Artesia is the creation of Mark Smylie, who has written and illustrated her adventures since 1999. When we first meet her she is a captain, leading the army of King Branimir, the ruler of the highland nation-state Dara Dess. Artesia began her service to the King as a concubine, but by her skill, her intelligence, and her gift of magic, she rose to become the foremost of his officers, an inspiration to the soliders under her command and a terror to her enemies. But her rise was so notable that Branimir feared she would usurp him, and plotted to have her assassinated while on campaign. She outwitted the attempt, but her companions in Branimir's court, including her lovers, were still in the King's castle, and were killed before Artesia could return and save them. For his betrayal of her and murder of her loved ones, Artesia beheaded her king and, using her powers as a priestess and witch, damned his spirit for all eternity. At the same time the foreign empire of Thessid-Gola has returned to stake its ancient claim to the lands of the Middle Kingdoms, mounting a massive invasion that leaves the Kingdoms scrambling to mount a united defence. Artesia, now de facto ruler of Dara Dess, assembles a force and leads them down from the highlands and into the conflict, seeking to do her part to safeguard her homeland. But the Thessid-Gola invasion can only be stopped by a force equally massive, and the rulers of the Middle Kingdoms have long histories of mistrust, petty squabbles, and outright war between them - even a common enemy can't eradicate the friction between them, and Artesia finds the politics of her allies just as challenging to navigate as the wartorn lands teeming with Thessid-Gola forces. Artesia's story is a fantasy epic of boundless imagination, yet grounded in hard reality. Magic and the supernatural abound; Artesia is able to perceive and communicate with spirits, call upon powerful and dangerous magic, and several of her loved ones from Branimir's court still stand by her side as ghosts, offering their advice and perspectives. The Thessid-Gola in turn have their own powers, bringing dark and terrible mystical forces with them in their invasion. But for all the supernatural goings-on, the story is firmly based on real-world concerns: political power, personal choices, and the force of arms of massed armies. Artesia's world is solid and believable, based on a rich and complex mythology that draws on many historical sources while injecting them with a particular brand of imagination, to give them their own unique flavour. Smylie's art is as accomplished as his writing, with vast panoramas of armies and battles, evocative scenes of mysticism, quiet personal moments, political intrigue with carefully-drawn faces reflecting the complex characters behind them, and unashamed eroticism, all rendered in rich, full detail. Smylie points to Queen Medb as a real-world historical figure with similarities to Artesia - for a more well-known parallel, he describes her as a 'Pagan Joan of Arc'. She is a shrewd and determined commander, and we see the struggles she faces in leading her forces against a superior foe, but she is also an individual heroine, a person with a strict moral code. In this, she is often set apart from the more experienced rulers of the Middle Kingdoms, who plot and scheme against each other even as they profess alliance against the Thessid-Gola horde. For all her cunning in war and worldliness, Artesia's morality can still cast her as naive in the face of the two-facedness of her so-called allies, and the motives of her enemies are rarely simple either. She also faces the hypocrisy of the more 'civilised' Kingdoms, who profess disdain for many of her ways - women in the Middle Kingdoms are by and large not to free as Artesia and her cohorts, and often she finds her abilities as a soldier and commander called into question, her association with her patron gods regarded as heretical, and her open and enthusiastic sexuality denounced as immoral and whorish. The irony, of course, being that she is in all likelihood the most moral character in the story, for while she has more than her share of hard decisions to make, through her thoughts being revealed to us we see what it is that drives her, and how she arrives at the choices she makes, and her selflessness and self-awareness put her detractors to shame. Artesia's story so far is available in three hardcovers, Artesia, Artesia Afield and Artesia Afire, each of which contains the six issues of its namesake comic miniseries, plus an annual and supplementary material. Smylie has stated that Artesia's complete story would require 22 volumes, but that 'come hell or high water', seven will be completed, comprising the core story. The fourth, Artesia Beseiged, is in progress - two issues have been published, but expansion and restructuring of Smylie's publishing company Archaia Studio Press have taken up much time, and the exact date for future issues is yet unknown. That said, with Smylie's determined commitment to Artesia's story, it seems inevitable that the story will be told, sooner or later.