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Quite inadvertently, there's a theme to my reviews this month, and that theme is dreams. I feel that dreams are very important for writers and roleplayers. Some of my best ideas come from dreams, and that perfect state between sleep and wakefulness, when your creativity roams free. As such, it's no surprise that dream realms are a popular subject for stories and comics.
9th Elsewhere is a web comic about dreams, but it's very different from my other review fodder this month, The Dreamland Chronicles. 9th Elsewhere tells the story of Carmen, a young would-be writer, and her muse, the goofy yet lovable Eiji. When Eiji is assigned to help inspire Carmen, they accidentally end up lost in her psyche/dreamscape and must chase after the magical flying box that contains the key that will let them leave. Still with me? It really makes more sense if you read the comic.
9th Elsewhere is full of beautiful and sometimes strange imagery. Though the story is serious, it contains dashes of humor and it's easy to identify with both characters. Carmen is a depressed writer who struggles to be self-sufficient. She doesn't like to accept help from others, and she doesn't like to keep at things if she doesn't succeed at first. Eiji is a muse with a past record of screwing things up, but he really means well. He wants to help Carmen learn about herself and excel at writing, and sometimes his wacky methodology really helps. Of course, it might also help that he's a cutie and shares her strange and anachronistic fashion sense - where can I get a muse like this???
The artwork here is great. Though it is a manga-style comic and as such occasionally falls back on chibi characters, giant sweat drops running down the forehead and other silly things we've all come to expect from manga, when the story is serious, the artwork matches it. Ms. Curtis does an especially wonderful job with facial expressions, and I love the costume design. The comic is presented in a comic-book page style layout.
Two other great things about 9th Elsewhere is the spiffy webpage, which is occasionally tweaked and updated to match the season or the current theme of the comic, and the fact that it updates regularly! In fact, when I first started reading, it was a once a week schedule. Recently they've switched to twice a week, and done an admirable job of having a nice new comic every Monday and Wednesday.
The archives go back to January of '03 and are a quick but enjoyable read. The comic is entirely free, no need to subscribe to one of those newfangled services that charges you to view the archives. 9th Elsewhere is currently one of my favorite web comics and I definitely recommend that you give it a look.
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