Over on the free Dystopia Patreon, Jackwraith looks at the creative origins of Jasper and the Morlocks, reaching all the way back to a pencil sketch from 1991, the original Dystopia “bible,” and the early Dystopia Chronicles stories. The essay […]
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The Need for Intermission This week on Patreon, Jackwraith looks at why Dystopia is taking a short interlude between Chapters Three and Four. The post explores how these intermission pieces give readers a moment to breathe while also widening the […]
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That title is the opening to the tagline of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K miniatures game; a game I played for around 15 years (along with Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Battlefleet Gothic, Epic Armageddon, Necromunda, Mordheim, Battlemaster, Man o’ War and pretty […]
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Comics are often remembered for their biggest moments: the reveals, the action, and the images that stay lodged in your memory long after the page is turned. But those moments rarely stand alone. Using a recent page from Dystopia as […]
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Jackwraith’s latest Patreon post, “Action and Reaction,” explores how motion, consequence, and escalation shape the pacing and tension inside Dystopia. From collapsing environments to the chain reactions unfolding beneath Haven, the essay examines how small visual and narrative moments build […]
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This week, Jackwraith elaborates on how stories, ideas, and creative instincts shape the way he writes. He explores how experiences foster a trust and confidence in atmosphere, restraint, and the spaces between words… principles that guide the narrative voice of […]
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Jackwraith reflects on the construction and intent behind the featured splash page, focusing on how scale, composition, and visual pacing are used to immerse the reader in the environment of Dystopia. The post explores the balance between detail and readability, […]
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In their latest post, Jackwraith turns inward toward the mechanics of storytelling examining how perspective, structure, and pacing shape the experience of the world beneath Haven. Rather than focusing on surface action, the essay looks at how narrative layering builds […]
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On Saturday February 21, we’ll be hosting a live hangout on the Dystopia Discord, and you’re invited to drop in, listen, participate, or simply lurk. The evening will be an open, informal space to talk shop: creating comics, sharing observations about Dystopia, […]
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A new essay is live on the Dystopia Patreon, where writer Jackwraith reflects on the origins and meaning of the ShadowNet, tracing its roots back to early online communities and the lived experience of existing simultaneously in physical and digital […]
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A new behind-the-scenes article exploring the mythological and narrative roots of Chapter Three: SCYLLA has been published on the Dystopia Patreon. Jackwraith examines how ideas of lore, risk, and inherited mythology influence the Dystopia current chapter and how those concepts […]
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This sketch is a quiet nod to a figure that’s been hovering at the edges of Dystopia for a long time. You may recognize The Mime from Dystopia Chronicles, a five-issue series published years ago through 5th Panel Comics. Those […]
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If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the signal and you have our heartfelt thanks. For a while now, the Dystopia newsletter has lived a little apart. Quiet. Independent. Slipping through inboxes with updates from Haven and notes from behind the […]
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From Chapter 3: Scylla – A sneak peek at some of the underground activity… Ventrik and Tanya emerge into the Chamber – this is where we’re heading.
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This is a quiet side door into the world you’ve already glimpsed on the dystopia website. The comic pages, the strange fragments of “found footage,” the clinical readouts and half-remembered conversations. All of it is part of the same signal. […]
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This week marks a full year since Dystopia began its descent Into darkness. For Alfa and Jackwraith, it’s been a journey of discipline and discovery. Each week has brought a new page and a new piece of the puzzle that connects humanity, technology, faith, and the […]
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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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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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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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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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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 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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In some ways, the Control Ring (level Two) of the city is the most obvious of settings and, in turn, the most aptly named. Government of any kind is essentially about control: controlling who is considered a citizen, what the […]
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As I mentioned in the historical publication piece, the gangs have almost always been a fascinating topic for whomever has read the bible. When I started listing them off on that day that I dumped the majority of this whole […]
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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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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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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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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 most basic identity of the Dystopia setting was two-fold: 1. It was a place that everyone at Fifth Panel Comics could play around in. 2. It was a way to compile a ton of random ideas that I’d built […]
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A wonderful aspect of life is that nothing is ever “done” and Dystopia as a concept and a project is no different. Originally, Jackwraith had built this world based on concepts that piqued his interest and, over time, that idea […]
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