New frontiers in lush–Alectorfencer’s Myre

A graphic novel journey into another world with a reluctant heroine and her dragon… 

Alectorfencer’s Myre

Indiegogo campaign ends 9/14/14

I had the pleasure of seeing Alectorfencer, 2 the Gryphon, and FoxAmoore together to launch this project at Anthrocon. They had graciously agreed to share their space with Amadhia Albee’s Kaze: Winds of Change project, but it almost seemed unfair–they were  bringing an entire world to the table.

Myre—name of protagonist, name of series–is a three-part graphic novel series written and illustrated by the phenomenal artist, Alectorfencer. If you’re not familiar with her work, it’s amazing, rich and detailed illustrations right off the front cover of OMG Fantasy magazine. “Myre” is five years in the making, and given the level of love in the work we’ve seen, may be somewhat slow to release as well–but you can’t really argue with beautiful.

The basics: Myre is a dragon-riding nomad, caught in a web of fate and prophecy, on a path to change the world. Simple statement, complex world, again you kind of have to take a look at Alectorfencer’s recent art to see how rich her setting is. (As a slightly cynical aside, I’m a little tired of the hero/heroine template, “X is the only Y to ever Z”, in this case “Myre is the only nomad to ever befriend and ride a dragon,” it’s just a little easy and I personally feel it isn’t that significant of a statement in fantasy anymore, but a trope is a trope, and they look like a neat pair of characters.)

I’m going to have to come back to how magnificent the setting is. And that’s clearly a big sell point, a “Let’s explore this amazing world together.” If you watch the video (music by FoxAmoore), there’s a lot of setting love there, so it’s not just me. Some really amazing stuff–this picture of staggeringly large elephant things sold me immediately, it reminded me of something from one of my other favorite realistic fantasy artists, Wayne Barlow and his “Inferno” illustration series. Maybe not the most flattering comparison points, but it stuck with me.
So far as the kickstarter itself goes, you’re probably too late to pick up some of the amazing customized offerings, maybe she’ll open up a few more of those–but there’s a really interesting perk available to anyone who donates at the…uh…€30 tier, a podcast devoted to exploring the world of Myre, hosted by none other than 2 the Ranting Griffon. Neat! I don’t recall seeing anything like this before, the “access to developer blog” is nice but not exactly unique.

I did find the pledge points a little confusing, partially because there was a lot of copy in each description that could have been a little lighter, partially because some of the goals mentioned all three volumes, but the lower level ones were just for the first volume, and there didn’t seem to be a pledge point for the hardbound release.

There are a few of the perk, “The author will craft you a leatherbound copy of the project herself” left, which would be an amazing treasure for a true Alectorfencer fan. The price point is high, €2000, but within what I’ve come to see as standard for the ultra-rare, “touched by the artist” pledge point.

The real pain point for me, though, is going to be the wait for the books! It’s a long, long journey to finis here, but Alectorfencer’s built a strong base to take her down that road. Good luck!

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.