Humanoids Presents: The Jodoverse



Visionary author, filmmaker, and philosopher, Alexandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Endless Poetry) has created ― along with some of the world’s most singular and talented sequential artists ― an incredible Sci-Fi universe, full of love, revenge, intrigue, betrayal, and redemption. Told one series at a time, this wholly imaginative realm continues to expand on a cosmic scale. Featuring excerpts from The Incal, The Metabarons, The Technopriests, and Megalex, this collection provides a peek into this mind-blowing world that will ensure that you’ll want to hop onboard and explore it further…Welcome to The Jodoverse!

THE INCAL IS THE GREATEST COMIC THAT YOU PROBABLY HAVEN’T READ

The Incal is comic written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius. Initially created and published in France, it’s the centerpiece of what would later be referred to as the writers Jodoverse or Metabarons universe and has been reprinted in English three times most recently in September of this year by Humanoids publishing. Jodorowsky is more well known for being a visionary film maker whose worked explored themes of spirituality through a lense of ultraviolence.

He is perhaps most notable for originally being the director pegged to adapt the science fiction novel Dune where he was set have the film star Salvador Dali, Orson Wells and Jodorowsky’s own son, feature original music by Pink Floyd, Magma & Henry Cow while having a script that would have made for a 14 hour long movie. In the end no studio would budget his vision and eventually David Lynch would make a much more straight laced version of the movie years later. Think about that for a second, David Lynch was the conservative choice in a binary between him and Jodorowsky. In addition to his film work Jodorowsky has an extensive comics bibliography dating back from 1966 to today including several stories illustrated by the late French artist Jean Henry Gaston Giraud or as most know him by Moebius.

[...]The Incal is a future dystopia story that evolves into a treatise on spiritual enlightenment by morphing at every turn as the story progresses from one fantastic setting to the next. It hits the perfect medium of expansive science fiction and relatable personal journey that will remind you of being a child and discovering the wonder of science fiction and epic story telling for the first time.

It centers on John DiFool, a “private eye” that is content to waste away his life on whiskey and android prostitutes before he comes in contact with “The Light Incal” essentially the positive light force which in turn brings about his call to adventure as forces for light and dark surround him in seeking out the power of the light Incal. This leads to an expansive cast that end up with John including two princesses; one of which he falls in love, his biological son that he had by the other, a master assassin that has guarded the boy all of his life, a warrior with a wolf head and DiFool’s pet bird that swallows the light Incal and becomes sentinent in the same way as his human counterparts.

It’s a ragtag Star Warsesque bunch that is reluctantly tasked with saving the universe from the forces of “The Dark Incal”, the dark half of the light incal, and chief among the reluctant faction is DiFool himself, a man that is constantly being pushed and pulled towards doing the right thing as he wants nothing more then to go back to his “homeowhores” in spite of the utter demise and oblivion all of existence is facing. The world building is contiously fantastic, expansive and mesmerizing as the locations, setting and logic of the universe are always expanding from beginning to end. The concepts and execution of vision from Jodorowsky and Moebius is in complete synochracy while the illustrations is purely breath taking in the manner of it’s originality, detail and scope.

But at it’s center the brilliance is John DiFool’s non journey that does not give him the easy victory or answers while creating a fantastic allegory for the sins of the past repeating themselves, the futility of complacency and the necessity for individual transformation. It’s final page is a beautiful conclusion for the story that manages to allow you to feel everything you just read in one final page like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

The Incal



The story begins in the dystopian capital city of an insignificant planet in a human-dominated galactic empire, wherein the Bergs, aliens who resemble featherless birds and reside in a neighboring galaxy, make up another power bloc. DiFool receives the Light Incal, a crystal of enormous powers, from a dying Berg. The Incal is then sought by many factions: the Bergs; the corrupt government of the great pit-city; the rebel group Amok; and the Church of Industrial Saints (commonly referred to as the Techno-Technos or the Technopriests): a sinister technocratic cult which worships the Dark Incal. Animah (an allusion to anima), the keeper of the Light Incal, seeks it as well.

The series mixes space opera, metaphysics, and satire; a counterpoint to the grandiosity of the events is always DiFool's base, even cowardly nature. Every major character in The Incal is based upon Tarot cards – for example, John DiFool is based upon The Fool with his name being a pun upon "John, the Fool". (A small friendly companion, like Deepo in The Incal, accompanies the Fool on his journey.) Animah's name is based on the Jungian concept of the anima, the feminine part of every male's psyche.

The Metabarons



The Metabarons or The Saga of The Meta-Barons is a science fiction comic series relating the history of a dynasty of perfect warriors known as the Metabarons. The series takes place over the course of several generations, and chronicles the life of each of the five Metabarons. The stories depict a space opera reminiscent of Greek tragedy, and heavily influenced by Frank Herbert's Dune novels.

Every Metabaron is mutilated by his father in his youth so that his endurance to pain is tested, and receives a powerful mechanical body part as a replacement for the destroyed limb. In each generation, the son and heir must eventually face his father in a battle to the death. These battles have taken many forms, from hand-to-hand combat to space duels, and the succession is only achieved once the son succeeds in killing his father.

The Technopriests



After the Greek tragedy of "The Metabarons," Alexandro Jodorowsky comes back to his biblical roots with this quest reminiscent of Moses and set on a galactic scale. To top it off, the characters and the theme of virtual reality are tailor-made for artist Zoran Janjetov ("Before The Incal"), who finds in Jodorowsky his perfect match. Albino, hero of this space odyssey, remembers here his childhood, his apprenticeship, and the big and small battles he had to fight to fulfill his ambitions in a universe where technological advances are paradoxically matched only by the cruelty and the barbarism of the forces controlling it.

Megalex



On Megalex, the city-planet, the laws of nature are prohibited. The tyrannical order reigns over a renewed population controlled by genetic manipulation. Due to the repeated attacks of the neighboring forest, primitive and impenetrable, the urbanized system in command allowed an 'anomaly,' a clone policeman nearly 10 ft tall, to escape. Guided by Adama, one of the rebels fighting for their freedom, the gentle giant manages to join the camp of the 'objectors' and help them go up against the evil powers of Megalex.

Has anyone ever checked out their comics around here? I think they're some kind of European publisher and man, the artwork is just off the charts. As a sometime amateur artist, sometimes you see art that inspires you -- and then you see art that is so amazing you just want to give up.

They also have some pretty big name writers as well -- Kurt Busiek did a book for them (which unfortunately had a concept that was so close to one a friend and I were working on that it felt like he had copies of our notes) called Redhand and I just saw that Geoff Johns did a book for them as well, titled Olympus. A lot of their other writers are big names from science fiction or Europe...

And that's what they seem to primarily publish -- science fiction (looks like cyberpunk and space opera to me) and fantasy. If you're tired of Big Two books, these look to be a great alternative with very creative work done at an extremely high level. Rafael, you might like this Alexandro Jodorowsky writer.

Anyway, here's some art from After Incal and two others I just ordered yesterday, The Metabarons and Megalex.

I picked this up at my LCS just yesterday. Mine is the collected edition.

Which one is this? After Incal?

Yep.

Have you read The Incal? If not, you might want to read that one first -- it's drawn by Moebius and he does a pretty swell job.