Webcomic Wednesday - Danger Country by Levon Jihanian

A lot of genre art comes in all caps. Everything’s pitched to look as exciting, as fantasy, as SF, as horror, as genre as possible at all times. Tumblr thwarts this dynamic somewhat, but usually with a high-gloss cuteness that’s its own kind of shouting. The beauty, literally, of Levon Jihanian’s fledgling fantasy epic Danger Country is that its art speaks to you in a calm, almost vulnerable tone of voice. It’s a bit too soon to tell where the story — about the lone survivor of a village massacre who sets out to seek justice, and the companions he meets along the way — is headed; perhaps its genre revisionism/refinement won’t extend past Jihanian’s quiet line, sadsack character designs, and muted palette. But that’s plenty far, if you ask me. It’s so refreshing to see a story of this sort told in this way — so much more reflective of the stylistic range of the genre’s best practitioners in other media than just drawing a bunch of superheroes with swords or warmed-over Frazetta covers — that I almost don’t care about the story itself. Seeing a spectacle like the pages above drawn in roughly the style of a slice-of-life comic is a spectacle all its own.