Author:
Lorenzo Mattotti – Kramsky
Publishing house:
Logos Editions
Date of publication:
08-03-2017
In a fantasy world populated by imaginary and wondrous creatures, Hippolytes-the shaman’s son-sets out in search of his wife Ladybug, who has been missing now for seven days from the Ghir village. He does not yet know that his journey will be much longer and more treacherous than he can anticipate, for it is the entire Garland Country that is in danger, threatened by a terrible curse and the deadly germ of evil. To save his family and all the people of the Ghir, Hippolytes will have to go beyond the boundaries of the known territories, all the way into the endless and frightening Terrae Incognitae and even beyond, to where the living are not allowed, in search of the frozen heart of Mount Raucous.
This is a story of love and courage, of fidelity and redemption, but it also speaks to us of our inherent weakness and our readiness to close our minds and hearts to be ruled by the most base instincts, beguiled by the charisma of false guides to salvation.
Lorenzo Mattotti’s soft black-and-white drawings combine with Jerry Kramsky’s evocative texts to create a dreamlike, allegorical universe that, in the illustrator’s words, “evokes the original naiveté of old comics such as Alley Oop and the Moomins, full of strange and tender animals, but also capable of excitement and suffering.”
The extraordinary talents of the two authors thus take us by the hand on a 400-page fairy tale adventure into the deepest meanderings of their dreams, returning a work of epic scope that is both a personal quest and a journey beyond the limits of traditional comics.
Fifteen years after Jekyll & Hyde, Mattotti and Kramsky return to sign a new project together: Ghirlanda, an unpublished comic book story that took a full 10 years to complete and is published simultaneously by #logosedizioni in Italy and Casterman in France.
“Beyond the sighing clouds, among the horizons of twilight, lies the land of Garland. Its vast plains and soft slopes seem to hold the light; the climate is mild. There from time immemorial have lived the Ghir, a people of peaceful beings, who love to contemplate the magic of the land with their wonderment of ancient children.”