When I was in my senior year of high school I obtained a very cut up and edited version of The Maxx on VHS. While I hadn’t read the comic (and never really did get around to it) I found the series to be awe inspiring. I know, it’s weird what really gets us at the core of our being, but there you have it. But the story of a hulking brute of a man who wears purple spandex and beats the ever-loving crap out of people and his trippy existential attempts to save his ‘Leopard Queen’ in the Outback of his mind spoke to me. I don’t know what that says about me as a person… but there you have it.

The Outback was really the core inspiration I think. The Maxx (the aforementioned purple ass-beater) was delusional (or was he?). His delusion took place in a dreamscape called The Outback which is described as Australia, but also Pangea, a land before time as it were. It was populated with bizarre oddities: air whales, the crabbit and the isz. The environments ranged from dusty desert hardpan to lush and savage jungles. Danger lurked around every corner and this reality overlaid (or hid beneath depending on how you look at it) things from ‘our’ world. It was a fascinating trip into the human psyche that made you question which reality was really valid at the end of it.

So, one lazy afternoon, probably around 2005, I asked myself: if I had an Outback… what would it be like?

And, Ossua was born. If you were ever wondering what the name of this blog came from, that’s where.

It’s a full world. A place full of hope and promise, and threatened by great evil. It is home to fantastic creatures such as the pumpkin folk and the verminkin. The tribes of the beastmen. The great city of Ygg. It has a history, and it has a future and it has a great tale of creation and life.

When I write about it, if makes me wonder if I would have the courage to step into it. To share in the trials and tribulations of The Rat. To take on the forces of the darkening southern islands. To travel up the river Dream to its source. And to wonder if I would pass quietly into the east.

It’s a world I wish to return to soon. Perhaps, when I am done with Bob, I will go there again.