Marko Djurdjevic Returns to Lucca Comics & Games to Launch ORKEN

When Marko Djurdjevic puts his name behind a fantasy universe, I am paying attention. Period. The artist has spent years giving comic readers images that stop you cold on the rack, and now he and the crew at SIXMOREVODKA are bringing ORKEN back to Lucca Comics & Games for its first European public book launch. Better yet, they are bringing it back to the same festival where the project was first introduced nearly a decade ago.

For comic fans who know Djurdjevic primarily through his Marvel cover work, ORKEN is a chance to see what happens when that visual imagination is not borrowing somebody else’s sandbox. SIXMOREVODKA has spent years developing characters, cultures, environments and mythology for its own fantasy setting, and the result is the kind of worldbuilding that makes an old-school fantasy nerd start zooming into every piece of artwork looking for clues.

The 2026 appearance has a cool full-circle quality because Lucca was there near the beginning. SIXMOREVODKA first presented the project on the festival stage in 2017. Now the team returns with an actual book and years of additional development behind the universe. That changes the conversation from ‘look at this world we’re building’ to ‘here, now you can actually enter it.’

Lucca Comics & Games is also celebrating its 60th anniversary edition in 2026, so the timing could not be better. This is one of Europe’s major gatherings for comics, games, fantasy and pop culture, and a visually driven project like ORKEN is basically built for a crowd that appreciates concept art as much as sequential storytelling.

Djurdjevic has always had a knack for making familiar genre ideas feel heavier and more tactile. Armor looks like somebody actually has to carry it. Faces tell you something happened before the character ever entered the frame. Costumes, weapons and environments feel designed around a culture instead of around whatever looked cool five minutes before deadline. That discipline is exactly what an original fantasy universe needs if it wants to survive beyond a handful of beautiful illustrations.

SIXMOREVODKA’s broader reputation in concept art and entertainment design matters here too. Worldbuilding at this scale is not just about drawing one killer hero and one nasty monster. The audience needs to believe there are nations beyond the edge of the page, histories nobody has fully explained yet and conflicts that existed before the reader showed up. From what the studio has been building around ORKEN, that sense of scale appears to be the entire point.

And yes, there is a collector side to this story. A European public launch at Lucca means fans will be getting one of the first major opportunities to experience the project as a physical book in the environment where it originally began attracting attention. For people who have followed Djurdjevic’s career through covers, commissions and design work, that makes this more than another convention appearance.

I also dig the fact that this is an artist known for making other companies’ characters look incredible finally putting that same visual muscle behind something owned and developed by his own studio. Comic history is filled with creators who spent years making somebody else’s universe richer before building worlds of their own. Watching that transition happen is always worth supporting when the ambition is there.

Marko Djurdjevic and SIXMOREVODKA will bring ORKEN to Lucca Comics & Games 2026 as part of the festival’s 60th anniversary celebration. If fantasy art, monster design and deep visual worldbuilding are your thing, keep this one on the radar. I know I will.