Ghirlanda

In a fantastic world populated by imaginary and marvelous creatures, Ippolite – the shaman’s son – sets out after his wife Cocciniglia, who has been missing for seven days now from the Ghirs’ village. He doesn’t know yet that his journey will be much longer and more dangerous than he could expect, because it is the whole country of Ghirlanda that is in danger, threatened by a terrible curse and by the lethal germ of evil. To save his family and all the Ghirs, Ippolite will have to push beyond the borders of the known lands, into the vast and dreadful Terrae Incognitae and even further, where the living are not welcomed, to find the frozen heart of the Hoarse Mountain.
A story about love and courage, loyalty and redemption, that also speaks about our inherent weakness and our readiness to close our minds and hearts and let us be governed by our darkest instincts, charmed by the charisma of false guides towards salvation.
The soft black-and-white drawings by Lorenzo Mattotti mix with the evocative texts by Jerry Kramsky to create a dreamlike and allegoric universe that, in the words of the illustrator, “evokes the original innocence of old comic strips such as Alley Oop and The Moomins, full of strange and gentle animals, who are also able to feel emotions and suffer”.
The extraordinary talent of the two authors will guide us by hand through a 400-page fairy-tale adventure into the deepest parts of their dreams, offering us an epic work which is at the same time a personal research and a journey beyond the limits of traditional comic books.
15 years after Jekyll & Hyde, Mattotti and Kramsky are back for a new collaboration: Ghirlanda, a never-published-before comic book that took 10 years to complete and is now published simultaneously by #logosedizioni in Italy and by Casterman in France.
“Beyond the sighs of the clouds, between the dusk’s horizons, lays the land of Ghirlanda. Its vast plains and soft hills seem to capture the light, and the climate is mild. From time immemorial this is the country of the Ghirs, pacific creatures who love to contemplate the magic of their land with the amazement of ancient children.”