Longtime collaborators on numerous projects for Top Cow, Ron Marz and Stjepan Sejic are launching a new creator-owned graphic novel series in February 2013. Ravine is epic fantasy at its highest with dragons, magic, and political machinations, is set in the kingdom of Palladia, a world that Sejic has been developing for the past eleven years.

Ravine come from a desire by Stjepan to make a fantasy comic series that was a full-blooded fantasy tale with rich character development, layered, well-motivated villains, and a deeply detailed world. Anyone that has seen his artwork will know how much that setting was made for Stjepan to design.

The world is one where intrigue and power struggles have so dominated the lives of those who rule — royalty and religious leaders alike — that they are blind to the gathering forces that threaten all of them.

While the story, world, and characters are Sejic’s, Marz acts as scripter and editor. Both creators cite the nature of an epic fantasy as the reason for releasing the series as graphic novels rather than individual issues.

Marz has stated that the story kind of demands to be told in large chunks and read as one story instead of as parts. While it’s a bigger risk to release the project as a graphic novel collection and not serialized, Marz felt there was a bigger reward creatively by doing so.

Ravine: Volume One (DEC120509), a 160-page graphic novel for $14.99, will be released on February 13.