Lucca Comics & Games Will Launch Marko Djurdjevic’s Orken

Posted in: Conventions, Events, Lucca Comics & Games, Pop Culture | Tagged: marko djurdjevic, Orken

Lucca Comics & Games Will Launch Marko Djurdjevic’s Orken

Marko Djurdjevic will make his return to Lucca Comics & Games this year, bringing with him his debuting new comic book Orken.

Article Summary

• Lucca Comics & Games 2026 will host Marko Djurdjevic as he launches Orken, his long-awaited creator-owned fantasy comic.
• First revealed at Lucca in 2017, Orken returns full circle with its first physical books and Djurdjevic meeting fans in person.
• Orken centers on a brutal first contact between the Khar of Edom and the invading Elemon human empire from across the sea.
• Marko Djurdjevic and Lucca Comics & Games call Orken’s debut a milestone for the artist and the festival’s creative legacy.

Lucca Comics & Games confirmed a new piece of the programming this week, as they will be the setting for Marko Djurdjevic to launch his new comics, Orken. If you’re not familiar with the title, this is a new creator-owned transmedia fantasy universe created by Djurdjevic under the Berlin-based studio SixMoreVodka. Djurdjevic first announced the project in 2017 at the Italy-based event, so this is a long-time coming full circle moment as this will be the first opportunity for European audiences to get their hands on the physical books and meet him in person. We have mroe details from the announcement below.

Orken Makes Its Debut at Lucca Comics & Games 2026

Marko is best known from his cover work for Marvel Comics – including Thor, Captain America, and other flagship titles – and for co-creating Degenesis, the creator-owned tabletop RPG that became a benchmark of independent game design and world-building. He now returns to Lucca to launch the world of Orken. Conceived as a contemporary reinvention of fantasy, Orken abandons the traditional division between civilized humans and monstrous orcs and instead frames its world around a violent first contact between two civilizations at the height of their respective powers.

On one side are the Khar — the Orken inhabitants of Edom, an ancient culture deeply bound to the land they have occupied for generations. On the other are the Elemon, an industrialized human empire arriving from across the sea after exhausting the reand an expansionist ideology, the Elemon see Edom as a new frontier. To the Khar, their arrival represents an existential invasion

Neither civilization is presented as a faceless fantasy faction. Orken tells the conflict through shifting perspectives on both sides, following soldiers, rulers, families, believers and ordinary people caught within a collision neither culture fully understands. The result is a story about conquest, survival, identity, cultural misunderstanding, and the narratives people construct to justify violence. SixMoreVodka describes the central premise as a “clash of civilizations,” with the visual and tonal shorthand “Princess Mononoke on the set of Apocalypto.” Rather than building toward a conventional good-versus-evil fantasy war, Orken asks what happens when two sophisticated societies meet and both believe the future belongs to them.

“Lucca is the best convention I have ever attended: Organization and atmosphere, people, weather, food, the city itself, it all creates the perfect backdrop to launch a new product,” said Djurdjevic. “Nine years ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited and present the first concepts for Orken, and now, in 2026, my journey is completed, and I can finally show the public what I’ve been building for all these years. It’s a pleasure to complete this long marathon where it once started, and I’m eager to see the audience responding to it after so many years of waiting.”

“We are very happy to have participated in the Orken Journey from its origin. In 2017, Marko Djurdjevic presented Orken for the first time in Lucca, bringing concept art and revealing characters for the first time,” said Emanuele Vietina, Director of Lucca Comics & Games. “We have seen it grow through the years to become an incredible, compelling, and fully realized fantasy world. Marko is a great artist, launching an independent innovative IP, Lucca Comics & Games is proud to be part of this success story, which truly showcases the festival as a creative hub for world makers and the perfect platform for other creatives to launch their game properties.”

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