Just found this today and read it through beginning to end. Truly amazing. The dialog and art are just mind blowing-ly entertaining. And the multiple storylines come together really well when you take it all in in one sitting (with a few breaks to savor the awesomeness and suspense of course).
Malone is my favorite character I think, but that priest is definitely the most bad ass fictional priest ever created.
Have you thought of trying to get this published as a graphic novel someday? It is something I would proudly pay to own.
Laz, lad, I very recently registered with TWC to make voting for you easier, but since they keep treating me as ‘anonymous’, I had a go just before at voting for you twice; but the swines picked up someone using the same net connection’d already voted a minute earlier!
Yet what if I wasn’t me but my own brother?
Anyway, in pursuit of solving the mystery of why you’re only in your sixties, well behind a number of far less talented producers, I started reading some of them, in particular the Phoenix Requiem, which seems perpetually glued to no.2.
Anyway, this was what I found: setting aside the strips which seem to blatantly cash in on the popularity of sword and sorcery games like World of Warcraft, etc., or the ones which seem to populate their strips with pictures of naked midriffs and pert, barely concealed bosoms and nipples, (and that’s just the guys!), the one area you play down which the rest seem to play up is romance.
In Phoenix Requiem the main horror story is actually virtually only a device for Sarah Ellerton to stretch out that line from David Bowie’s Drive-in Saturday track, “She’s uncertain if she likes him, but she knows she really loves him”; and by crikey she does it remarkably well.
She’s not a better story teller than you, doesn’t have anything like your mastery of pace, range of characterization, unpredictability or sheer breadth of invention, but boy does she know how to string out a teasing love affair where each party keeps postponing declaring how they feel, only to finally decide it’s now or never only to then have the plot suddenly intervene and tear them apart, only to then be unexpectedly thrown back together again, only to then be immediately torn apart again.
I read over 500 pages without stopping just to finally see the heroine drop her drawers and finally give the doomed hero a good seeing to – it was like being a twelve year old again, forty years after the event!
I’m not sure that soppy stuff’s quite your style – though I’m certain you could easily fake it if you wanted to – and I’m also dubious whether your readers’d go for it……I don’t know why, but I have the strangest sense chucking in stuff like that could just put your ratings through the roof!
Thank you, alanborky, for those kudos and your analysis (what I could print of it, anyway:-D). I’d heard something similar from Richard Mathis,who runs TWC. That, and the fact that, at 500 pages, the Phoenix Requiem, has been running for loooonnnnggg time, therefore building up a large readership, may account for PR getting 350,000 votes by the end of the first week of every month.
But romance of just about any sort would be as out of place in LIM as a shapeless lump of a baby would be in PR. I’ll just have to be satisfied with what I have…and keep beating the vote drum.
“Luckily, I was prepared for this situation and brought a knife! I have it here somewhere…”
*rumages*
“dammit, must left it in my other robe. ah well I’ve still got this lump of wood and theres a cat over there…”
oh no, finally caught up. i’ve been reading this on and off for a few months and am so hooked. i can’t wait for more, and will check back often. thank you mr. latham
May 7th, 2010 at 12:52 am
:O Oh my……….
May 7th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Just found this today and read it through beginning to end. Truly amazing. The dialog and art are just mind blowing-ly entertaining. And the multiple storylines come together really well when you take it all in in one sitting (with a few breaks to savor the awesomeness and suspense of course).
Malone is my favorite character I think, but that priest is definitely the most bad ass fictional priest ever created.
Have you thought of trying to get this published as a graphic novel someday? It is something I would proudly pay to own.
Thanks for all the hard work!
May 7th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I’d vote for bathing in cat urine, even though I am not into watersports.
May 7th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Laz, lad, I very recently registered with TWC to make voting for you easier, but since they keep treating me as ‘anonymous’, I had a go just before at voting for you twice; but the swines picked up someone using the same net connection’d already voted a minute earlier!
Yet what if I wasn’t me but my own brother?
Anyway, in pursuit of solving the mystery of why you’re only in your sixties, well behind a number of far less talented producers, I started reading some of them, in particular the Phoenix Requiem, which seems perpetually glued to no.2.
Anyway, this was what I found: setting aside the strips which seem to blatantly cash in on the popularity of sword and sorcery games like World of Warcraft, etc., or the ones which seem to populate their strips with pictures of naked midriffs and pert, barely concealed bosoms and nipples, (and that’s just the guys!), the one area you play down which the rest seem to play up is romance.
In Phoenix Requiem the main horror story is actually virtually only a device for Sarah Ellerton to stretch out that line from David Bowie’s Drive-in Saturday track, “She’s uncertain if she likes him, but she knows she really loves him”; and by crikey she does it remarkably well.
She’s not a better story teller than you, doesn’t have anything like your mastery of pace, range of characterization, unpredictability or sheer breadth of invention, but boy does she know how to string out a teasing love affair where each party keeps postponing declaring how they feel, only to finally decide it’s now or never only to then have the plot suddenly intervene and tear them apart, only to then be unexpectedly thrown back together again, only to then be immediately torn apart again.
I read over 500 pages without stopping just to finally see the heroine drop her drawers and finally give the doomed hero a good seeing to – it was like being a twelve year old again, forty years after the event!
I’m not sure that soppy stuff’s quite your style – though I’m certain you could easily fake it if you wanted to – and I’m also dubious whether your readers’d go for it……I don’t know why, but I have the strangest sense chucking in stuff like that could just put your ratings through the roof!
May 7th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Thank you, alanborky, for those kudos and your analysis (what I could print of it, anyway:-D). I’d heard something similar from Richard Mathis,who runs TWC. That, and the fact that, at 500 pages, the Phoenix Requiem, has been running for loooonnnnggg time, therefore building up a large readership, may account for PR getting 350,000 votes by the end of the first week of every month.
But romance of just about any sort would be as out of place in LIM as a shapeless lump of a baby would be in PR. I’ll just have to be satisfied with what I have…and keep beating the vote drum.
May 7th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Carnaki would find this place interesting.
May 7th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
*tries to imagine alanborky’s suggestion and is (hopefully only temporarily) reduced to gibbering madness*
May 8th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
…. On second thought Howard, I think we should take the long way around.
May 9th, 2010 at 10:09 am
“Luckily, I was prepared for this situation and brought a knife! I have it here somewhere…”
*rumages*
“dammit, must left it in my other robe. ah well I’ve still got this lump of wood and theres a cat over there…”
May 9th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
oh no, finally caught up. i’ve been reading this on and off for a few months and am so hooked. i can’t wait for more, and will check back often. thank you mr. latham
May 10th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
In that case, pass the cat and get him some more coffee.
May 11th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Phenomenal work that captures the imagination – as always!
May 11th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
I wonder which one they’ll choose…
May 12th, 2010 at 2:02 am
Vote for Cat Urine!
May 14th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Oh hey, I just noticed something (after seeing the page for 5/14/2010) … he’s the one drawing the hexes !?