The Leviathan

Beautiful story! Wonderful atmosphere and perfect pacing. Very original too, there's nothing quite like this in comics.

I'm a little shy about pointing people to my site but I'll make an exception here. I ran a quick interview with Wesley a while back and she is incredibly articulate. One of the best spoken illustrators I've ever met. For anyone interested:

http://igallo.blogspot.com/2008/02/fresh-paint-wesley-allsbrook.html

Wow, gorgeous colors! Consider me a fan. :D

Irene, her other work (on your blogsite) is like nouveau after it meets the absinthe fairy. *wow*

This graphically driven story is going to take a re-read or two to sink in.

"Where are you?"

"Shrodinger's Box."

"Dead or alive?"

"Not sure yet."

:D

Neutron:

"nouveau after it meets the absinthe fairy."

I'd have given a small body part to have said that first.

Well Irene, technically... according to the Tor.com ToS:

. ...you grant Macmillan and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute and display such content throughout the world in any media now known or hereafter invented.

...it's all yours. ;)

Lucky for you it's illegal to ship body parts with the USPS. >:)

I'm going to take a wild guess that, given the comic's title, Raleigh's close resemblance to Peter Blegvad is not a coincidence.

I should add that I loved it.

@ neutronjockey

On the contrary!

You acknowledge that you are responsible for any submission you make, including the legality, reliability, appropriateness, originality and copyright of any such material. You represent, warrant, and agree that you own all rights to the content you post or otherwise control sufficient rights to grant the rights you grant by these Terms of Use...

It's still yours. We can just repost it.

@Torie

:P

Certainly one of the best comic I read on the net in ages, if not the greatest ! This story got such a great mood, congrats to Wesley Allsbrook, it was a blast to read. I wish be able to read many "Tor comics" if you guys plane to keep this quality and freshness. Wow ! ^^

[I hope you will apologies me for my bad english :P]

that's quite beautiful.

Enjoyed the illustrations. Although I must, in complete embarrassment, admit I had high difficulty following the storyline and am not sure what happened at the end. :(

I'm not a huge comic reader. However, I'm hooked on Wesley's epic story. Her masterful gestural drawing style creates a fluid and almost first person sort of experience for the reader. The mystery and pace of the story-line creates a feeling of being half awake and half asleep. She really deserves all the kudos that will be born from this. Congrats from a big fan!

Beautiful and surreal, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Her artwork reminds me a bit of Paul Pope's which is not a bad comaparision at all. All in all, well worth reading.

The story is beautiful, strangely compelling. The art is wonderful. But I hate when a plot is dependent on supposedly smart/really stupid people doing exceedingly stupid things. Climbing up to the top of the Leviathan alone is outrageous. No scientist or explorer would do it, not without a death wish. And then going spelunking down a mysterious and seemingly bottomless blow-hole, alone, without proper equipment, including a LIGHT, that's just stupifyingly stupid, Bizzaro World stuff. Is the man drunk, high or di he have a stroke and suddenly go insane? Bizarre fantasy and sci-fi concepts I can accept. Brazen idiocy is a harder sell.

Good stuff; reminds me a bit of Persimmon.

Very cool

Hm. Well, now I know that I can't read graphic novels on my laptop. Having to scroll up and down to be able to follow the storyline (the larger panels exceed the length of my window) makes it impossible to grasp the images holistically - as a result, to me much of this was incomprehensible mush, visually.

It was very pretty, but just a bit, well, surreal for my tastes. I have no idea exactly what happened after about the halfway point of the story.

Tracey@19: reading graphic novels on a screen, especially a small screen, is actually quite difficult. Here's an essay by Scott McCloud which touches on the issue.

[url]http://www.scottmccloud.com/makingcomics/five_half/00.html[/url]

Well, I think it certainly looks cool, but I honestly can't figure out what's going on. Could one of you posters who got it explain it to me?

Hey all, thanks very much for the praise and input. I'm flattered that you all took the time to read this. I feel very lucky to have a place like this to show my work. Super-normal thanks to my editors, Liz and Gina, and to Irene Gallo... Couldn't have done any of this without you.

Fascinating...
Lovely tones..
.. and nicely plotted....
Beautiful artwork..

It's also wonderful to see graphic work in short form on the net..

Well done to all concerned..

=]

Totally incomprehensible. Loved the art though.

Can any of the big-brains here explain to me exactly the meaning of that story? Or at least *something* of what it meant?

Or are those of you who said you "got it" just saying that to sound smarter than you really are?

I suspect the latter...

Very fluid and expressive artwork, even if nobody *really* understood it :-)

tobiathan @ 26 (and everyone else who was perplexed): I certainly have my own ideas about what's going on, but I edited the piece, which is obviously an unfair advantage. I would be very curious to see what kind of explanation someone who is not me would give. :)

I too became lost right after Raleigh slipped into the Leviathan's entrails... then the story becomes weird. Beautifully weird. Great job Wesley!