Introducing the Barrow

[Westeros]

<p>Occasionally, our running of Westeros.org leads to opportunities only tangentially related to <em>A Song of Ice and Fire</em>, but they can lead to some very interesting things (such as the contest we’ll be announcing further below…)</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Barrow.html"><img src="http://asoiaf.westeros.org/Archive/TheBarrowWesteros.gif" /></a></p>

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<p>In the past, I’ve made <a href="http://www.westeros.org/ASoWS/News/Entry/3761">some</a> <a href="http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/20239-comic-books/#entry875804">noise</a> about an independent comic book series, </em><a href="http://www.archaia.com/archaia-titles/artesia/">Artesia</a></em>, written and illustrated by Mark Smylie. Inspired by, among other things, <em>A Song of Ice and Fire</em>, Smylie set out to create an epic fantasy following the eponymous character and the world-changing events around her. His “Known World” setting grew to enormous proportions, spanning continents, containing dozens of gods and recounting events over thousands of years (and multiple dating systems, while he was at it). The scope of it was on par with what one sees in literary epic fantasy, but in comic book form? Pretty much unheard of in the English-language market. Smylie’s terrific watercolor artwork was paired with a formal, Shakespearian sort of prose and an extremely earthy, gritty setting. There’s high magic, there’s ghouls and demons and vampires, there’s incredibly-realized battles between armored knights, there’s intrigue and murder, there’s sex and sexual politics—it has it all.</p>

<strong><a href="http://www.westeros.org/Updates/Entry/Introducing_the_Barrow">read on &gt;&gt;&gt;</a></strong>

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