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The QuackCast

The QuackCast

Auteur(s): Michael Morris
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 The QuackCast features Ozoneocean, Banes, Tantz Aerine, and Pitface, talking about writing, movies, webcomics, art, politics, philosophy, sexuality, and everything else! We're the hosts of the oldest webcomic host on the net, Drunkduck.com, aka theduckwebcomics. 20 years this year!WOWIO, Inc. Art
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  • Quackcast 757 - Memento Mori

    Quackcast 757 - Memento Mori
    Sep 16 2025
    Mortality is a heavy, heavy subject. It was brought up in the forums a while ago so we're chatting about it now. We talk about death in popculture, how we treat death in our comics and our growing awareness of mortality as adults. You become increasingly aware of mortality as you age, mainly because you witness more and more of it in action; pets, celebrities that you loved, public figures that you're aware of, grandparents, family friends, parents, friends, and eventually even you have health scares. It's a cumulative thing, but eventually you move from being young and immortal to having the spectre of death ever-present. The ultimate goal of ALL life is immortality, it's what it always strives for in various ways; the two main ones being longevity and reproduction. Life is amazing in that it's a self sustaining bunch of chemical reactions and processes that have an inbuilt goal to keep on going forever however that can be accomplished. There are almost immortal things in our world like the earth and our sun that are billions of years old but even they die eventually and they have no way, will, or mechanism to prevent that, unlike life. But even though we as humans have relatively long lives compared to most other living things and we reproduce quite well, we as individuals certainly are NOT immortal and we have to deal with that in many ways. Our cultures traditionally separate death from normal life, we venerate it through religious practice, explain it and mythologise it. In the modern day we're separated from the realities of death more than ever before because childhood mortality is super low, we all live longer than ever before and when we reach the end of life we're hidden away in retirement homes and hospitals. Most people live in cities and don't experience the same close relationship with death that those on farms and fishing communities constantly dealt with. But it never goes away. As time moves on it always draws nearer, like a slowly creeping shadow. Which is a great analogy because light seems so bright and active, warm and enveloping, it seems ever-present and forever lasting- our sun is four and a half billion years old. But the end will come for that too eventually and things will return to darkness. Darkness and non-life are the natural state of things, life is only a brief glow, an aberration, momentary. The idea that life and death, dark and light are equal, different sides of the same coin and in balance is total and complete nonsense: Darkness and death are the normal, ordinary, basic, state of things- it's ubiquitous and universal, whereas life like light is unusual, precious, singular and special. Never forget that. This week Gunwallace was still recovering from his hospital stay so another best off: Life and Death - Light hearted lyrics and classical vaudevillian comical ukulele mixed with synth in the best tradition of flight of the Conchords… but this is Gunwallace !Originally 20th Feb 2017 in Quackcast 311 Topics and shownotes Links Mortality thread - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/180089/ Featured comic: DemiMon Hollow Town Syndrome - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/sep/08/featured-comic-demimon-hollow-town-syndrome/ Featured music: Life and Death - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Life_and_Death/, by Joff, rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ 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
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    58 min
  • Quackcast 756 - Not dumb, layered

    Quackcast 756 - Not dumb, layered
    Sep 9 2025
    Today we're chatting about things that are ostensibly superficially straightforward, but are actually quite clever and layered in many ways. The two prime examples are Paul Verhoven's Robocop and Starship Troopers. They can both be taken as simply dumb, hyper-violent action films, but both are also good, solid, basic satirical critiques of society. Robocop is a critique of over-corporatism and commercialism, where the myth that “private enterprise does it better” is taken to an extreme. A company takes over the police and the governance of the city of Detroit. Policeman, officer Murphy is killed on the job, only to be revived as a cyborg and we find that the corporation owns him even after he's dead. He becomes their mindless robot slave. The whole film can be taken either as a violent action movie about a super robot cop blasting his way to justice, or as the story of a literal corporate slave on a journey to regain his own humanity and freedom and in doing so he has to murder the CEO of the corporation to free himself. Which is a very symbolic act for an American film where CEOs are seen as demigods. Starship Troopers can be taken as a simple story of brave solders flying into space and fighting back on a crusade against disgusting bug aliens that threaten earth. But we learn that the aliens were only after earth because humans threatened them first, and rather than being the underdogs, the humans are actually massively superior and the aliens are afraid… rather than fighting for our existence we're actually committing genocide (or xenocide), which was also the point of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. With that little bit of extra info all the testosterone, gun firing, soldier camaraderie, patriotism and support for the troops takes on a sinister edge. If we look at it with the right angle we see that they were Nazis all along. I really appreciate stories with those sort of simple layers that can be taken in two completely different ways. It can be very easy to fail at though when the audience doesn't see your other layer at all or your “clever” message isn't very clever or well delivered. Stories certainly do not need to have layers and alternate reading to be good. I appreciate simple straightforward stories that are as they appear to be. But these ones with single extra layer which means things have a very different and obvious reading are fun. Fight-club is famously that sort of story, when we find that Tyler Durden was imaginary all along and it changes your reading of the story, you can still just take it as it seemed in the beginning though. I think the Life of Brian qualifies as well: at the beginning we think it's a satirical version of the life of the messiah, directly making fun of Christ and the bible stories, but at the end we learn that Brian really was just a simple normal guy all along like he and his mum claimed and it changes to a story NOT making fun of Christ but rather the mindless populace who never really cared about Brian at all, they just overlayed a symbol on him and worshipped that instead which took away all his control and killed him in the end. Still, look on the bright side…. Do you like these sorts of stories? This week Gunwallace was in hospital so wa unable to give us a tune so the betst off this week is Gumshoe - Groove on into this black and white world of cool. Lazy coiling blue smoke floats out and leads the way down to this underground world of jazz and sophisticated glitz. Let the bass walk you through, take a twirl with the glittering piano keys, high-five those highhats, and take your place at the bar in the coffee lounge. Make yours black, no sugar. You’re staying up all night for this one! From Quackcast 491, 10th August 2020. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Cafe Menagerie Blues - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/sep/02/featured-comic-cafe-menagerie-blues/ Featured music: Gumshoe - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Gumshoe/ - by Pencilz, rated T Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ 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
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    55 min
  • Quackcast 755 - My ending is not your ending

    Quackcast 755 - My ending is not your ending
    Sep 2 2025
    What happens if an author makes a massively popular story but takes ages and ages to finish that last part of it, and people are waiting breathlessly for years and years for them to end it? Would you support the idea of others taking it off their hands and finishing it FOR them? After all if the IP is popular enough and they've already sold it for tv shows and movies, the public feels they have a sort of ownership over it (Game of Thrones/A song of Fire and Ice)… This was the idea behind Tantz's newspost last week and we wanted to talk it out more. We on the Quackcast all say “NO”, mainly because that's not the right thing to do but also because as a reader it always feels “off” when its not the voice of the actual author. The example I go back to isn't George RR Martin, but Robert E Howard- A big strapping lad from a small town in Texas and a very talented writer for the pulps in the 1930s. He created many amazing characters but most famous among them was Conan the Cimmerian, thief, warrior, and king. The final Conan story by Howard was “Red Nails” and many people regard it was one of his best. Those people are wrong and they are idiots. Red Nails is a reworking of The Slithering Shadow (which I wrongly called “the hidden City” on the Quackcast), the main thing you can tell about Red Nails is that it wasn't written by Howard, it's just not at all in his style, apart from the things it takes from the story it's based on. The Slithering Shadow is a perfect example of a Conan story: it's short, very tightly written, and it expresses all the themes a good Conan story always does- the power of the individual and their will to overcome any challenge, even unknowable supernatural horror, and the contrast between the wild barbarian man who knows himself and the decadent, soft city dwellers who cling to a decaying society built on inequity and evil. The Red Nails on the other hand copies those aspects without understanding them, Conan is a mere side character doing his own thing while pirate Queen Valeria is the main character from who's perspective we see. It's novel and great to have a female character perspective from Howard but he just didn't ever do that. The details and action in this long and sprawling uneven story are paper thin and rushed over without thought which again is something Howard never did. It also includes a great big graphic portion about a woman being captured, whipped and spanked in a very lurid exploitative way, which Howard just didn't do, especially not in his Conan stories. It's an obvious fake that freaks hold up as the best Howard Conan story but I say it's crap and something taken out of the hands of the author and finished by someone else. When Robert E Howard died by suicide in the 1930s the legacy of his writing continued on. Author Lin Carter rather scurrilously repurposed a lot of Howard's other fiction and rewrote them as Conan pastiches, at first claiming they were original Conan stories by Howard, and Red Nails is possibly a good example of that sort of thing. Later on other authors like L. Sprague de Camp and Robert Jordan took on the mantel and continued with the character and he later made his way into comics and movies, the same as James bond, Batman, Superman and a hundred thousand other pop culture and comic characters that are part of the broader cultural landscape now, for better or worse. As a fan, you DO start to feel you have a sort of ownership over characters and sometimes even feel you have a better understanding of them than the original author… So would you ever consider taking over the work of someone else, not in a fan fiction way, but becoming the author of official works? Or could you see that happening with your own work? In many respects I would hate it, but in others I'd be intrigued and interested. This week Gunwallace gives us a lovely musical theme to Wings Of Daera - Welcome to the Star-chamber, prepare to be judged by the super sci-fi, scary arbiters with their laser eye attachments. But you escape into the underground passages and then out into the vast windswept, toxic wasteland beyond, driving fast in your turbo boosted future car to stay ahead of the cannibal mutants that hunt out there after nightfall… Topics and shownotes Links Inspired by the newspost by Tantz - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/aug/22/the-ending-is-always-yours/ Featured comic: Blighted The Odyssey - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/aug/25/featured-comic-blighted-the-odyssey/ Featured music: Wings Of Daera - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Wings_Of_Daera/ - by Ardihel, rated M. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ 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 ...
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    59 min
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