AI, or artificial intelligence, is the topic of the moment. From kids using it to write their papers to corporations deciding that it can replace whole swathes of their employees, it’s the latest hot thing in how the economy that […]
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Category: Creative
Detroit WebComicon 2025
Detroit WebComicon, September 13-14 If you were near Ferndale, Michigan this weekend, you felt the buzz around the Rust Belt Market. The WebComicon rolled into town, and was two days of meeting artists and enjoying the creativity the webcomic community […]
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Creative Resources: Podcasts
Diving into the world of webcomics, podcasts became a convenient and valuable resource to understand the changes in landscape since Jackwraith and I had managed the 5th Panel Comics website 25 years ago. Back then, the small press world was […]
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Creative process and long-term visions
It’s sometimes difficult being “just” a writer in a visual medium. Despite the fact that writers are the very foundation for those media (be they films, television, comics, video games, or something else), they’re often deeply in the shadows of […]
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Persistence unto (and sometimes through) death
It’s been a couple months since the last time I tapped out one of these. In the interim, I’ve been writing in other places, although not as often as I could’ve been there, either. I’ve also been working on the […]
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The concept of oligarchy
The third level is the one that fits most neatly into the old school cyberpunk vision that drove a lot of the Dystopia setting. It’s very high-tech. It has a lot of cyberized-type characters and it contains that “corporations as […]
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Shadows on (and off) the ‘Net
The opening story, Into Darkness, is primarily concerned with what’s happening in “the Real” as the city expression goes. We’re presented with Force Command, which is the main route of interaction with the outside world, which is almost always only […]
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Plans for the moment
When Jeff suggested that we try to get back into comics (him drawing and me writing), he immediately suggested the Dystopia material that I’ve been regaling you with in these first few posts. When he did that, he asked me […]
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Edge of the known world
Dystopia was originally envisioned as a multi-genre project. Early in the lifetime of Fifth Panel, we didn’t have a ton of variety in our genres (e.g. it was still mainly superheroes), but there were at least some variations in approach, […]
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The grand vision
Me being me and having new stories and characters springing into my head on an hourly basis, I immediately knew that just doing one book and calling it “Dystopia” wasn’t going to serve the situation. With a setting that was […]
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The free weekly webcomic updates on Monday. Dystopia offers unique takes on storytelling through genre-spanning arcs set in a richly imagined, multi-layered world. Across its towering levels and shadowed undercity, you’ll encounter cyberpunk conspiracies, gangland rivalries, corporate cults, digital ghosts, and the quiet struggles of those trying to survive between the cracks. With each story, Dystopia invites you deeper—into a world that feels both impossible and eerily familiar. The world expands as you read, revealing patterns, echoes, and secrets hiding just beneath the surface. It’s an evolving experience that rewards curiosity.
