Ravine

Created By: Stjepan Sejic
Written By: Stjepan Sejic & Ron Marz
Illustrated By: Stjepan Sejic
Letterer: Troy Peteri
Publisher: Top Cow Productions

On Sale: February 27, 2013
Price: $14.99
Format: FC
Pages: 160
Audience: T+/Teen Plus
Final Score: 9/10

THEY ARE A POWERFUL FOE, BUT THEY WILL FALL!

In a fantastic world far from our own, an ancient magic spell almost split the world in two and left an endless ravine in the north. One man, Nebezial Asheri, driven by the deaths of his wife and daughters will attempt to reclaim that magic and bring his loved ones back to life. The forces of an entire city, Paladia, will rise to oppose him, but his greatest foes will be a ragtag band of an outcast wizard, a dragonrider, and their allies.

Artist extraordinaire STJEPAN SEJIC (ARTIFACTS, WITCHBLADE) branches out into his first ever creator-owned and original property for Top Cow! Presented in a perfect-bound, dramatically oversized issue format, RAVINE is an epic about the lengths one man will go to to reconstruct his family, and the forces of good who must stop him at all costs.

Are you a fan of epic fantasy tales on the scale of Lord of the Rings? Do you love losing yourself in a good story with amazing art? If you said yes to these questions then you should check out Ravine.

It didn’t take much to get me to pick up this book. There were three words needed, Marz, Sejic and fantasy. I already knew that Ron Marz could craft a well written and paced story. I had been admiring Stjepan Sejic’s otherworldly art in Artifact. And I enjoy fantasy settings. But I was still curious as to whether these two men could pull off a what I had yet to see done well in a graphic format… an epic scale tale in a fantasy world. To often fantasy tales seem to lose something when presented in a graphic format but not Ravine. The storytelling moves at just the right pace to allow the reader to enjoy Sejic’s digital painting of the tale while not leaving you wishing it would pick up the pace.

The art, I can’t find a word to express how breathtaking it is to look at art that you can tell is coming from the artist’s soul. If you read anything about Ravine before we were able to see more than teaser images of the art, you know by now this is a story that Sejic has been wanting to tell for quite awhile. Add to the passion that Sejic has for the tale to his mastery of digital painting, which lends it so well to this tale, and the images flow as though you are viewing a film.

But it’s $14.99? I know, I blinked when I first saw the price for this book. But if you stop and do some quick math you quickly realize that this is actually a bargain. If you look at how many issues that same money would buy of a regular sized comic book you would get maybe 4 issues. That would be only 88 pages of story. So for the same money you now have almost twice as much story and extra content.

Add to the additional amount of story the fact that they are not forced into having to force a cliffhanger or hook every 22 pages of story to get the reader eager to pick up the next issue and you now have a tale being able to be told in a much smoother format. Something that a fantasy tale of this scale needed. The scale is to large to be broken into such small bites as a traditional sized comic book would have required. Wise move on their part to go with the longer book. For myself, I wish it had been longer. I don’t want to wait for the next book to come out.

Was the book what I expected? Honestly? No, it was much more and much better. I really had doubts that they could pull off a fantasy world in a graphic format in a manner that would not seem flat or muddy. They exceeded all my expectations. Other than the fact that I have to wait until I believe it is summer for the next installment of this tale my only problem was keeping all the characters straight. But I have that problem at the start of any truly epic fantasy tale with many players.

Final Score: 9/10