept, and are repeated over and over and even influence real life- for example: that people are blasted back in reaction to being shot. It started as a way of making shooting scenes more dramatic and obvious on film, but became a convention and we all believe it so much that it influences reality- it's part of the famous JFK conspiracy about a “second shooter” because people foolishly think JFK's head rocking “back and to the left” indicated the direction of a gunshot. The kinetic energy of a bullet is imparted to the medium it strikes, typically through heat and destruction when it hits a soft target like a human.

In that vein we cover a few gory myths, thanks to suggestions by Bravo1102 and Tantz's Red Cross experience. Everything from decapitation to period myths. Also some stiff about defibrillator paddles- they can't restart a heart that's stopped, rather there are two particular kinds of irregular rhythms that they are able to shock back to normal- I picked up that bit of info from my Ex, Amy- an excellent ER nurse. Uncredited in the Quackcast. We cover quite a few more. People's suggestions were great!

Lastly- We'd like to acknowledge the horrible invasion of Ukraine that has taken place. That is an awful thing for the world and particularly the civilian population of Ukraine itself. We mention that in the cast. I don't like propaganda or tales of heroic military action and defiance, it's ridiculous and stupid. We stand with the civilians who're suffering. War is a horrible thing and we hate it. Tantz and I both do war themed comics and our perspective is a bit different from the usual. We recommend the comic “The Second Crimean War” on DD for a good perspective on Ukraine.


This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Eva of Asgard - Thunderclaps, followed by a slow, steady downpour that gradually increases in strength before collapsing into a furious, chaotic storm of electric guitar driven hard rock! An electric guitar strikes like lighting, illuminating the entire piece in sharp relief, till the metal tempest blows itself out and fades away.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Thread about persistent myths in fiction - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178988/

The Second Crimean War - a great comic about the issues with Ukraine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Second_Crimean_War/

Featured comic:
Cassie York in the Purple Nowhere Part I - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/22/featured-comic-cassie-york-in-the-purple-nowhere-part-i/

Featured music:
Eva of Asgard - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/EVA_of_Asgard/ - by Synwells, rated T.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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There are so many really silly cliché myths from fiction that we all just tend to accept. They're objectively stupid but they get repeated so often that we don't bat an eye when we see them and we can even start to believe them in reality. I thought it'd be fun to dig into them in a Quackcast. I made a thread in the forum for people to contribute to. Unfortunately we didn't get to many in the Quackcast but there's always time to do another!

Just so you get an idea of what I mean, here are some bellow:
- That Indian burial grounds are magical and can cause spirits to come to the land of the living.
- that demons speak Latin, or Aramaic, or ancient Greek or any other bronze Age language.
- that guns can't harm demons or monsters.
- that dangerous animals and insects are evil and they want to kill you.
- that people get blasted through the air when shot by guns.
- that all native people can track stuff anywhere and live off the land and that they're also close to the spirit world etc…
- That security lasers are red beams and easy to avoid.
- That women in the 19th century always complained about tight corsets.
- that peasants were dirty and never washed.
- That back-flips are the best way to doge when in a fight.
- That using paired weapons in each hand is always better and means a person is super deadly and skilled.
- That wearing a sword on your back is a good idea.
- The Heimlich Maneuver is the standard medical and scientifically endorsed way to stop someone choking.

More fiction myths please!


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Untitled Brick Comic - Piano notes step back and forth, swaying, prevaricating, halting, hesitating, before taking the leap into action to dance, spin and twirl on the glowing dance floor to this 90s inspired dance track.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Myths of fiction thread -

Featured comic:
Team 541 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/14/featured-comic-team-541/

Featured music:
Untitled Brick Comic - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Untitled_Brick_Comic/ - by Ccznen, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Time to chat about character hairstyles. Tantz did a newspost about them a few weeks ago and I spun the topic off into a fashion subject for a Quackcast, but something really basic and simple like hair has a lot of potential in its own right. There are lots of things you can consider…

-What does the hair style mean for the story and the on screen action (messed up, neat etc)?
-What hair we like to draw on characters?
-HOW to draw different hairstyles?
-Characters with the best hairstyles?
-To manga or not to manga hair? Manga hair styles are pretty weird. Either clumpy and spiky or weirdly coloured and super glossy.
-Bald is beautiful? Pinky was going to be bald at one stage…
-What's up with beards?
-Body hair?

It's just endless ^_^


This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Wrota Metro - It bounces along like the rythmic, mechanical pulsing of a complex machine, keeping to a time and purpose known only to itself and it's creator. Following its progress is lulling and mesmerising, one could get caught up in it and keep going for days!


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost on hair - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/12/the-significance-of-hairstyle/

Featured comic:
Space Daddy Adventures - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/08/featured-comic-space-daddy-adventures/

Featured music:
Wrota Metro- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Wrota_Metro/ - by Byj561, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

He might not be in the Quackcast right now but he's in our hearts and in this topic! Banes did a newspost about Nostalgia the other day because so much popculture these days is openly recycled: from reboots and remakes, to stuff done in 80s styles etc. This sort of thing has always existed of course, nothing is new not even nostalgia ironically, but today there is more of it and less totally new stuff.

Oh! Special note. Today we were joined by Andreas Helixfinger! The brilliant Swede. So we have even more international flavour now. He will be doing newsposts on Sunday!

Instead of complaining about it we decided to talk about the nostalgia we loved! What are the best reboots and sequels? What are the things that you love that are being revisited?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to DNR - contemplative, cool, introspection. Electric guitar and synthesizers waft in blue and pink waves, vibing together and relaxing. They hit a couple of stressful bumps in along the way though, where the energy is ramped up too high. They play through that and go back to relaxing the first time, the second time it happens they're finished and flatlined.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes's newspost: Fountain of Nostalgia - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/02/fountain-of-nostalgia/

Featured comic:
TWO PENNY VAUDVILLE - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/feb/01/featured-comic-two-penny-vaudville/

Featured music:
DNR - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/DNR/ - by Arborcides, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Andreas Helixfinger - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Andreas_Helixfinger

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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This Quackcast is about one of the cool things about being an adult: growing out of childhood prejudices and expanding your tastes to try new things. There's this rosy, idealistic idea that kids are culture sponges, open to everything, all experiences and tastes, but that's a fantasy unfortunately. Kids are only open to experiences for a relatively short time before their preferences solidify, but even THEN they have a very strict hierarchy of sources they'll accept those influences from- parents, friends, family etc. A lot of what they like is driven by peer pressure and the opinions of others.

Even as a teen and young adult you have pretty strong prejudices, you like a lot of things but you tend NOT to like many things in broad categories because you “know” that you don't like them. For example: “classical music is boring”, “modern art is pretentious”, “Romance movies are for wimps”, “Country music is for rednecks”, “Poetry is lame”. etc. These childish broad brush “I know what I like”, statements are things we all say at one time or another.
One of the wonderful things about adulthood is that we don't have to worry about the prejudices so much, especially those influenced by peer pressure and perceptions about what others will think about us for liking certain things. this means we can go back and check out all those wonderful things we missed out on and see if we really DO like them!

Try reading some classics, try some jazz, country and classical music, read some superman, try the genres you despised and see if that's really what you think.

TLDR: Being an adult- means losing prejudices so you can go back an enjoy what you missed


This week Gunwallace Gunwallace was busy busy getting older and having a birthday! Yup, he's growing up. So the classic Gunwallace theme I've picked this week is Feint (also for Quackcast 459) - A raw thrumming violin importantly intones ringing chords over and over as it sets us up for a beautifully rocky crescendo that culminates in a tumultuous sonic climax!


Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Wrota Metro - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/25/featured-comic-wrota-metro/

Featured music:
Feint - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Feint/ - by Stonedraccoon, rated M.


Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PIT_FACE - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Pit and Tantz join me to talk about about fairies, fae, Faery, Fair folk, Yokai, and all that good stuff. They're like the dark-matter of the supernatural world: they're not really gods, demons, monsters, or ghosts (though sometimes they are al of those sort off…), they generally fill the spaces between. They exist in a lot of cultures all over the place. They can be naughty spirits, elemental creatures, or animalistic, but generally they're quite alien and unknowable. This discussion comes from Tantz's newspost on Saturday.

We talk about the pretty fairies from popculture and how those were quite popular in the latter half of the 19th century among the spiritualists and romantic naturalists. We talk about the “royal fae”, the sexy humanoid Fae like Titania, Puck and Oberon (mentioned in Shakespeare), and Herne the hunter. Fairy myth like changelings and kelpies and how they may have arisen as cautionary tales. We chat about how alien mythology simply directly replaces fairy myth in the modern world with things like abduction, mutilation of farm animals, lost time and other fantastical ideas. We also talk about the modern KING of the fairy image and myth: Brian Froud, who not only created a brilliant book with gathered myths and explanations about the seelie and unseelie court, but also single handedly created and influenced the very look of all modern illustrations of fae-folk with his particular stylings and his work on things like The Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, the Story Teller and other things.
What are your fave fairies and fairy stories? What do you hate in fairy myth?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Ark Hunters - Notes cascading and calibrating, before committing and tumbling down and along in a continuous torrent, a cataract of notes, flowing and bursting outward. Acoustic and electronic, guitar, violin, piano and percussion vying continuously.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost: The Fae - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/21/the-fae/

Featured comic:
Dry Kings - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/16/featured-comic-dry-kings/

Featured music:
Ark Hunters - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ark_Hunters/ - by Tombag, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Listen on Stitcher ​​- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/

Let's talk about total immersion… When consuming media rather than creating it, if you're lucky you become immersed: the struggles and fears of the character become your own. You feel for them, you care, their pain, their hunger, even their shivers and sweats, you care about the world in which they live…
That can be an amazing feeling and it's pretty much WHY we really enjoy and keep consuming media. Themes, great visuals, intellectual explorations of ideas and concepts are all very well but nothing compels and excites you as much as when you really CARE what's happening.
So that's what we're chatting about!

Tantz and I talk about some of the times when we've felt really immersed in a story and what that felt like. It's amazing how comics, movies, games, radio plays etc can take you away from your present and plonk you into the world they're depicting. Personally I find the less visuals provided by the media the easier it is to be immersed (so books and radio plays), because most of the story has to be built in your head, but you can find immersion with any media. That's why when its over you feel so bereft and marooned: you've been bumped out of that world. It's also why we want sequels so much and are usually always disappointed by how they turn out: we don't really care about another story with the character starting over, what we want is to live in that world with them one more time, and when it's inevitably not the same (because most writers don't understand the real point of a sequel), we're unsatisfied.

This is also the main reason I don't like horror movies: I will become immersed in the story so I feel the pain and fear of the characters, I care about them too much so horror movies depress and sadden me if I let myself become immersed.
What are your experiences with story immersion? Are they good, bad, do you love it or just not care too much?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Dude in Distress - a classical, slow, dancing promenade… careful steps in satin slippers on mirror polished wood… At full speed we’re launched into relentless movement. Hydraulic, electric servos of enormous power push us ever on, altering the world in unimaginable and extreme ways.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
INTERSTELLAR BATTLE GIRLS LEAGUE of SUPER WARRIORS - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/11/featured-comic-interstellar-battle-girls-league-of-super-warriors/

Featured music:
Dude in Distress - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Dude_in_Distress/ - by EssayBee T, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

“The Girl Boss in the sausagefest”
Pitface and Tantz chat are here to chat with me about the subject or lady Barbarians: What they look like, where they originated, why they originated, what they mean, and the logic behind them. They're often overshadowed by their male counterparts (e.g. Conan), and often dismissed as simply an erotic male fantasy, but they've been around just as long and they've also had just as much of a role to play in the traditional “barbarian” mythos as the male versions. Sure, the sexy versions are abundant, iconic, and visually striking, but they're not the be all and end all!

This Quackcast was inspired by the topic of my 8th Fashion Spotlight and its focus on the barbarian woman Rose Red, I go into a lot of detail there and it's linked bellow if you're interested. for a little bit of a recap: lady barbarians go back at least as far as the Roman empire, even older possibly. In Rome they took the form of “gladiatrixes” (female gladiators), who were dressed as and promoted as barbarian fighters from exotic, uncivilised lands (Africa, all over Europe etc), as a way to excite the interest of the paying public to pay to see the fights, the same as we'd do today with wrestling and MMA. Many influences were behind this: the myth of the Amazons, the myth of Atalanta, red haired Celtic queen Boadicea, even early ideas for what was behind the myth of Medusa - she was thought to be based on the queen of a barbarian tribe rather than Ovid's much later idea that she was a virgin temple priestess.

But of course most of us know female barbarians because of their modern incarnations. They've always been around in the history of art but they had a spike in popularity with the Italian “Sword and Sandal” movies of the 1960s, then the art of fantasy art master Frank Frazetta in the 1970s. They found their way into things like Dungeons and Dragons and with the success of Conan the Barbarian and the Robert E Howard inspired Valeria in that film a whole host of lady barbarians got their own films, often exploitative and sexy. The most famous lady barbarian of the time was Red Sonja, loosely based on another Robert E Howard character called Red Sonya, but turned from an armoured fighter against the Ottoman Turks into a scale-mail bikini wearing comic book barbarian woman from prehistory.

The most famous lady barbarian to come after her was Xena, the warrior princess, played by statuesque New Zealand sketch comedian Lucy Lawless. Xena was simply a female spinoff from Hercules The Legendary journeys. The really cool thing about her is that not only did she achieve extreme popularity and her show totally eclipsed its originator, she was also an original character AND she got that popularity without leveraging the sexiness of the premise or character!

Some notable lady barbarians I can think off… Virginia Hey's Warrior Woman, Tina Turner's character, and Furiosa from the Mad Max 2, 3, and 4 respectively; Lady Death; Red Sonja; Grace Jone's character from Conan the Destroyer; Valeria (Sandal Bergman) from Conan the Barbarian; Queen Boadicea; Xena; Betty Paige's Cheetah woman (her look was probably an inspiration for Xena in some ways); Ygritte from Game of Thrones; Atalanta; Princess Merida of Brave; I even created my own version in a Barbarian Pinky TA!
Who are your faves from the this genre?


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Creeping through the desert ruins, not wearing overly much, heat hits like a wall, golden sun dazels and mystifies. From plucked strings to creepy atmospherics, the sound bursts in a bombastic wave of high energy multilayered noise and exotic sounds, with pounding percussion.

Topics and shownotes

Links

DD Fashion Spotlight 8: Rose Red - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/05/friday-fashion-spotlight-8-rose-red/

Featured comic:
Latitude Zero - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/jan/04/featured-comic-latitude-zero/

Featured music:
Hentai Action Theater - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Hentai_Action_Theater - by Bedlam Boy, rated A.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Happy New Year! It seems we've all decided to keep going on with the 20's so let's continue…

Did you know the year 2022 marks 20 years that Drunk Duck has been around? YUP! The site is actually THAT old THIS year!
No other comic host is as old and legit as us. They're all little babies. Even Facebook didn't exist when we stated, no iphones, no smartphones, tablets, no Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Pintrest, Instagram, Spotify, tiktok and so on. Jeeeeez man, we're freakin GRANDDADDIES of the internet. Even this podcast turns 12 years old this year.
Hopefully 2022 will be the year when we get our facelift, new looks, better features and keep being the cool, grown-up, mature and interesting alternative, to all the bland cooperate comic hosts out there.
At the end of the cast, we start getting arrogant and silly and describe ourselves as the gods of DD XD I can't believe we recorded that!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Giovani Vigilanti - Catchy bass notes, strings echoing like percussion leading us up bouncing purple steps into an orange cloudy sunset lit sky. This tune moves ever onwards, always right, like a 16 bit sidescrolling fighter, towards inevitable confrontation with a level boss. We best him easily and keep rolling ever on.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Stick Figure Apocalypse - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/28/featured-comic-stick-figure-apocalypse/

Featured music:
Giovani Vigilanti - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Giovani_Vigilanti/ - by Urekgp, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Listen on Stitcher ​​- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/drunkduck-quackcast
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/

huh hu hu hohohohohohohohohohohoh Merry Christmas!

Merry Xmas from everyone here at DD, but most especially Tantz, Banes and me, Ozoneocean! Pitzy is away for a while on family business, it's the time of year and family comes first. Tantz is at home with her pretty Christmas tree in cold Athens, Banes is snug and warm in his place in snowy Canada, and I'm sweating my bum off in Perth Western Australia as the temperature gets close to 44C (110.66F), but I dressed up like an exotic santa anyway hahaha! Which I tried to draw but lost confidence in my skills because it's SOOOO bloody hot and I can't concentrate so I posted screenshotted pics from our Patreon video instead. I AM MELTING!!!!!!
We have no particular topic this time, just a Christmas chat. It's mostly Tantz and I because Banes had to rush off to work, dedicated fellow he is.
How did you spend Christmas?
Was it hot there too? Cold? Did you actually get a white Christmas?
I would LOVE a winter Christmas.

This week Gunwallace gave us no theme, instead he suggested replaying The Rose Killer, a theme to a comic by Nicotine. This theme first apreared in Quackcast 199. It's noir, street, jazz, smokey bar music, VERY atmospheric.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Giovani Vigilanti - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/21/featured-comic-giovani-vigilanti/

Featured music:
The Rose Killer - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Rose_Killer/ - by Nicotine, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Merry Christmas and whatever you celebrate :)
Interesting topic from Banes! It's his idea that sometimes the literal elements of a story (the plot etc.) are simply too weak to properly support the theme. He gives the example of The Truman show, where the idea is that a person is living a fake life under constant surveillance as the star of one of the most popular real life TV shows ever and he doesn't know anything about it… The themes are the power of the media, commercialism, the American dream, obsession with reality TV etc. Banes felt that although these themes were very strong the practical setup of the world and story weren't quite strong enough to support it.
I remember feeling that way as well when I originally saw it. The universal obsession with the show and the practical challenges of setting up and maintaining that fraud for so long with all those people were all nonsensical. Good theme but they didn't think hard enough about the setting. This is an aspect we don't always think about!

That's distinct from stories with a more symbolic setting like The 7th Seal, or Mullholland Drive because we know they are are not meant to be literal, there are more than enough cues! But when the literal aspects of the story are key to conveying the theme then they need to work. It's a very simple but powerful idea and helps you realise whey a lot of stories with big themes just don't quite gel or sit right: it's not you, it's them.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to c h h t - Seriousness, sadness, blue strobes, faded scenes, isolation, concrete and plain facades. The lights are dim as twilight approaches. Night closes in and streetlights bloom with golden halos. Two strangers meet in the a circle of light glittering on the wet road.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' newspost on themes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/15/above-and-below-the-surface/

Featured comic:
Tiger Tea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/14/featured-comic-tiger-tea/

Featured music:
c h h t - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/c_h_h_t/ - by Princefishie Lover, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

We all know that fiction and reality are separate things, but fiction mirrors reality and we suspend disbelief to ignore the parts that are unrealistic so that we often treat fiction the same way AS reality. But there are many tropes and aspects of fiction that ONLY work in fiction and can't work in reality. I was inspired to examine this idea because of our Fetish-cast with Fallopian Crusader and his idea that certain fetishes can only exist in comics.

An obvious example of this is superheroes and their costumes. Of course there are many stories that try and make more “realistic” versions of superheroes (Kickass etc), but that's beside the point. The vast majority of superhero stories create their OWN reality that we just accept- amazing superpowers, magic, horrific acts, feats of amazing heroism, and super amazing costumes. It's possible to have heroic vigilantes in reality, without powers, but classic superhero costumes just never work, even though marvel has shown better than anyone else that they can work amazingly in live action movies.

A lot of fiction sets us up with unrealistic expectations- raunchy comedies about university life all gave us a very unreal idea of what goes on there (this was parodied in the Simpsons), and romantic comedies and romances give us a terrible idea of how to court a person! If we were to do a lot of these things in reality they'd be regarded as criminal acts; assault, stalking, theft, or just plain creepy, unethical, crazed and horrible.

What were some of the unrealistic expectations you had about reality from fiction? What are some of the things that only work in fiction but don't really exist in reality?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Ferda Boys - The sounds of the crowd ebbing and flowing, Ice hockey sticks clacking, a whistle blows and the action is on! Heavy piano, light drums and soaring distorted guitar burn through this 70s sports power ballad, singing the plays while the match progresses. The music fades and the crowd roars in appreciation as the puck strikes the back of the net!
The sound effects come from https://Zapsplat.com, a royalty free sound library.

Topics and shownotes

Links

FetishCast, Fallopian Crusader tells us about how some fetishes ONLY exist in comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-557-fetishes-in-comics

Featured comic:
Ferda Boys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/30/featured-comic-ferda-boys/

Featured music:
Ferda Boys - - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Ferda_Boys/ - by Hockey Webcomics, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

This interesting Quackcast topic was influenced by a DDer who has been subsumed by anti-CoVid conspiracy. This inspired me to delve into the reasons for the massive growth in these types of conspiracy and how the current state of the internet contributes to it. I had some theories, but I thought I should do some reading on the subject to see what the real reasons are rather than using guesses to fill the gaps like conspiracy thinkers tend to do. I was quite shocked by what I found.

There are really three main parts to the problem: 1. Gate-keeping, personalisation and curation of our online communication and viewing by big tech companies. 2. This curation tends to have the effect of polarising us and making our views more extreme than they are 3. Groups use these factors to manipulate people through the use of bots (in the form of fake users), as well as paid users with several accounts.

Gate keeping:
The majority of our online interaction is through only a few large companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, TikTok, Twitter, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon etc), they closely track every aspect of our online behavior and use it along with AI to customise and curate our online experience: the Facebook and Twitter feeds, suggested videos in YouTube, “personalised” Google search and so on, the same for the “friends” it suggests to us. None of that is nefarious or evil, it's just impersonal AI skewing what we see to keep us online longer and sell more ads. But this is also why their online services are free and often quite useful. It's actually quite crude and clunky, their AIs are terrible and obvious most of the time, suggested videos, news results, friends, product ads, and search results are just as often terrible as they can be useful.

Polarisation:
The friends, news stories, links, posts in Twitter and Facebook, videos on YouTube and TikTok that appear in our feeds are generally biased to what will get the most interaction and engagement from us; something that makes us angry like politics, or happy like celeb news for example. Researchers investigated this by creating neutral bots on Twitter. Beginning with “liking” the first random things suggested to them by Twitter, they then randomly “liked” subsequent things Twitter suggested to them. Each time Twitter would base what it suggested next on what had been liked, which meant that the neutral bots gradually had more and more extreme versions of whatever was initially randomly liked. If the initial thing had a slightly left leaning bent, in the end the suggestions were extreme and the same for right-wing and so on. In this way social media has a default tendency to radicalise us. This is part of the reason online debate is so polarised.

Manipulation:
The Problem is that it's very easy to manipulate this system and us as a consequence. It's very cheap to set up millions of bots as fake people and give them user accounts. I'm sure you've occasionally seen suspicious accounts that have tried to add you as a friend, people with names and preferences that don't fit their profile photos, these are generally poor people in West Africa and Pakistan who're paid to set up multiple profiles, basically the human version of bots, in an effort to circumvent anti-bot security measures.
The purpose of these fake accounts is manifold. They can be used to skew the kinds of news people see, spread fake rumours, sell products and scams, increase the profiles of certain people etc. This is done by having them all share the same phrases, hash tags, and links, and liking things, that in turn tricks the AIs that curate and personalise your feeds and searches into suggesting what the bots have promoted.

Researches have documented this activity from Russian and Chinese state controlled bot farms, it's also been the tactic of Islamic State (ISIL) to attract and radicalise people, spammers, scammers like Natural News and Mercola who sell fake health products and diet scams, multi level marketers, hackers, angry conspiracy theorists with agendas like the antivaxer crowd, and even just people out to make money from advertising with fake clickbait news stories about celebrities- You've all seen and clicked on those terrible ads at the bottom of news stories run by Zergnet, Taboola, and Outbrain. These always lead to low quality, often fake stories with lists that you click through. They're harmless but time wasting.

If you lacked scruples you could also use those tactics to increase the profile of your webcomic! In fact we can see it in the small scale in the way webcomic hosts like Taps and Webtoons manipulate their audiences: only recommending certain types of comic to them, promoting only those comics on their main page and elsewhere etc, this in turn forces creators to produce comics which look and feel the same way because it seems the only alternative available.

Online VS the real world
It's very important to remember that the online world Vs real world is a false dichotomy. There is ONLY the real-world. The internet is only a form of communication, but it is the dominant and most important form of communication which is why this stuff is so very important and dangerous. It has real world consequences, as seen with CoVid-19 conspiracies, Pizzagate and the invasion of the Capitol building, this idiocy results in mass deaths. Sites like Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, and Facebook have been great sources of citizen journalism and alternative news, but unfortunately they're now very simple to manipulate and control. Where once they were a great alternative to polarising mainstream media, now that usefulness has been compromised.

Personally I'm all for neutrality and fact checking which is why I financially support the Web Archive, Skeptoid Media, Wikipedia, Snopes, and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (I bought their book). None of these sites get it right all the time, but they actively try to and they provide valuable resources for the rest of us to try and help keep the world honest and agenda free.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Ham - a quiet country road… golden sun rays barely caress the shadowed trees through the cold morning mist. An old truck bounces and jounces along on stiff suspension, past brushing branches, roaring through the stillness. Beautifully evocative notes draw us in, then the tune excites with plucked banjo and burning, distorted electric guitar.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Sources:
In Defense of Truth - https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdoepub/377/
Social Bots and Social Media Manipulation in 2020: The Year in Review - https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.08436
Fake Online News Spreads Through Social Echo Chambers - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fake-online-news-spreads-through-social-echo-chambers/
Artificial Intelligence and Echo Chambers - https://www.counterterrorismgroup.com/post/artificial-intelligence-and-echo-chambers
Neutral bots probe political bias on social media - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25738-6
Skeptoid Media - https://skeptoid.com

Featured comic:
Pep Squad - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/dec/07/featured-comic-pep-squad/

Featured music:
The Ham - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/the_ham/ - by Hansrickheit, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Today we're chatting about the NEW news feature that we're doing every Friday: The DD Fashion Spotlight. This is a new way to promote comics without all the restrictions of the featured comic system. To be eligible for a normal Wednesday feature a comic has to have at least 15 pages, be currently updating, not in the top ten, have good writing and artwork, not be adult rated, and not have been featured before. That cuts down the playing field quite a lot but it's what we have to do to make it worth a feature.

The fashion spotlight is quite different! All that's required is that the comic has characters with outfits that are interesting enough to talk about, It could be a one page comic that stopped updating 11 years ago, it can be adult rated, it can be in the top ten, it can have had a feature before, it can even have had a fashion spotlight feature before, whatever, as long as there are clothes to talk about it's eligible. I've done two so far.

There were a few reasons behind this new feature… One was the featured comic from a couple of weeks ago about the Halloween Fashion show comic, one was Tantz's newspost about how character's hair styles can be used to convey emotion and things, there was the fact that Emm couldn't do Friday newsposts anymore for a while, and lastly my own love of clothing. I've always been a bit of a collector of clothes, especially antique items. I also do my own sewing, do cosplay, make my own Napoleonic military uniform gear, and I love designing outfits for the characters in m comic. Initially I approached Vino Mas with the idea of running the feature because he's run many fashion events on DD in the past, but he has too may commitments so I thought I'd tackle it myself. I future we may have other reviewers though!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Tiger Tea - Bass notes lead us on a winding little path… to a vast winding staircase built by a relentless driving synthesised tune that takes us on mysterious journey, up, down, and around, disorienting and enchanting.

Topics and shownotes

Links

DD Fashion Spotlight 1 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/18/friday-fashion-spotlight/
DD Fashion Spotlight 2 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/25/friday-fashion-spotlight-the-intrepid-torpedo/

Featured comic:
Catch22 - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/22/featured-comic-catch-22/

Featured music:
Tiger Tea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Tiger_Tea/ - by PaddyWolfe, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Interview with Dwight L Macpherson, creator of The surreal adventures of Edgar Allen Poo, now known as The imaginary voyages of Edgar Allen Poe! Dwight joined DD back in the old days, well over a decade ago. Back then he hosted his comic with us, about Edgar Allen Poe. From the very beginning I could see that both it and its author were destined for bigger and better things and I'm pleased to say that came to pass. Through a lot of hard work, with the efforts and both him and his wife working as a team, Dwight has found success as an independent published author with a number of projects under his belt and more ongoing ones in the pipeline.

I still remember the surreal moment years ago with I saw his Poe book in a bookshop here in Australia in my isolated city of Perth. I had this weird moment where I was taken out of reality and didn't know know where I'd seen it before and then worlds came crashing together! From all the way back in 2006 when I first saw it online on DD to years later when it's there in book form right in front of me, not in the USA somewhere or Europe where most DD stuff lives, but right in front of me at my little suburban bookshop in Perth Western Australia, in the most isolated capital city on the planet. It still seems like a false memory. And now Dwight is back with us on DD and happy to chat and tell us all how he got where he is today, happy to share the secrets of his success.

Dwight's story: It all started in Korea, stationed there as a sergeant, researching pirates for a story which became the comic Dead Men tell no Tails. It was eventually published in Arcana comics with Ben Templesmith as the cover artist (a fellow Perth peson who I've met). A TV producer in California was looking for works to option and picked up Dwight's book. It didn't go anywhere but Rebecca and dwight eventually met, married and became a powerhouse team working on Hocus Pocus Comics togther (HP comics). Dwight is a huge advocate for independant creators and alternative publishing modes, one of those of course being webcomics!

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Miss Sisyphus - Slow, faded monochrome ennui, colour bleeds in gradually, like a stain on paper, filing with life, danger, adventure, futuristic exploration, like a dull and dusty bud, blossoming into a gorgeous flower, full of colour and heady scent.

Topics and shownotes

Links

About Dwight and Hocus Pocus Comics - https://www.hpcomics.net/our-story
More of Dwight's links - https://linktr.ee/Dwightlmacpherson
Dwight's comics on DD - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/edgarallanpoo/
The comic I first knew him for - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Surreal_Adventures_of_Edgar_Allan_Poo/
Pip's Monster House, the current project - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Pips_Monster_House_/

Featured comic:
c h h t - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/16/featured-comic-c-h-h-t/

Featured music:
Miss Sisyphus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Miss_Sisyphus/. - by SinisterDuck, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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Fallopiancrusader joined us as a very special guest to chat about fetishes in comics! It's really interesting and he brings his expertise with adult comics and his wide ranging knowledge of comics in general to bear on the subject. So what are fetishes? Well they're often things that people have sort of a sexual interest in but aren't always associated with sex themselves, they're peripheral to sex. Because of that they're often enjoyed and appreciated in their own right for their own sake! Think of things like body piercings, tight laced corsets, wearing fursuits, spanking, wearing S&M leather and PVC gear, shoe appreciation etc. all things associated with sex that people can also enjoy and appreciate outside of sex.

Comics have a long and surprising history of being associated with fetishism. One obvious thing is that superheroes wear skin-tight outfits that leave little to the imagination, they also often find themselves in perilous situations where they're tied up and gagged (or at least they USED to in the old days), and there are obviously people for who dressing up as superheroes IS a fetish (not cosplayers), but that's not really what we're talking about here so much, apart from two big exceptions: The mainstays of DC Comics Wonder Woman and Superman. Both have an association with fetishism.

Joe Shuster, cocreator of Superman, made money drawing comics where characters would be whipped, tied up and “tortured” in titillating ways. The creator of Wonder Woman was into bondage, which is the reason Wonder Woman has a magic lasso and why she always used to find herself tied up with it. He practiced bondage in his private life with his wife and her female partner. There are also people like Wally Wood who was a great comic artist, commonly credited with Power Girl's impressive bust, his sex comics are extensive and very well drawn!

Something very insightful that FallopianCrusader bought up was that there are various fetishes that can ONLY really be explored through the medium of comics! Things like giantism, miniature people, vore (where characters eat a lot), expansion, furies, Robot sex, horror body modification, giant boobs, huge genitals, Tentacles and more. In fact one of the most popular runaway hit comics on DD (NOT a sex comic) explored both expansion and vore fetishes at the same time, it was called “Craving Control”. In it a woman would be insatiably drawn to consume vast quantities of food and as a consequence her body would expand, her stomach and already big boobs would grow. But very soon she would magically shrink down again back to her old conventionally sexy proportions. People LOVED it, it had massively wide appeal outside of those fetish interests because it was funny and well drawn but it was only created because of fetishes and the fetishes in that from can't really exist in reality.

Some of the other things we chat about: Fritz the cat - Robert Crumb, Air Pirates and the secret Disney sex files, Virtual sex, Body modification, Vampirella, Greg Land, Fan-fiction, Witchblade, Adam Hughes, Richard Corbin big dick characters, Convention VS fetish, Pantsu upskirt, Opia, muscle women, dick women, kicking in the genitals…

This is a safe for work Quackcast and does not go into sexy details, so don't worry in that regard.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Creepy and beautiful synth scene-setting that creates space and volume and then fills it with a meat grinding steamroller of death that slashes and crushes all in its path like a huge armoured monster!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Our Special Guest, Fallopiancrusader - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/fallopiancrusader/

Featured comic:
Halloween Fashion Show - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/09/featured-comic-halloween-fashion-show/

Featured music:
Halloween Fashion Show - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Halloween_Fashion_Show/ - by Sleeping_gorilla, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean

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The other day Tantz Aerine wrote a newspost about an article critical of Squid Game. The crux of things was that the Squid Game creator had said their message was anti-capitalist, while this critic was saying that the author's message with the Squid Game was an anti communist critique and not a very good one at that.
The issue here is that isn't how you do criticism. At all. You can give an interesting reading of something and tell us why YOU think it's anti-Communist, or tell us how it looks through the lens of post-colonialism or new wave feminism etc, but you can't say that is what the author is saying or what the work means, especially if the author explicitly says WHAT they are saying.
This may seem like a small distinction but it's actually very, very important. Bad criticism often tells us what the creator is saying. Don't do that. Don't be that person.

When you have a creative work to look at, you can't tell us what it means or what the author means, only the creator can do that. You CAN tell us what it means to you though. You can tell us about the commonly agreed meanings of various tropes and symbols too as well as their meanings within different cultural frameworks and contexts, but not why the creator used them, that's up to the creator.

The Squid Game is based on the deathmatch trope from anime and manga using all the clichés from that form including poor ordinary people caught up in something dangerous that they don't fully understand, a callous attitude to life, normally innocuous games turned deadly, twists and turns with who's really behind the whole thing, betrayal and so on. We can say that for a certainty because it's provably true. Why did the author co-opt the deathmatch trope? We can't say, but we can theorise they used it because it's popular in Korea and Japan. We can also talk about the history of the deathmatch trope, different examples of it like Running Man, Deathrace 2000, Gantz, Btooom, Danganronpa, Deadman Wonderland, Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, and many more which all follow the same pattern. We can use those examples to talk about why the elements of those tropes exist but we can NOT talk about their use in Squid Game in isolation. That would be like talking about the use of the word “and” in the English language without talking about the use of similar words in other languages and the origins of the word in German.

It's important to remember that things do not exist in a vacuum but also that intent is up to the creator to define, not the critic.

This week Gunwallace ha given us the theme to Secrets Of Uncrom - Secrets, hidden knowledge, secret cult meetings in guttering candlelight, murder most foul, and plots thickening! This atmospheric electronic tune has layer upon layer of interesting and disparate sounds, suggesting mystery, darkness and hidden things.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's newspost on conflicting with the author intentions - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/22/flipping-off-the-author/

Featured comic:
Sapling - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/nov/02/featured-comic-sapling/

Featured music:
Secrets Of Uncrom - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Secrets_of_Uncrom_The_Balance_of_Life_and_Death_/ - by Secretsofuncrom, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
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See our Halloween video on Patreon! It's free to everyone this week, just go here https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck and you can see us dressed up in costume for the cast! We always do these videos before each Quackcast but they're usually only available to Patreon subscribers. You get to see us and a much more candid version of the topic we're talking about.

This week we're talking about group shots and how cool they can be! I love drawing them, having all your characters together in the frame is so cool and fun- you can hint at character relationships, have them doing some sort of fantasy activity or just being awesome and posing together. We also chat about some of our fave group shots in film like the beginning of Reservoir Dogs, and the most prolific source of group images ever: album art!

In the cover of today's Quackcast I've added some of my fave group shots I've done from actual Quackcast covers. What are your fave group shots from film, album art, comics, posters, or your own art?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Superstar Sparky - happy, easy going old fashioned organ notes. Grooving along on a warm summer's day, not a care in the world. Synthesized trumpets step in and raise the level, promising big things, fun, sun, and good times!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Banes' newspost on horror group shots - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/24/the-horror-group-shot/

Featured comic:
Miss Sisyphus - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/25/featured-comic-miss-sisyphus/

Featured music:
Superstar Sparky - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Superstar_Sparky/ - by Jamanning7, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

This year for Halloween we've decided to do another commentary! It's of the 1980s Zombie movie “Return of the Living Dead”. It's extremely 1980s in style. There are zombies, punks, yuppies, electronic music, toxic waste… It's quite an entertaining, quite comedic, nihilistic cold war zombie film with very good effects for the time that really hold up today. Even the gore is tasteful. I am NOT a fan of horror in any way, Banes and Pit lobbied hard for this movie… but even so it was not a bad film. The zombies are animated by a man made chemical contaminant, which is quite an 80s theme in of itself. They're not contagious like modern zombies, there's no infection or outbreak to contain. The problem here is that they're virtually indestructible because of the chemical that animates their flesh, they're also fully intelligent and fast moving, this makes the zombies far more menacing and scary than any modern shambling brainless decaying infected version.

If you can find the movie online (it's pretty easy) you can watch along with us as we do our commentary on the film!
Have you seen Return of the Living Dead? What did you think of it? How does it stack up today?

This week Gunwallace wasn't able to give us a theme so I'm replaying Scarred Eden: A million futuristic laser violins play a symphony of light and sound, weaving the landscapes of our dreams against the awesomely huge backdrop of a swirling, purple, star filled nebula. It's a very Jean-Michel Jare sounding piece of 80s style electronica so pairs well with this movie.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Rabbit and Corvid - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/19/featured-comic-rabbit-and-corvid/

Featured music:
Scarred Eden - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Scarred_Eden/ - Damehelsing, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Last time we covered tropes we hated! This time we're talking about clichés we actually like. It's quite a bit trickier because clichés are clichés for a reason (overuse) so it's not easy to like them, except in some cases…
For me it's Isekai. That's a Japanese word for “another world”. This is a very old genre, it's basically a story where a person from our normal world goes to a magical world, we see this in ancient fairy stories, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and many others. until the mid 20th century it was the default way of writing any fantasy story. It has always been around, the Japanese were just the first to come up with a popular name for it.

In the last few years this genre has exploded in Anime and Manga, with stories based on the idea of a person being physically transported to the world of a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Role playing Game). Early on we had anime like Hack.Slash, which was pretty crap but no one else was really making that sort of story then. Now with the popularity of Sword Art Online (again, not a very good version of this trope), lots of other stories in this vein popped up, so much so that the trope has become a cliché. This means that there are a lot of good things made using it but a LOT of badly made trash as well and that people will get sick of it, as they do with clichés, meaning we will stop seeing anymore Isekai stories for a good long while.
I still love them though!

Pit and Banes like Slasher horror. This genre became such a tired cliché that it almost died out but was revived by the movies “Scream” and “I know what you did last Summer” which helped light the fire for this phoenix to be reborn. Retro is another big thing in horror now that's starting to become a cliché, the popularity of Stranger Things helped fuel that monster. The massive popularity of the Marvel Universe franchise has resulted in a huge over-population of superhero films and they're becoming a cliché people dislike, many still love them though.

What are some clichés that YOU love?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Amber Mage - Warm waves of amber light synth. Subtle tribal beat flowing under a beautiful orchestration of violins, blending with sharp, bouncy electronica pulses, creating a tasty melange with a sweet spicy cinnamon flavour

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Backwoods - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/05/featured-comic-backwoods/

Featured music:
Amber Mage - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Amber_Mage/ - by Wildcat Arren, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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Tantz explains why she really hates a bunch of tropes that are super commonly used in things, stuff like very obvious plot armour for the protagonist so that you KNOW nothing can seriously hurt them so you stop caring what happens to them and in the story in general, child-led stories where the adults are all useless and ineffectual because it takes away your suspension of disbelief, and amnesia where a huge bunch of the story is erased so the writers can just repeat stuff over and over. Banes and I join it to talk about stuff we hate too!

One of the tropes I hate is how assassins and great fighters are currently depicted as fighting with a mathematical precision, ala John Wick, Daniel Craig's James Bond, Jason Bourne, the Black Widow, Captain America etc. It's not that it's not realistic because of course it isn't and it's not meant to BE realistic, the problem is that the precise, choreographed, balletic, perfect kung-Fu style of gunfighting is a trope that's used as a shortcut to indicate that the person is a great fighter highly trained: It's a trope, and it's hugely overused and boring. No one ever fights like that, especially not with guns and it's not cool anymore because we've seen it a million times, Give it a rest and show us more natural fighting for a while. The same with wire effects, parkour: They've turned action heroes into anime characters. That's great the first few times but it's at saturation point now and useless.

What are your most hated tropes?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The War Below Us - A rhythm heavy relaxing piece. A tribal dance sound that sends you floating away on soft clouds lit by golden lights and joy with the faint smell of incense. Too much energy to meditate, but great for concentration!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz' newspost on hatable tropes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/oct/01/tropes-i-hate/

Featured comic:
Secrets of Uncrom The Balance of Life and Death - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/28/featured-comic-secrets-of-uncrom-the-balance-of-life-and-death/

Featured music:
The War Below Us - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_War_Below_Us/ - by PuddingLem0n98, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

We decided to chat about games. Video game and computer games. They're now a huge part of pop-culture entertainment and they've influenced us in many ways creatively throughout our lives. There are many different kinds of games out there, but one of the really cool things about them is that they're able to deliver a kind of interactive narrative experience that takes things further than Film or comics can easily do. Games were also instrumental in the early days of the first big popular wave of webcomics with gamer comics (PVP, Ctrl Alt Dlt, and Penny Arcade) and sprite comics (8 bit fantasy), being some of the most popular.

For me, the look of game characters like Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), was a big influence for my comics, and the play style of military games like Battlefield 2 helped me get a good look for my military based comic (Pinky TA). Just the imagery and visual of games these days is inspiring enough, but even back in the day with simple side scrolling platformers, 2D fighters and top down anime style JRPGs the interactive nature of the games could still suck you in and inspire you. I remember I did fan art of the characters from Golden Axe back in the day and I used to draw the weapon loadouts for the JRPGs that I'd play. I don't play games very much at all now because they're far too addictive and I end up wasting hours on them, but even though they're not that creative (well Minecraft is!), they're still a great form of escapism, a good way to deliver a complex story, and a great way to hang out with friends and meet people.

What are your fave games and why? What games were most inspiring to you?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Last Aviatrix: The first early morning rays of sun peek over the distant horizon, brightening the sky from grey to blue… The cold silence is shattered by an aeroplane swooping low overhead. Frenetic energy, speed, action, a whirlwind of active momentum and fury as the sounds carry us along at a great rate of knots and then fade away…

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Giant Bee and Friend - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/21/featured-comic-giant-bee-and-friend/

Featured music:
The Last Aviatrix - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Last_Aviatrix/ - by BusterCagle, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

In today's cast we're chatting about LOVE stories! This isn't a subject we get into much but it's a huge genre so we thought we'd tackle it. We thought none of us even WORK in that genre till I belatedly realised that Banes and I sort of DO with Bottomless Waitress hahaha! There's all sorts of love in there… Sorry for the sound quality with this one I've no idea what went wrong.

I'm pretty sure we all know a good love story or at least KNOW love love stories and most of us like them to some small degree, from passionate drams to romantic comedies, it's a wide genre and it real does get in everywhere. Humans, like most animals reproduce sexually and we're a highly social and cultural species so of course we've developed a lot of stuff around the stories of relationships and the imperative to procreate. Love stories of al kinds have been around since people started writing, so it's worth having a little chat about.
Some of the thing we mention here (sorry, we blanked on webcomics): Pretty woman, Cinderella, Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones' Diary, Joe Vs the Volcano, You've got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and of course- Princess Bride.

We're in 2021 now though and we like to imagine we've expanded the definition of “love” and relationships to things like polyamory, same sex and non-binary etc… but the truth is that these things have always been around just by different names, whether it's free love, androgyny or something else. To that end I mention ne of my fave SciFi books: Drinking Sapphire Wine and Don't Bite the Sun, both by Tanith Lee. It's a couple of SciFi stories written back in the 1970s about a genderless character who lives in a future world where everyone's needs are catered for by automatic, robotic systems, leaving people free to stay as juveniles for as long as they like. People switch bodies, genders and personalities at will. drug taking in encouraged, as is sex, but only if you enter into a formal contract. People have little robots that follow them around, hovering after them with which the can update people on their movements and share their status with all their friends and the rest of the society, gaining or losing popularity as they do. It's a very modern couple of books! And includes relationships between androgynous people.

What are your fave love stories?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Max Jaw - Dark, mean streets. The sound echoes and roars in this dense, hard concrete jungle. It’s unforgiving, raw and cynical. It knows all your secrets and it doesn’t even care, it’s seen it all before… you’re just another anonymous face in the crowd. You won’t be remembered.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Max Jaw - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/14/featured-comic-max-jaw/

Featured music:
Max Jaw - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Max_Jaw/ - by MaxJaw, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Translating cultural concepts so they can be understood in a different country can be really tricky, most people never bother. Often the audience is just left to guess what's behind certain concepts and idioms.
As an Australian, growing up as a little kid we were bombarded by media from everywhere, but mainly Britain, the USA, Canada and New Zealand. There was so much about American media that was utterly alien to us and we were just left to puzzle it out, especially American high school concepts: The level of seriousness with which they regard team sports in schools, cheerleaders, jocks, jockstraps, school kids driving cars, homecoming, pep rallies, summer camp, proms, tick or treating, thanksgiving… We just had to make sense of those things ourselves. Some we could work out from context but others I never really understood and never really will.

Tantz tells us a bit about how she translates concepts from her Greek WW2 comic Without Moonlight to be understood by an English speaking audience and we all have a chatter about things we see in the media from other cultures that we just don't really get, but mainly from the USA since Tantz, Banes, are not from the US, only Pitface and she wasn't IN this Quackcast!

What are the cultural concepts in media from different countries that you don't get?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Speaking in Tongues - A lonely and delicate piano rises out of the shadows to paint an intricate and pretty picture with sound. Backed by gentle synthesised strings, it swirls and rises like a tiny new vine, weaving its way up towards the light.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
The Last Aviatrix - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/sep/07/featured-comic-the-last-aviatrix/

Featured music:
Speaking in Tongues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Speaking_In_Tongues/ - by Quinn O Matic, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/

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There seemed to be a lull for a while after the 1990s and the massive sequel craze of the 80s, but nowadays we're back in full swing again with sequels, reboots and reinvisioning of film and TV franchises.
Banes noticed a distinct pattern of behaviour that occurred around bad or failed franchises: The makers would chose to go against what existing fans liked about the property in the fist place, usually in order to appeal to new fans. When both new fans and old ones dislike what they do, they attack the fans and blame the fans for failure of their version. Then they'll search and find a new franchise to mess up. It's rare that people own up to or admit to failures anymore, it's usually always the fault of the fans for being too “toxic”.

The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot is a great case in point: a film reboot of a hugely popular and successful franchise staring tried and tested popular comedy actors, it turned into a failure. One popular narrative was that it was caused by “toxic” fans and their sexist online campaigns… while those people certainly did exist, a simple viewing of the movie is enough to see the real reasons it failed: They weren't sure what audience it was intended for. The story and storytelling style, the costumes, the sets, effects, lighting, toy-like props, and many of the jokes were specifically aimed at young children, while many of the situations and most of the other jokes were extremely sexual and adult in nature. So what we got was a young kids movie that wasn't for kids- this means adults watching it feel bored or patronised and groan over the childish humour and the kids that could appreciate that content either aren't allowed to watch it, or if they do they're also bombarded with very problematic and gross adult sex jokes: none of this was the fault of the fans.

Compare that to the original 2 films:
They were never intended for a very young audience. Nothing in them was aimed at young children. These were bawdy, young adult comedy fantasy “horror” films. In keeping with the context of the time they had adult humour disguised with double entendres, or hidden with tropes and metaphor. They gained a following from young audiences anyway because the adult content was subtle enough to pass, and the story and style was broad enough that it didn't need to be dumbed down to be understood by younger audiences, in this way they appealed equally to all ages.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Phantasos: Hot, dry desert. Orange sun. warm winds blowing. Shimmering mirages…. Electric arabesque. This is a gloriously distorted riff filled trip into an exotic world of sand and dunes, with beautiful minarets rising out of the distance, sparkling in the harsh light.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Bane's franchise fail newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/18/franchise-follies/

Featured comic:
Follower - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/31/featured-comic-follower/

Featured music:
Phantasos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Phantasos/ - by Phantasos by Jslongstreet, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Why aren't there more prettyboy bad-ass characters? Pretty girl bad-asses too! This character type is often a hall-mark of Japanese and Korean fiction more than anything else though it DOES show up in Western media occasionally. There is no age-limit to the type, what distinguishes it is that the character is tough and a very good fighter while also being very obviously concerned about their appearance and looking good- they don't just look good and fashionable naturally, they actively work at it.

They're most usually shown as being villains but there are examples of them being heroic too. In Western Media James Bond is on the edge of the trope, The Saint (famously played by Roger Moore) is definitely a pretty boy bad-ass, as is Jason King. There's Vega from Street Fighter 2, Space Dandy, Spike from Cowboy Bebop… As for women, the ladies of Charly's Angles, especially the Cameron Diaz movies are a great example.

The popularity of the trope in Japan could come from a samurai tradition that emphasised a study of “softer” arts along with the more lethal ones, manifesting in flower arranging, poetry writing, painting, calligraphy etc. While many Samurai would look ultra masculine and shaggy, still others were exquisitely groomed, wearing hair ornaments, fine silks and makeup. In the west at times we've had something similar with dandy fencers in the 17th and 18th century, hussars dressed in extravagant uniforms covered in gold or silver braid, furs and rows of shiny buttons. There were the famous Landsknechts, German mercenaries who specialised in using gigantic greatswords and dressed in amazing outfits of slashed, puffy, brightly coloured silk and huge hats bedecked with feathers.

So prettyboy badarse characters are not alien to our culture, they're just not that popular right now. Let's bring them back! What are your fave pretty boy or pretty girl badasses?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The Anaether - Running over the darkened plane, legs pumping, feet eating up the distance, dust flying, pounding on into the dimness, escaping, leaving everything behind… This electronic tune is scene-setting and atmospheric, suggesting speed and distance with its relentless rhythm.


Topics and shownotes

Links

Tantz's prettyboy badass newspost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/13/pretty-boy-badass/

Featured comic:
The War Below Us - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/24/featured-comic-the-war-below-us/

Featured music:
The Anaether - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Anaether/ - by Lizbeth490021, rated A.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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We're all fans of something, but when does that happen? When do we transition from just following and liking something into being full on fans and is there even a difference?
I think there definitely IS a difference. I became a fan of Star Wars after watching the first film but I'm not a fan of The Witcher even after watching the entire show. Henry Cavill as Geralt is super amazing but the show itself is just blah to me. I've seen about 200 or so episodes of One Piece but I don't think of myself as a fan. I became a fan of Ghost in the Shell after seeing a poster from the Manga. I became a fan of Farscape after watching reruns of the series over and over.

I think being a fan is about thinking deeper into the thing you enjoy, having it influence your life and creative choices, as well as making you want to enjoy it BEYOND what it is: making fan art, buying toys, posters, looking up trivia about it etc…
It can happen at any stage… when you first read the comic or see a promo pic for it or see a trailer for a TV show or movie or even just a cover picture. Or it can develop slowly over a lot of time and repeat viewings. But it's not a certain thing. I think most people are NOT fans of most things they consume, only certain things ever earn that honour.

Then there are things like being a fan of something but not liking the rest of the fandom, Rick and Morty is famous for that, with many fans being usually taken with the Rick character and wanting to be like him because he's an arsehole as well as a supergenius , and thinking they're also supergeniuses because they're arseholes. Admitting to being a fan of Rick and Morty can get you tarred with the same brush as those people, it can also scare people away of becoming a fan. Being a fan of something doesn't mean you like everything related to that thing, it just means that what you Do like, you really, really like.
There are different ways of being a fan too, my own fanship of Captain America is expressed in my cosplaying the WW2 movie version :)
What are you a fan off and when did that happen?


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Conscripted - What’s it like to have your body and soul transformed and subsumed into the body of a huge, magical, invincible, giant encased in unbreakable metal armour? You have no free will of your own, no ability to communicate or even think. You are now just a serene slave in the form of a huge golem with awesome powers commanded by another. Gunwallace’s theme for conscripted puts me in the mind of poor Darius from Conscripted who was forced into exactly this situation. This music is a serene, clean surface, a smooth forest pond. Calm and clear, disturbed only by the nearest drops of thought rippling across it and then vanishing. Slowly these increase, the rings crossing and converging, until the serenity is no more.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Conscripted - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/16/featured-comic-conscripted/

Featured music:
Conscripted - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Conscripted/ - by Dragonsong12, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
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Angela frowned in disappointment. Her boobs seemed to grimace in displeasure, nipples pulsing with abject fury. As she walked the heaviness of their bounce echoed her anger. She sat down at her desk, opened the document she had been working on and began to type.
She was halfway through her romance novel, “Pirates of pleasure”. Her boobs swelled and seemed to glow, echoing her happy mood as she worked. She typed…
“David admired his 6 foot 5 inch frame in the mirror, sweat glistened off the darkly tanned, well defined 10 pack rippling across his abdomen. Well-defined pectoral muscles bugled like fat watermelons. His perky brown nipples drew the eye like magnets. The huge bulge in his skin-tight white semi-transparent trousers pulsed with both threat and promise. Deep hazel eyes glowered beneath strong dark brows and a thick fringe of dark shaggy hair as he drank in this magnificent sight. He thought longingly of the wanton, headstrong, powerful pirate queen maiden waiting alone in his quarters…”
Angela's Boobs rose and fell excitedly with the quickness of her breath as she continued to type…

There's a fad at the moment for finding terrible examples of men writing about women. But this isn't a one way issue by any means. You can find ridiculous examples of women writing about men in any one of a billion romance novels, crappy examples of straight people writing gay people. bad versions of gay people writing straights, Binary writing non-binary, white writing black, and the reverse… Basically people writing about something they have limited personal experience with in a superficial manner and focussing on the aspects they fetishise. It generally produces silly results whoever does it.
This is what we chat about, with some side lines into things like ethnic stereotyping. Check out the weird manga samurai versions of national cultures done for the Japanese Olympic games.

This Quackcast was inspired by a newspost by our own Tantz Aerine. Maybe we should all have a go at some bad writing? The above version was great fun! I did a double layer: a man (me) writing badly about a woman writing badly about a man in a very silly, stereotypical way.


This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to The BirdBoys - creepy cyberpunk weirdness with a big, bouncy beat to move us along. Get lost in the hustle and bustle of a futuristic western crowd. Glowing lights, dark side allys, mysterious whisperings half heard from far away, chatterings in unfamiliar languages… A dry dusty techno future.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Men writing women badly - https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/18-men-who-need-to-be-banned-from-writing-female-characters
Men AND women writing each other badly - https://medium.com/inspired-writer/men-women-writing-each-other-badly-9c0f46aeac5c
Woman writing men badly- https://www.thewriterscircus.com/articles/characters/5734/common-mistakes-female-writers-make-when-writing-male-characters/
Tantz post on the subject - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/30/writing-women-writing-men/
Countries as Samurai - https://world-flags.org/



Featured comic:
The BirdBoys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/aug/02/featured-comic-the-birdboys/

Featured music:
The BirdBoys - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_BirdBoys/ - by J_vulture, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Mal (aka Bluecuts), Alice (aka DameHelsing), and Pitface are all together in the Quackcast to chat about all the things involved in making the DD anthology! They get a bit kinky with their symbolism and analogies haha! So be warned. The language gets a little spicy… It makes a fun listen!

These three great people worked hard over a whole year to bring together the contributions of many creators to put them all into this amazing horror anthology so they could fund the design update for DD. So please help support it and buy a copy, it's only $15

DD Horror anthology link: https://drunkducksells.gumroad.com/l/EBCcv

They chat about the possibility of doing another anthology, maybe even an Adult anthology!? That would be an interesting thing to do.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Freddy Reno Went Missing: A relaxing day in the warm sun at the beach. The smell of sunscreen on skin and salt air tinged with a pungent hint of seaweed. This music rolls in like a pleasant breeze, washing away negativity with its easy, jazzy, calming sounds. Sit back, sink into the warm white sands, let them cushion you as the heat of the sun melts away your worries.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Lullaby Tales - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/27/featured-comic-lullaby-tales/

Featured music:
Freddy Reno Went Missing - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Freddy_Reno_Went_Missing/ - by OrGiveMeDeath_Ind, rated M

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Bluecuts34 aka Mal - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/bluecuts34/
Dame Helsing aka Alcie - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/damehelsing/
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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No, not surgical masks, this is about the kind superheros wear, also gimps, masquerades, villains and robbers! Inspired by Pitface and her deep and abiding love of gimp masks. We talk about how common it is to find masks in comics and how comic characters probably wear masks more than in any other media. And most media where characters wear masks is based on comics anyway.
What are your fave masks?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Generation Bad: An epic entrance! Striding into a grand hall, cloak billowing wide, regal, grand, huge. Violins pacing out the rhythm, twin electric guitars, one threatening with a low, distant thunder growl as the other soars and wheels high above!

Topics and shownotes

Links


Featured comic:
Erin's Space - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/20/featured-comic-erins-space/

Featured music:
Generation Bad - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Generation_Bad/ - by TheRedDeath, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

On Friday the 16th the site was down for a while. Nasty, but we fixed that and chatted to our programmer Alexey about starting the update program on DD. The DD Anthology is also out now too, so you can buy a copy and help support the upgrades! Pit and Banes were MIA today but as a special treat you can meet my Russian hatted Ex, Miss-Judged, who's with me and Tantz in this cast. And as a super extra special treat you can see us ALL in our pateron video which is free to ALL this week! In the links bellow.

Our Patreon vid is available to all! Watch:
Vid - https://www.patreon.com/posts/dd-patreon-video-53856108



We chat about the DD fall, maybe getting JustNoPoint to be our Sys Admin, code updates for DD, the design update, and the DD anthology. Then at about the 18 minute mark we dive into our main topic: “Test of character”. This was based on a newspost by Tantz Aerine. Some examples of things we mention that have a very prominent 'test of character" component are: horror stories, O-Henry stories, Fairytails, and Avatar the last airbender.


This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Quantum Festival - Starting on the sub-atomic level we work our way up the energy levels. Mesons, baryons, quarks, hadrons, protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons vibrating, pulsing, combining, exploding. Energy is produced in strange and wonderful ways. The eerie synthesiser sounds illustrate this perfectly, beeping, bumping, clicking and wailing, helping you visualise the quantum weirdness!

Topics and shownotes

Buy the DD anthology and help us at the same time - https://drunkducksells.gumroad.com/l/EBCcv
Anthology update - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/the-duck-reanimated/
Crash report - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/17/annnd-were-back/
Tant's Test of Character newpost - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/09/the-test-of-character/


Featured comic:
The Magister Records - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jul/13/featured-comic-the-magister-records/

Featured Music:
Quantum Festival - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Quantum_Festival/ - by Lokpolymorfa, rated E

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Miss-judged


VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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We chat about the styles and trends in webcomics and what causes them, whether it's people copying stuff they like, working with the limitations of the technology they're using or other reasons.

In the early days of webcomics a few early birds got very popular simply because they were they were there first: 8 Bit Fantasy, Sluggy Freelance, PVP, Penny Arcade etc. They garnered imitators and so webcomic fashions and styles were born. We had a huge wave of sprite comics, slacker gamer comics, and slice of life comics. The “2 friends sitting on a couch playing video games and being dicks to each other while not understanding girls” was probably the most popular trend for years!

Webcomics have had a few explosions of popularity and trends diversified over the years. A significant one has been the so-called “webtoon format”, which is actually the Scott McCloud infinite canvas idea that was developed years before. That site encourages creators to use it because they prefer it for their mobile site and app. But it's created a larger trend of people making their comics in that way regardless of host.

Tapas and webtoon only promote certain styles of webcomics on their front page which in turn creates another style: manga influenced work with large eyes, flattish, muted colours, digital 2D art only etc with only a limited range of story types. People see that and start to imitate it, thinking that's how webcomics should be, or if they do work like that they can be popular, or just because they like it, or don't know any better…

The limitations of technology create styles when people use premade models in popular 3D programs. This happened in the early days of 3D with all the Counterstrike comics and people using 3DMax and poser models. It happens with in digital 2D art with an overuse of standard brushes in Photoshop, Gimp and now Procreate and Infinite painter. These things are influenced by limitations of the tech, which creates a new style and that gains imitators.

What popular tends and styles have you noticed in webcomics? And what casued them?

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Patchwork and Lace - Darkness abounds, walking into a dark tomb, past shadows and demon parasites, into mysteries beyond light and human understanding. Deep underground where humans were never meant to venture, learning horrific truths about the universe and what lies beyond… The distorted bass line takes you down… deep down.

Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
24Hour Cake - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/29/featured-comic-24hour-cake/

Featured Music:
Patchwork and Lace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Patchwork_and_Lace/. - by Itsasooz, rated T

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes


VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join the Discord server to chat in real time with other DD comics people - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

There was ALL sorts of kerfuffle on the internet centred around the phrase “Heroes don't do that”.
It began with an interview of two people involved in the production of the Harley Quinn TV animated series. According to them there was a sex scene between Batman and Cat Woman, including a scene of cunnalingus. They claim that a representative from DC told them to cut that scene, saying “Heroes don't do that”. But what is the real story?

The nerd-net exploded over that! It's super important to realise that it is NOT a direct quite from DC comics though, it's a 3rd hand paraphrased remark: originally second hand and paraphrased by the two interviewees, then delivered 3rd hand to us by the news blog that published it. Hence it CAN NOT be said to represent the editorial policy and exact words of DC.

Further, we don't know if the intent was “Heroes don't perform cunnalingus” or “We don't want to show our heroes performing oral sex on screen”. Most of the nerd-net automatically assumed the former, perhaps because people tend to think overly literally, or they like to go for the funnier, stupider, more bombastic interpretations. The latter seems the far more logical and obvious version to me though. It's silly to think there would be certain super common sex acts that DC would forbid their heroes participating in off screen.

With that in mind we're thinking about the idea of the "image" of characters, including our own: What WOULD they do onscreen and what would then NOT be shown doing?
#heroesdon'tdothat
#heroesDodothat

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to SweetGum - Hot summers day in the shade, looking out over the wide expanse of a fresh green sunlit valley where you can see to the limit of your dreams. Far mountains dissolve into the sky and the world goes on forever.


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
Staff and Steam - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/15/featured-comic-staff-and-steam/

Featured Music:
SweetGum - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/SweetGum/ - by BitterBadger, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes




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Webcomicers need to learn to draw and write in order to become webcomicers. There are many other skills and also different ways to make webcomics, BUT most of us draw and or write. Here Tantz and I talk about terrible teachers of these skills and better ways to learn :)
(Also, Jason from Friday the 13t is a big fat buttface)

When it comes to creativity it's a tricky thing to learn and teach, Mainly the most important thing is learning the raw skills you need in order to produce that creativity. A bad teacher will try and impose their own notion of creativity on you, use jargon, skip steps and basically not explain to you WHY you do certain things. Good teaching in creative feilds is about skills, techniques, tools, learning the terminology, and the reasoning behind things.

What were some of the worst and best expereinces YOU had when learning to draw or write? Who were the bad teachers, the good teachers, the bad lessons and the good ones?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Necroblivion - The raw, bussing fuzz of distorted electric guitar over calm, almost celebratory rhythm driven music brings to mind the sounds of North African Tuareg band Tinariwen. This is quite a positive vibe and a very African sound.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Fatman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/08/featured-comic-fatman/

Featured music:
Necroblivion - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Necroblivion/ - by Paneltastic, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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Taking on more than you can handle - i.e. James Cameron and JJ Abrams are good directors and writers but neither could handle the demands of a complex Sci-Fi project that needs full world building and internally consistent logic etc (Avatar and Star Wars). They're great with more simple SciFi that's based on 21st century earth and simpler stories, but epic SciFi was clearly a long way beyond the capabilities of either. We're talking about when WE have been caught taking on stuff we couldn't handle, how we dealt with that and also how other creators dealt with it too.

It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that you take on, whether the story style is too much for you, you can't get a good ending, the research is too much, the artwork is too hard, the schedule is too demanding etc. We've all been caught in some way or other, usually multiple ways! One strategy is to break stuff down into more manageable chunks, but sometimes that's just too hard anyway. It can be wroth it to battle on because it forces you out of your comfort zone and makes you learn new lessons and techniques. Sometimes you can still produce something great even if you didn't reach what you were originally aiming for. And sometimes it actually makes more sense to quit because you find yourself wasting too much time and energy on it when you could be spending that more profitably elsewhere. There are no single right answers here.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to COSMIC SAFARI: A trip through the wilderness of the vast galaxy, along beautifully coloured nebula filaments, past the rings encircling gas giants, and through the tails of comets! This is Jean-Michele Jarre meets a small remote controlled car!


Topics and shownotes

Featured comic:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/jun/01/featured-comic-cosmic-safari

Featured Music:
COSMIC SAFARI - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/COSMIC_SAFARI/ - by Frenemy, rated E.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
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We've done a few Quackcasts about how terrible Mary Sues are… well this is the opposite! Tantz postulated that they can be likable and GOOD for a story and then won us over easily by telling us why during our Patreon video. In the Quackcast Banes and I join in, having been convinced of the idea. We talk about how if the Mary Sue is a likable, good person, genuinely humble or altruistic and helpful then that can mitigate their Mary Sueness. Whereas if they're selfish, take their status for granted, take advantage of others or are just there to be marvelled and worshiped by the astonished onlookers (re: Rey), they can be unpleasant.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Erin’s Space: Racing on down to a slow, calm interlude at the seaside… Pulp fiction meets Café Del Mar. Gunwallce turned a balalaika into a surf guitar for the exciting intro. Then we relax to soft, smooth jazz

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic:
Necroblivion - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/25/featured-comic-necroblivion/

Featured music:
Erin’s Space - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Erins_Space/ - by Pelta8d, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

The famous film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa gave its name to the style of a story that has the same scenes told from different perspectives. Many comics and movies have done this, it's a really cool trick to try. Not only can it help you show a different perspective of a scene it can also show your story in a completely different style when you show things through the eyes of a particular character and how they “see” the world. It can even be a great trick for making a sequel- rather than a linear continuation of a story you show a story that happened in parallel to the sequences shown.

You get that with the “event comics” made by DC and Marvel where one large event takes place across multiple “titles” and that even made its way to the Marvel cinematic universe with a few stories happening at the same time, very notably the events of Black Panther and the Civil war. In fact this sort of thing was even part of the very first origins of my comic, Pinky TA, back in the late 90s: It started as a painting series depicting the events of a point in time. Some painting followed the story in a linear fashion (before and after), others depicted the same point in time from different angles and perspectives. It's a really cool way to help you look at your story differently.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Trevor: A black line on the horizon of dense sound builds like a tidal wave, rising higher and higher as it comes closer. It never breaks, only swamps and envelopes you as it rushes past dragging everything with it with the enormous power of the ocean behind it, flooding like a rising tide from the sea, drenching you in sound.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Newspost on timeloops - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/28/when-i-come-around/

Featured comic:
Huckleberry- https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/11/featured-comic-huckleberry/

Featured music:
Trevor - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/TREVOR/ - by JCorrachComics, rated A.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

So what IS SciFi? Well it's a pretty wide umbrella term and contains a lot of different things. In some senses it's just an imaginative fiction story where science replaces magic. SciFi can simply be a sciencey setting where genre stories take place (romance, adventure, nior, horror). It can be a magical fantasy space opera with a futuristic skin (Star Wars), it can be “hard SciFi” where the story is set in the future but the science is completely plausible, it can be written with strong themes that examine philosophical questions and make interesting points about the nature of humanity, and it can be so many more things too. It's a broad church!

Where did SciFi begin? Basically it all started in the 1920s. The “pulp” magazines were super popular. People just couldn't get enough of them. Publisher Hugo Gernsback found a niche re-publishing old speculative fiction stories ( Jules Verne, HG Wells, Mary Shelly etc), in some of his publications, and single handedly created the “Science Fiction” genre as a way to sell them. Pretty soon a new crop of writers was producing new stories specially to be a part of this genre and to go in his magazines, these were the first SciFi writers… Among them EE Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov etc. And the genre was born.

It's currently popular to say that Mary Shelly was “the first SciFi writer”, I'd counter that and say not really… It was a big step on the road but what her Frankenstein character was most influential with was monster fiction, she created the “mad scientist” subgenre that has been hugely influential in horror fiction. But when you're talking about the “first” of something the problem is that you can ALWAYS come up with earlier examples, which is why I list Gernsback in the 1920s as the true creator of the genre.

For example, the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann pre-date Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and out of them we have stories of a scientist creating a lifelike clockwork robot, becoming Operas and the famous ballet Coppélia. And if we want to go back to the earliest primordial SciFi origins what comes to my mind is many of the Greek myths: the famous Scientist Daedalus who created wearable flying wings, animated toys, the Labyrinth, even the ability for a woman to mate with a bull! Then there's Archimedes (a real person) with SciFi stories of his accomplishments like the creation of a sun-powered ray to destroy warships or a giant claw machine that plucked them out of the water… Or the stories of the ships built by the Phaeacians (in Homer's Odyssey), they're able to travel as fast as a falcon to any destination you can think of since they know all the cities of the world and can navigate automatically. SciFi has a LONG history for something that wasn't codified till the early 20th century.

———————————

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Starlights, Gunwallace says: “Had some time this morning. Here's a theme for Starlights. In my head I'm imagining you with your new guitar dressed in the white dandy costume playing the solo.”
My description: A dandy gent in bright white frock coat and tricorn hat festooned with giant ostrich feathers stands outlined against the stormy grey sky… He shoulders a cream coloured stratocaster, and shreds, ripping out a soaring solo against the growing winds of the coming storm -


Topics and shownotes

Kawaii's newspost on the Beauty of SciFi - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/02/the-beauty-of-science-fiction/

Featured comic:
Cupcake War Machine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/may/04/featured-comic-cupcake-war-machine/

Featured Music:
Starlights - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Starlights/ - by Kawaii Triangle, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
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Time loops in stories are a lot of fun, they can be really complicated and interesting. Groundhog day is the most famous version of this trope. Banes tells me it's a “trope codifier”. In a time loop story characters are caught reliving the same events over and over with the main character being the only one who's really aware of it, Sometimes the loop happens only once or a couple of times, or many, many times as in Groundhog Day and Palm Springs. We chat about some of the different time loop stories, their characteristics and why we like them.

We also talk about the instance where you actually experience this in reality: re-watching and re-reading books, movies, TV shows etc. It's like WE are the main, aware character and the loop is the movie or the book. We get something different out of them each time, just like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog day. Videogames give us even more of a time loop experience, allowing us to follow different threads and make different choices to achieve different outcomes at the completion of the game. If you “die” you also “re-live” the game over and over till you manage to complete it in the way you want! Tantz brings up the example of the game Undertale that specifically recognises and draws attention to this.

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme to Akacya the Bounty Hunter: Reverential awesomeness. Buzzing distorted beat pacing out the time and encouraging you to move, a slow, heavy, swaying, stomping dance. A wobbling, vibrating guitar weaves through and ties it all up like a bright satin ribbon around a present, topping the track off with a beautiful display of shibari.

Topics and shownotes

Links

Newspost on timeloops - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/28/when-i-come-around/

Featured comic:
Phantasos - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/26/featured-comic-phantasos/

Featured music:
Akacya the Bounty Hunter - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Akacya_The_Bounty_Hunter/, by Shinka, rated M.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Character height is not something we think about too much but it's actually a fairly big deal: in terms of what the height means, what it means contextually, how the character fits into their world, how they relate to others around them, and how it's like to draw them!
A character can loom, they can shrink down, they can appear bigger than they are due to force of personality or smaller due to being shy and retiring, Largeness can equal power and strength, stupid docility, threat, potential, or it can be used to highlight the strength of a much smaller character that beats them as in many animes.
It can be very tricky to get a good sense of the size of characters in relation to others and how they fit within the world, just using chairs for example can make a huge difference depending on the characters.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Lyza's Sandstorm - Softly, pacing, creeping, exploring the haunted vastness of the empty space. Abandoned, wind whistles through, distant creaking, the soul has left the building but something dark remains… waiting.

Topics and shownotes

Forum discussion on character height - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178679/

Featured comic:
Starlights - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/20/featured-comic-starlights/

Featured Music:
Lyzas Sandstorm - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Lyzas_Sandstorm/ - by Simonitro, rated M.

Listen to the Pitface Interview! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiSOTrWQ1Jk&t=187s&ab_channel=SurgeryHead

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

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Evil superheroes are a stupid fad, that's my contention. My opinion. They've been around for a long time but now they're so popular it's becoming a bit of a fad and might turn into its own genre. I suppose Marvel and others have saturated the superhero market so to stay relevant other companies are doing “twists” on that traditional genre, hence the evil superheroes.
I think it's a stupid idea because: we already HAVE evil super characters, in the form of villains; it's an escapist fantasy medium of a world where heroes are actually good, unlike reality where they're more complex and often actually evil (i,e, police shootings) subverting that just takes us back to reality again rendering the superhero part of the equation pointless; a character being corrupted by power and becoming evil is not really that complex or interesting, it's actually very, very obvious, a character trying to remain good in spite of the power IS complex and interesting because that's far harder to do. And so on

The counter argument is that the superhero genre has been around for about 90 years or so now and can do with a little examination. I say fair enough, but it doesn't need to be a fad or a genre in its own right. Handle it correctly and make them the super villains. Some evil superheros in these things: Chronicle, Bightburn (horror in the style of The Omen, Case 39 but using a superman origin), The Boys, Invincible, Hancock, My super Ex-girlfriend, Venture Brothers.

This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Journey Through the Star Sea - In Gunwallace’s words: The brooding darkness of this seemed to fit the featured comic this week. On the brink of death’s door, the man seeks and seeks, search for succour, absolution of the sins of the body and mind, a cure for his disease. It’s a dark and dangerous universe, there’s no rest for him to be found…

Topics and shownotes

Links

Forum discussion about evil superheroes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/178671/

Featured comic:
Journey Through the Star Sea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/apr/13/featured-comic-journey-through-the-star-sea/

Featured music:
Journey Through the Star Sea - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Journey_through_the_star_sea/, by Scribbloid, rated T.

Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Pitface - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!

Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS