Good, but not as much as expected.
The review was originally posted to my review blog here.
Both Ron Marz and Stjepan Sejic are among my favourite comics creators. I’ve been having lots of fun with their collaboration on Top Cow’s Artifacts crossover series (I happened to read the first four volumes of the series in like 2-3 days last year) and I consider both of them to be among the best out there in the industry right now. When I heard that they were working on a creator-owned property through the auspices of Top Cow, itself among my favourite publishers, I was all sorts of excited, especially since the early artwork that was released was just plain amazing.
Sadly, my excitement was tempered with the book itself. In the main, I liked the artwork, but the story was often too disjointed and the artwork wasn’t all that clear a lot of times.
Conceived by Sejic, who is both the writer and artist for the book, Ravine tells the story of a fantasy world with several nation states, dragonshifters, ancient magics, prophecies, coming of age characters, and dragons, lots and dragons. On the meta-level, this is a very exciting story. But it is hampered by the fact that there is, even for a graphic novel, a LOT of things to keep track of and the complexity of Sejic’s work works against the book a lot of times. Some of the artwork isn’t all the distinct either, with several characters looking the same in some key scenes, and that makes it all the harder to read. The painted style that Sejic used in Artifacts is back again for Ravine, but unlike the former, I just wasn’t a fan of it this time with the latter. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a metric ton of detail in each panel and they are all stunning for the most, but it’s just that sometimes the details blur together and becomes difficult to differentiate things at times. In the advance reading copy I got through Ron Marz, the colours are actually a bit dark as well, which no doubt colours my experience (pun intended), so I’m considering buying the individual series to see how it is all in “reality”. Sounds like a fun experiment of sorts!
The dialogue was often confusing, and I kept getting disoriented with the narrative, which often necessitated second and even third reads of the pages. This made the book frustrating, and not all that good of an experience in totality. Ravine is definitely not up to part with Ron Marz’s Artifacts for Top Cow or Prophecy for Dynamite. Given that Sejic is the co-writer, I think some of his influence is at work here as well. I’m hoping that together, the two can improve for the next installments because this is a story that I definitely want to stick with!
What I will definitely credit Sejic and Marz is with the complexity of the world, even though I found it overwhelming a lot of the time. There are political, cultural and geographical nuances at work throughout the book and despite their flaws, they really do make for a good enough experience. The best I can say is that I’m really looking forward to reading more of Ravine, and that I eagerly anticipate the follow-on issues from this TPB, in spite of my various issues with it. There’s a great genius at work here, that I cannot deny.
Rating: 6.5/10