Ravine

Three characters in front of an ornate ring, a man with glowing fire in his palm, a red-haired woman in armour holding a spear and a black haired woman with the same spear, but with wings a a glow on her brow.

I recently bought the first volume of the comic book Ravine by Stjepan Šejić, aka Nebezial and Ron Marz. This purchase was a bit curious for me: my interest in fantasy has waned with the years, and I tend to be picky about the drawing style. I had been following Stjepan Šejić on deviantart for some time and I really love his drawings, he has a style that is both detailed and energetic, his pictures reminded me of the art by or , basically the good covers of Dungeon and Dragons modules. Except Stjepan Šejić has this level of quality throughout each page of the whole album.

Ravine Book 1
Text: &
Illustration: Stjepan Šejić
Top-Cow Production
ISBN : 978-1-60706722-1

The universe seems like a mix of classical fantasy fare: a founding drama, lots of dragons, many humanoid races, a falling empire, a growing religion, and of course a malediction. The book starts with a map and there is a glossary at the end of the book, along with character and race descriptions. While this sounds very much run of the mill, this was clearly done with both passion and skill, the art is just gorgeous. More importantly, the story with its two chaotic main character is what makes the whole thing tick. Usually fantasy is extremely predictable, but this story seems to have the level of chaos of a RPG session but few of the conventions, making the story very interesting.

All in all a very interesting first book, and I’m curious to see where the second one will go, the sneak peeks on deviantart look promising.

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