Roadside Picnic in Poughkeepsie
November 2, 2016 11:09 PM   Subscribe

Spill Zone, a comic by Scott (author of "Uglies") Westerfeld, with art by Alex Puvilland and colouring by Hilary Sycamore. Updated weekly, anticipated completion May 2017.
posted by Joe in Australia (11 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is cool - thanks for posting. I'm reminded of Jeff VanderMeer's Area X books (not a bad thing).
posted by misterbee at 11:42 PM on November 2, 2016


This isn't far from what I remember Poughkeepsie as when I was a college student in the 90's... including the underage drinking in New Paltz.

Good story too. I'm hooked.
posted by neilbert at 4:37 AM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


This looks great, love the drawing (though I wonder why they chose to make faces so crude, especially Addison's, it looks like a graffito.) Love Scott Westerfeld's stuff generally. His wife, Justine Larbalastier, writes fun stuff too. I hope they produce many more fine books.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:55 AM on November 3, 2016


This looks great. I find more web comics/graphic novels on MetaFilter than I do any where else. For example, a recent FPP introduced me to O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti. Where else should I be looking to find things like this?
posted by ralan at 7:57 AM on November 3, 2016


If you are like me and you like navigating comic books and image galleries in general with your arrow keys, pop the below in your browsers console and hit enter, it will make the arrow keys navigate as you'd expect them to (page navigation)

http://pastebin.com/SxR2kDKg
posted by durandal at 9:41 AM on November 3, 2016


This is really nice. As usual, I can't help thinking that it would be as effective, if not more so, without the "voice-over" captions.
posted by radicalawyer at 9:54 AM on November 3, 2016


I am generally in awe at Scott Westerfield's output. He has the writing speed of a pulp writer, while maintaining impressive quality- he is one of the few "big idea" writers I really enjoy. So yeah, it makes sense that he would take on webcomics, before I dunno, writing and producing a blockbuster next week.

That aside, I like the understated sense of menace in this story. I also appreciate that his using the "webcomic than hardcopy comic" style that's been used so successfully by writers like Ursula Vernon.
posted by happyroach at 9:57 AM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Scott seems to be really interested in visual storytelling. He commissioned the elaborate endpieces and illustrations for his Leviathan series (rather than letting his publisher arrange it). Then he wrote a graphic novel re-telling of his Uglies series from a different character's point of view, though I can't say I loved them. Webcomics seem like the next step.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:23 AM on November 3, 2016


Oh wow, this is excellent. Flatland alone is a fantastic Anomaly for a Zone.
posted by figurant at 9:19 AM on November 4, 2016


The Roadside Picnic mention in the subject line is what sold me on checking out this comic. I just finished reading it and really enjoyed what's been posted so far. The parallels to Roadside Picnic are striking, and I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned as an inspiration! If anyone is reading this comic and hasn't read Roadside Picnic, I highly recommend it.
posted by jessypie at 11:20 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seconding the recommendation for Roadside Picnic. It's ... not very much like anything else, except a bit like this comic.

Also, there's a new set of pages out, and they are creepy.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:25 AM on November 9, 2016


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