There are certain long-standing traditions in fantasy literature that have petrified into cliché over the decades. One means of motivating heroes (who are often reluctant to leave home and enter into a life of adventure) lies with the kidnapping or slaying of the hero’s family, often a fiancée. Naturally enough, as an extra barb driven into the soul of the hero, this usually happens shortly before they were to marry, and can be the entire driving force behind a hero’s embarking on the path of the wanderer. Alex Heberling’s Garanos turns this plot on its ear by having Garanos being a woman seeking her fiancé, who vanished during a bandit attack on her home city.

Garanos was written as a self-contained story, with a beginning, middle, and end, focusing not on Garanos’ efforts to find her future husband but rather her experiences in the small walled town of Kaigan while on the trail of the bandits. The story contains multiple Chekhov Pistols, starting with the tattoo on Garanos’ forehead and shoulder, a symbol feared by the townsfolk as it is the same as that mentioned in their legends of an ancient evil known as the Harbinger, an entity that once terrorized the region before stories claim it fled to the North (where Garanos hails from) after losing an ancient war. The stories were wrong, much to the horror of Garanos and of Styx, an apprentice healer who befriends the warrior-maid.

The advent of the Harbinger shifts the story into a psychological horror, with Garanos struggling to defeat the Harbinger, even as Styx tries desperately to save this woman who’s come to mean a bit to him without killing her. But while the Harbinger story has been resolved, Garanos’ tale has not, with the story shifting to her original motivation… as the very men who attacked Garanos’ city so many months earlier end up attacking Kaigan and forcing the young warrior to come to the aid of a town that doesn’t entirely trust her in the wake of the Harbinger tale. Garanos is among the most compelling fantasy comics I’ve encountered. Indeed, it is more graphic novel presented online one page at a time rather than traditional webcomic. Entire pages can wordlessly show the story’s progression… and even the short time it takes for a page to load can seem an eternity as the story is shown, not told. Combined with computer-rendered artwork that is truly breathtaking at times, and Garanos easily becomes a story among the very best I’ve found online.