Franco-Belgian comics
Jun 10, 2014 12:40:35 GMT -5
🐍 cahusserole 🐍, Jean-Luc Lemur, and 2 more like this
Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jun 10, 2014 12:40:35 GMT -5
Right, so here is a thread for comics originally published in the French language. This includes Belgian comics (like Tintin) French comics (like Asterix) and comics originally published in the French language, even involving non-French people like say the Brazilian Leo or the Argentinean Juan Gimenez, and so on.
I've read very few comics, but most of those were originally in French, so hey, why not. I will begin with a half-assed and incomplete guide to the world of the Jodoverse, which is clearly the best sort of guide. But take everything with a grain of salt because, as I just said, fuck if I know what I'm talking about.
Simply put, the Jodoverse all comes back to Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, a film which, while never made, had a major impact simply because of the people it introduced to each other. Here Dan O'Bannon encountered H.R. Giger (and together they would work on Alien) but here too eccentric avant garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky came in contact with Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, one of the canonical greats of French comics. They'd start what would be called the 'Jodoverse', but it should be noted that while these comics broadly share the same universe, due to various apocalyptic events and Jodorowsky's ideas evolving whenever the hell he felt like it their continuity can be a bit elastic.
The Incal
When the film fell apart, Jodorwosky and Giraud collaborated on this decade-long production. Jodorowsky would provide the story, but Giraud would do the art. The result was a bizarro space opera spectacular about a cowardly scoundrel called John DiFool and the weird universe-ending quest he got caught up in along with his concrete seagull Deepo, a mysterious woman called Anima and a badass space warrior called the Metabaron, among others. Together they are catapuled into a story that's somewhere between tarot card references, hallucinations, and Moebius at the top of his space age weirdness.
It was pretentious, ridiculous, satirical, cosmically religious by way of psycohsexual hangups, utterly surreal and, frankly, wildly uneven - at worst it's lousy satire or lame writing. The characters are more symbolic mouthpieces than actual people (Anima? Eh? GEDDIT? GEDDIT?) but bottom line this is the kind of crazy insanity I'm particularly fond of when it comes to Jodorowsky so I can guardedly recommend it.
Perhaps appropriately for a grandiose epic made intentionally because an expensive movie fell through so the frustrated artists turned to the budget of their imaginations, there have been vague rumblings about a cinematic adaptation of the Incal for years now. A brief animated trailer to the movie that never was exists, and more recently Nicholas Windig Refn (who considers Jodorowsky a major influence and dedicated his last movie to him) has expressed interest in a live action version.
Before The Incal
This was actually the first Incal comic I read. I remember not finding it any good, it's pretty much all the lame excessively obvious satire aspects of the Incal with none of the fun stuff. Also it spends far too much time with a character who was literally a giant slug, which, ugh - but more to the point it was also illustrated by Zoran Janjetov, who I have less than kind words to say about later.
The Metabarons
If The Incal was the comic Jodorowsky created after the disappointment of Dune, Metabarons was the one that channelled the most ideas he had from Dune into the comic. Traces of Dune and his ideas for Dune remain in the Incal series proper - a gigantic feudal interstellar empire ruled over by an ensphered bigendered emperoress who lives on a planet of gold - but the sweeping multi-generational narrative of the Metabarons, a patriarchical line of superefficient galactic warriors and their brutal struggles within their own family and against the universe, most closely mirror his Dune ideas. Here we have a castrated father who has to find a new way to give birth, as Jodorowsky would have had Duke Leto be, and here is the Shabda-Oud, Jodorowsky's weird take on the Bene Gesserit - but more than that this comic series features antigravity gorrillas and gigantic cybernetically-enhanced space whales; it britsles with ideas and scope and drama and treachery and intrigue, with 'the headless child rips off and claims the head of the poet' kind of twists.
If Juan Gimenez's art lacks the colourful yet unforgettable simplicity of Moebius, it's a gritty, obsessively detailed look that gets out the grime and complicated machinery and baroque intensity of the lives of these multiple supermen of questionable morals rather well. If you read one Jodoverse series, make it this one.
The Technopriests
Just look at that.
Seriously.
If you don't recognize what's on the wall behind the characters, that is a LCARS interface, stolen exactly from the Star Trek: The Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager period, right to the specific details.
I said I'd have words for Zoran Janjetov. His artwork was just kinda lame in Before The Incal but in Technopriests his artwork progresses from lame to 'hey, these costumes kinda look like Star Trek' to 'sweet fuck this is literally just Star Trek.' And while Jodorowsky's writing regarding women is lousy at best, it's particularly poor here (there's rape. Let's not get into it.) While there is a mixture of decently weird Jodorowsky elements and his usually hamfisted satire (look video game developers must FREE THE MIND from oppressive religion or... look video games are cool right now? Right?) it just kind of is what it is.
Megalex/After The Incal/Final Incal/Castaka
...um. Yeah I haven't read any of these. I'm sure some expert will appear from the ether to say how great one of them is, but I mostly try to hold out for uncensored versions of these comics, which is harder than it sounds as most English releases of French comics tend to censor (this is also a big issue I have with Cinebooks' otherwise excellent releases of Leo's Aldebaran, which I might get to in a later post.)
Also I'm a bit lazy so I haven't tried hunting them down, and as might be clear by this point I have a mixed view of a lot of Jodorowsky's comic work anyway, but I figured this would be a good starting point. If there's any interest I'll dig into what little I know about Enki Bilal or Leo or Alex Alice or Marvel's Soleil releases from a couple years back or more Moebius or whatever.
I've read very few comics, but most of those were originally in French, so hey, why not. I will begin with a half-assed and incomplete guide to the world of the Jodoverse, which is clearly the best sort of guide. But take everything with a grain of salt because, as I just said, fuck if I know what I'm talking about.
Simply put, the Jodoverse all comes back to Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, a film which, while never made, had a major impact simply because of the people it introduced to each other. Here Dan O'Bannon encountered H.R. Giger (and together they would work on Alien) but here too eccentric avant garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky came in contact with Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, one of the canonical greats of French comics. They'd start what would be called the 'Jodoverse', but it should be noted that while these comics broadly share the same universe, due to various apocalyptic events and Jodorowsky's ideas evolving whenever the hell he felt like it their continuity can be a bit elastic.
The Incal
When the film fell apart, Jodorwosky and Giraud collaborated on this decade-long production. Jodorowsky would provide the story, but Giraud would do the art. The result was a bizarro space opera spectacular about a cowardly scoundrel called John DiFool and the weird universe-ending quest he got caught up in along with his concrete seagull Deepo, a mysterious woman called Anima and a badass space warrior called the Metabaron, among others. Together they are catapuled into a story that's somewhere between tarot card references, hallucinations, and Moebius at the top of his space age weirdness.
It was pretentious, ridiculous, satirical, cosmically religious by way of psycohsexual hangups, utterly surreal and, frankly, wildly uneven - at worst it's lousy satire or lame writing. The characters are more symbolic mouthpieces than actual people (Anima? Eh? GEDDIT? GEDDIT?) but bottom line this is the kind of crazy insanity I'm particularly fond of when it comes to Jodorowsky so I can guardedly recommend it.
Perhaps appropriately for a grandiose epic made intentionally because an expensive movie fell through so the frustrated artists turned to the budget of their imaginations, there have been vague rumblings about a cinematic adaptation of the Incal for years now. A brief animated trailer to the movie that never was exists, and more recently Nicholas Windig Refn (who considers Jodorowsky a major influence and dedicated his last movie to him) has expressed interest in a live action version.
Before The Incal
This was actually the first Incal comic I read. I remember not finding it any good, it's pretty much all the lame excessively obvious satire aspects of the Incal with none of the fun stuff. Also it spends far too much time with a character who was literally a giant slug, which, ugh - but more to the point it was also illustrated by Zoran Janjetov, who I have less than kind words to say about later.
The Metabarons
If The Incal was the comic Jodorowsky created after the disappointment of Dune, Metabarons was the one that channelled the most ideas he had from Dune into the comic. Traces of Dune and his ideas for Dune remain in the Incal series proper - a gigantic feudal interstellar empire ruled over by an ensphered bigendered emperoress who lives on a planet of gold - but the sweeping multi-generational narrative of the Metabarons, a patriarchical line of superefficient galactic warriors and their brutal struggles within their own family and against the universe, most closely mirror his Dune ideas. Here we have a castrated father who has to find a new way to give birth, as Jodorowsky would have had Duke Leto be, and here is the Shabda-Oud, Jodorowsky's weird take on the Bene Gesserit - but more than that this comic series features antigravity gorrillas and gigantic cybernetically-enhanced space whales; it britsles with ideas and scope and drama and treachery and intrigue, with 'the headless child rips off and claims the head of the poet' kind of twists.
If Juan Gimenez's art lacks the colourful yet unforgettable simplicity of Moebius, it's a gritty, obsessively detailed look that gets out the grime and complicated machinery and baroque intensity of the lives of these multiple supermen of questionable morals rather well. If you read one Jodoverse series, make it this one.
The Technopriests
Just look at that.
Seriously.
If you don't recognize what's on the wall behind the characters, that is a LCARS interface, stolen exactly from the Star Trek: The Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager period, right to the specific details.
I said I'd have words for Zoran Janjetov. His artwork was just kinda lame in Before The Incal but in Technopriests his artwork progresses from lame to 'hey, these costumes kinda look like Star Trek' to 'sweet fuck this is literally just Star Trek.' And while Jodorowsky's writing regarding women is lousy at best, it's particularly poor here (there's rape. Let's not get into it.) While there is a mixture of decently weird Jodorowsky elements and his usually hamfisted satire (look video game developers must FREE THE MIND from oppressive religion or... look video games are cool right now? Right?) it just kind of is what it is.
Megalex/After The Incal/Final Incal/Castaka
...um. Yeah I haven't read any of these. I'm sure some expert will appear from the ether to say how great one of them is, but I mostly try to hold out for uncensored versions of these comics, which is harder than it sounds as most English releases of French comics tend to censor (this is also a big issue I have with Cinebooks' otherwise excellent releases of Leo's Aldebaran, which I might get to in a later post.)
Also I'm a bit lazy so I haven't tried hunting them down, and as might be clear by this point I have a mixed view of a lot of Jodorowsky's comic work anyway, but I figured this would be a good starting point. If there's any interest I'll dig into what little I know about Enki Bilal or Leo or Alex Alice or Marvel's Soleil releases from a couple years back or more Moebius or whatever.
