A while ago I picked up issue 0 of this comic series, and rather liked it. Neither Ares nor Warlords (two more fantasy series published by Orione) had raised my interest, they sounded the usual "a' la D&D" fantasy. Whereas this comic, although it did feature battles (which are not uncommon in good stories anyway), seemed to have more to offer. So, I decided to try to buy all issues up to now, and read them. Not bad, really not bad.

Art is good, perhaps a bit rough in some panels, but enjoyable. Especially backgrounds, with lots of detail; it is characters what sometimes lets me feel a bit unsure. But, men have muscles, but not an "awful" lot; same for women's chest size (the artist is a woman after all :) : that is, normal human beings. Good, or should I say, at last. Clothes, environment, the whole setting is near to celtic culture, and people clearly recalls old British population (then Harmoran is an island).

Script is good, though perhaps a bit too linear. Characters are alive and have emotional conflicts; I'd have liked that motivations of the "bad guy" were more widely shown, because he thinks he's doing "the right thing", and this is a good bit of fresh air in fantasy stories. Even emotional conflicts of other characters are developed a bit too quickly. Not that they play a secondary role, I just feel general rythm is a bit too tight. By the way, I had the chance to exchange a few words with the authors, and I've been told that this comics had poor sales, so the publisher cut the original number of issues (they should have been 10, but it was shrinked to 7); this is why, of course, the series does sound a bit "shrinked". A real pity.

It's not easy to give you a taste of such a shrinked story without spoilers. Harmoran is a land of conflicts, both between different rulers, and between two religions, one ancient and "pagan", the other (inspired by Christian faith) called "grey one". The second's followers invaded the first's land, but old faith has not died and its followers want to push off the grey ones. Add to this invaders from beyond the sea, who start an era of battles.

You often hear bad comments about fantasy genre. It's often considered as a sub-genre of adventure, with the "sub-" part also meaning low-quality. They say its father is undoubtedly Tolkien, and everyone else just copied. Or rather, they identify it with D&D, or something like that, especially when you come to comics. (all of this is referred to Italian point of view)

Is this it? Of course, if you consider sales, you can see here in Italy, apart from Tolkien with resonance from the movies, a lot of works which have not much in terms of originality and sometimes even less quality. Yet worthy works do exist even among best-sellers, at least nowadays, and at least in literature.

If you look at comics, conversely, everyone seems to think fantasy="D&D-like stuff". That is, european medioeval (or pseudo-medieval) setting, more or less shallow, with lots of magical special effects, and featuring over-sized-muscled men and a lot of semi-naked women more or less useless except for showing female bodies. Let's not talk about fantasy manga, which are not only shallow, but you have to add little knowledge about european history (almost as little as ours of Japanese history).

Seems to, because you _can_ find more mature alternatives. But they usually are indipendent comics, expensive, and often not very famous. Harmoran didn't belong to any of these two categories. Neither to shallow fantasy, nor to expensive comics (as for fame, well, its publishing house was not a major). Still, Harmoran sold not enough, to its publisher, to open a path to other mature works like this. I'm not here to discuss editorial plans of Orione publishings, I don't know how much support they gave it; but what can support a series is readers, especially if the publishing house is not very big. And they did try; many complain nowadays no-one wants to take any risks anymore. So, it is obvious that Italian readers must want the usual "yesterday's soup". What a pity.