# Marin Comics

> Personal site of Marin Balabanov — web developer, designer, and comic artist. Essays and field reports on the demoscene, retro computing (Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64), comics, creative coding, computing history, and hacker culture, plus original comics and fiction.

Author: Marin Balabanov (https://marincomics.com/about.html). Content is written by a human, first-person, and reports on events the author personally attended or work he personally made. Articles carry publication dates and Schema.org BlogPosting metadata. All content is in English unless noted.

## Key pages
- [About the author](https://marincomics.com/about.html): Marin Balabanov — background, profiles, and contact
- [Writing index](https://marincomics.com/writing.html): all essays and articles
- [Dev](https://marincomics.com/dev.html): development projects and experiments
- [Comics](https://marincomics.com/comics.html): original comics
- [Videos](https://marincomics.com/videos.html): video work

## Writing
- [The Freest Being in the Universe Part 3: Pirates, Accusers, and the Other Silver Surfer](https://marincomics.com/freest-being-03.html)
- [The Freest Being in the Universe Part 2: Free! The False Start, the New Norrin, and the Elders' Plot Against Galactus](https://marincomics.com/freest-being-02.html)
- [The Freest Being in the Universe Part 1: Introduction & the Silver Surfer's First Twenty Years](https://marincomics.com/freest-being-01.html)
- [From Blog Posts to a Book on Amazon: How I Wrote and Self-Published The Freest Being in the Universe](https://marincomics.com/publishing-the-freest-being.html)
- [Confessions of a Kitchen Troll: Volunteering at Goulash Programming Nights 24](https://marincomics.com/gpn24-trolling.html)
- [Feedback at the Scale of Chaos: The Analog Synth Workshops at GPN24](https://marincomics.com/gpn24-synth-workshop.html)
- [ST News Disk Mag: A Digital Archaeological Analysis of Its Evolutionary History and Cultural Impact](https://marincomics.com/st-news.html)
- [KAWS Art & Comix](https://marincomics.com/kaws-2026.html)
- [From Pretender to Scener: When Can You Call Yourself A Real Part of the Demoscene?](https://marincomics.com/demoscene-authenticity.html)
- [How a Hackathon Can Be a Mirror to Your Soul: A Survival Guide to the People You Meet](https://marincomics.com/hackathon-archetypes.html)
- [That's What I Call Rapid Prototyping! Building a Business-Ready Prototype in Hours, Not Weeks](https://marincomics.com/vantage-prototype.html)
- [Chunky Little Squares: The Fabulous Appeal of Pixel Art](https://marincomics.com/appeal-of-pixelart.html)
- [C for Commodore: The BCC Demoparty 2026](https://marincomics.com/bcc-2026.html)
- [Why I Love the Demoscene](https://marincomics.com/demoscene-love.html)
- [Angels in a Makeshift Utopia](https://marincomics.com/39c3.html)
- [Drawing as Meditation](https://marincomics.com/drawing-as-meditation.html)
- [From Zero to Koala](https://marincomics.com/c64-graphics.html)
- [Speedrun of the Retro Gaming Museum in Vienna](https://marincomics.com/retro-gaming-museum.html)
- [The Game of Test-Driven Development](https://marincomics.com/code-retreat-vienna-2025.html)
- [The Unrestrained Energy of Rob Liefeld](https://marincomics.com/liefeld.html)
- [From Pigments to Pixels](https://marincomics.com/art-technology.html)
- [Exhausted at Evoke 2025](https://marincomics.com/evoke-2025.html)
- [How I Stopped Worrying About My Static Site Generator](https://marincomics.com/not-worry-ssg.html)
- [AI Videos in 2025](https://marincomics.com/ai-videos-2025.html)
- [Bringing back the weird](https://marincomics.com/bringing-back-the-weird.html)
- [GPN23 2025](https://marincomics.com/gpn-2025.html)
- [Re:publica 2025](https://marincomics.com/republica2025.html)
- [How using a delightful tool boosts creativity and preformance](https://marincomics.com/joyful-tools.html)
- [The amazing Revision Demoparty 2025](https://marincomics.com/revision-2025.html)
- [Meteoriks Demoscene Awards 2025](https://marincomics.com/meteoriks-2025-jury.html)
- [Why I dislike PowerPoint](https://marincomics.com/dislike-powerpoint.html)
- [Think. Do. Discover. Code Retreat Linz 2025](https://marincomics.com/code-retreat-linz-2025.html)
- [The Psychological Tree](https://marincomics.com/psychological-tree.html)
- [I Couldn't Decide Which Library to Use, So I Wrote My Own Website Search](https://marincomics.com/website-search-function.html)
- [How Hippie Met Nessie: Turning Two Boring Drawings Into A Cr*ppy Big One](https://marincomics.com/hippie-toilet.html)
- [How I Passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam](https://marincomics.com/aws-cloud-practitioner.html)
- [Drupal Camp 2024 Berlin](https://marincomics.com/drupalcamp-berlin-2024.html)
- [Coding Counter Culture](https://marincomics.com/coding-counter-culture.html)
- [Voxxed Days 2024](https://marincomics.com/voxxed-days-2024.html)
- [Vallejo and the Demoscene](https://marincomics.com/vallejo-pixelart.html)
- [The Magic of Evoke 25 in 2024](https://marincomics.com/evoke-2024.html)
- [Time Bandit: The Game That Sold the Atari ST](https://marincomics.com/time-bandit.html)
- [How I Felt Compelled to Find a Hidden Message Without Realizing How Interesting It Would End Up Being](https://marincomics.com/python-steganography.html)
- [Graffathon 2024. Coding Meets Art At the Introductory Demoparty](https://marincomics.com/graffathon-2024.html)
- [Distraction-free writing with a Palm m125 and a foldable keyboard](https://marincomics.com/palm-distraction-free.html)
- [The Books Chronicling the Atari ST Demoscene](https://marincomics.com/atari-st-demoscene-books.html)
- [Helsinki Hackathon Horizons: Junction X 2023](https://marincomics.com/junction-2023.html)
- [Using the MacBook with an eInk Tablet as an External Display](https://marincomics.com/eink-display.html)
- [Header image of the article Authentication Antics](https://marincomics.com/authflow.html)
- [One Bad Apple: a black-and-white Bad Apple silhouette](https://marincomics.com/bad-apple.html)
- [Why the Treo 90 is Like an Amiga 500 for your Pocket (in Spirit)](https://marincomics.com/treo-90-amiga.html)
- [Evoke 2023 Demoparty Report](https://marincomics.com/evoke-2023.html)
- [The KfW Cloud DevOps Hackathon 2023 in Frankfurt](https://marincomics.com/kfw-hackathon-2023.html)
- [Unleash the Power of the DevTerm](https://marincomics.com/devterm-configuration.html)
- [HealthHub Concept at CraftHack 2023](https://marincomics.com/crafthack2023.html)
- [Portable A500 Mini](https://marincomics.com/portable-a500-mini.html)
- [Revision 2023](https://marincomics.com/revision-2023.html)
- [The year 2022 in review](https://marincomics.com/2022.html)
- [Evoke 2022](https://marincomics.com/evoke-2022.html)

## Fiction
- [Der letzte Alchemist](https://marincomics.com/fiction/alchemist.html)
- [Das Mädchen, das man nicht berühren konnte](https://marincomics.com/fiction/beruehren.html)
- [A2 - Die Ballade von Angie und Alex](https://marincomics.com/fiction/a2.html)
- [Der Abstand zwischen den Augenblicken](https://marincomics.com/fiction/augenblicke.html)
- [Gib mir Stoff, Baby!](https://marincomics.com/fiction/stoff.html)
- [Zwischen Liebeslügen und Peitschenhieben](https://marincomics.com/fiction/rosa.html)