Read NAMESAKE!

I follow several webcomics these days, and I've followed others in the past; but I want to specifically discuss one amazing newcomer today:

Namesake.  (that link goes to the very first comic)

I mentioned this comic before, but it deserves another mention. Isa and Meg are creating something amazing here. They have taken us to Oz, a new vision of Oz, but one that clearly owes much to Baum's original vision (we even have General Jinjur, with a new, yet completely in-character, motivation); they've shown us Alice, grown-up after Wonderland. We have references to fairy tales that most younger people won't even have heard of. And it's all tied together with a concept that binds reality and fantasy together in a single inextricable unit and makes those people who cross the borders the epicenters, I suspect, of disaster and salvation.

In many ways it reminds me of my own Polychrome, as they have so far had some similar approaches to the same problems I had... but at the same time they've come up with very different twists.

It's well-written, the art style is nicely done with both Western and Anime elements combined, and the characters leap off the page from their first appearance. I can't wait for the next installments.

Writer's Block: The start of something wonderful

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"And then, after walking all day through a golden haze of humid warmth that gathered about him like fine wet fleece, Valentine came to a great ridge of outcropping white stone overlooking the city of Pidruid."
     -- Robert Silverbert, Lord Valentine's Castle

This opening line is rich with imagery and sensation, a dreamlike intensity fully appropriate for a novel in which dreams figure so prominently.  Lord Valentine's Castle is one of my favorite books of all time, a book I have read many times over and found that it still retains its wonder every time.

In my own case, I'll probably never be able to surpass:

"Dear God, I'm going to die," said Joe Buckley.

Of course, you have to have read the right Baen books beforehand to fully appreciate that line.