Scumbase

Trippy.  A reference to hippy drug culture seems most appropriate when discussing this web comic and the places it will take you and the people you will visit.

Our protagonist, Garland, is a bona fide guitar god, a master of fretwork, a man on top of creativity, living the rock star life all of us dream of when we pick up a guitar and sing our first wobbly song.  More importantly, he is 27.  

Those who follow music like its more than a passing song on the car radio, you may know that 27 is a year that fate seems to call the brilliant .. Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain.  And perhaps now, Garland.

For those who follow mathematics like numbers open worlds of infinite possibilities, 27 is also .. well, here it is in their words ...

The panels above get you a bit ahead of the story .. let me bring you up to speed.  Garland's left hand .. his fretwork hand seizes up and he can no longer play.  He goes to see doctors all over the world and eventually ends up in the lab of a kooky magician who promises him a cure.  And in order to further the story ... something goes wrong.   Garland ends up with an electronic panel on his chest that allows him creative genius when he pushes that button .. except, as you can see above .. he's just found out the ability is finite .. he can only use it 27 times before he dies.  And the muse, Number 9, is a living entity who controls the lives of the brilliant.

The writer is Charles Soule, whose blog "Land of 10,000 Things: can be found here.  Artist Renzo Podesta's blog is here.

27 is published every weekday and there is about an hour's worth of reading in order to catch up.