The Incal
The Incal is a French graphic novel series written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and originally illustrated by Jean Giraud. The Incal, with first pages originally released as Une aventure de John Difool in Métal hurlant and published by Les Humanoïdes Associés, introduced Jodorowsky's "Jodoverse", a fictional universe in which his science fiction comics take place. It is an epic space opera blending fantastical intergalactic voyage, science, technology, political intrigues, conspiracies, messianism, mysticism, poetry, debauchery, love stories, and satire. The Incal includes and expands the concepts and artwork from the abandoned film project Dune directed by Jodorowsky and designed by Giraud from the early 1970s.
Originally published in installments between 1980 and 1988 in the French magazine Métal Hurlant, and followed by Before the Incal, After the Incal, and Final Incal, it has been described as a contender for "the best comic book" in the medium's history. From it came spin-off series Metabarons, The Technopriests, and Megalex.
Content
''The Incal''
The story is set 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. It starts in medias res with Difool thrown from the Suicide Alley to the great acid lake below by a masked group, luckily saved by a police cruiser. During the questioning he denies that he received the Light Incal, a crystal of enormous and infinite 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, the keeper of the Light Incal, seeks it as well. During the journey Difool and Deepo are joined by Animah, The Metabaron, Solune, Tanatah and Kill Wolfhead, with a task of saving the universe from the forces of the Dark Incal, and the Technopriests manufacture and launch into outer space the sun-eating Dark Egg. As the darkness is overcome, Difool is brought before Orh, the fatherlike divinity, who tells him he must remember what he witnessed. As Difool falls away, he finds himself where he was at the beginning, falling down the shaft.''Before the Incal''
The story is a considerably more straightforward noir tale of boundless urban corruption with the relative absence of spiritualistic elements, which dips deeper into exploring the urban fabric of the world of The Incal. The story follows young Difool living in demimonde. He soon finds that his prostitute mother devoted herself to growing amorine, a drug that restores the ability to love. His father, Olivier Difool, breaks the law in wearing a fake halo that is the mark of an aristo. Justice is harsh for such transgressions of class — a legal clause "allows the condemned man to choose between a tablet at the morgue-wall, where he'll sleep away his thirty-year-and-one-day term", or "remodeling", which means having his entire memory wiped. His father chooses remodeling. Difool soon begins to investigate the mystery of the disappearance of prostitutes' children, something he shouldn't find out.''Final Incal''
The story from the unfinished After the Incal was rewritten to provide a separate narrative for this volume. The story starts after The Incal climax, in which John Difool encountered a flowing-bearded divine being named Orh, witnessing a universe-shaking event, hurtling towards certain death in the acid lake. DiFool forgets about the cosmic encounter, and recovers his memory as the universe faces the threat of a metallic virus. The Prezident was cloned in a metallic body, equipped with both chemical and brutal weapons, but also an altered mind — operating under the influence of the "destroyer of all living things", the Benthacodon. He unleashes a destructive organic virus called the Biophage 13-X with the purpose of forcing the population to abandon their natural bodies in favor of robotic ones. The only way to counteract is to reunite John Difool with his true love, Luz de Garra, and the Elohim makes four John Difools from different realities to encounter each other on a quest to find her. The egos of the allegedly evolved guru Difool and the super-evolved "angelic" Difool are ridiculed, and the least enlightened Difool, the ugliest and most craven, is selected to save the universe. In the end, the cosmic humanity manages to become one collective consciousness, as true love saves it from turning into a collection of unfeeling metallic beings.Main characters
- John Difool, protagonist: a Class R licensed private investigator and occasional bodyguard. Difool is reluctant to assume the role of hero, and suffers mood swings, self-doubt, and temper tantrums. He has a fondness for cigars, "ouisky", and "homeosluts". He is an everyman character, both unusually damning and praising of the human condition, kindly, sacrificing and selfish, likely to run away. His story is presented in "Before the Incal": he is the son of a prostitute, and started as a PI while investigating on the children of the red ring prostitutes.
- Deepo, Difool's loyal and good-hearted "concrete seagull"; generally smarter and more resourceful than John himself. Early in the story, the Light Incal gives him the power of speech.
- Animah and Tanatah, two sisters charged with guarding the Light and Dark Incals, respectively. In such duties, Tanatah hired the Metabaron to kill John DiFool and obtain the Light Incal. Animah, mother of Solune, who originally safeguarded the Light Incal, has psychic powers. Tanatah is also the head of the rebel group called the Amok.
- The Metabaron, the greatest bounty hunter, mercenary, and fighter ace in the known universe, and the adopted father of Solune; originally sent to kill John Difool by Tanatah. The Metabaron returned John in a frozen state without killing him, knowing that Tanatah would betray him.
- Solune, the adopted child of the Metabaron and the biological child of Animah and John Difool. Like Animah, Solune has immense psychic powers, and was the chosen host of the power known as the Incal, destined to become the dual-gendered leader of the universe.
- Kill Wolfhead, an anthropomorphic wolf mercenary in Tanatah's employ. Kill holds a grudge against DiFool, who pierced his ear with a bullet near the beginning of the story. He is portrayed as faithful, loyal, impulsive and aggressive.
Analysis
The universe is split into two galaxies, a human, and a Berg, and the story is set on four planets in the human galaxy: Ter21, Techno-Gea, Aquaend, and the Golden Planet.
On the planet Ter21 there are two social classes: the fortunate, who reside at the top, and the others, who live down in the pits. At the top, it's a near-panopticonical dystopia with standard TV program depicting filmed violence for public consumption, and indoctrination. Seemingly no one works anymore, and all life is mediated through the TriD, even people's dreams. People are addicted to "love drug" amorine, while the president is engaged in repeated body transplants. The masculine role is ridiculed by mass-produced holographic prostitutes. The technopriests represent the most damning, avaricious human drives.
John Difool is based upon The Fool from tarot with his name being a pun upon "John, the Fool". Animah's name is based on the Jungian concept of the anima, the feminine part of every male's psyche, as well in Latin "anima" means "psyche". The series has no taboos, an attitude towards sex, violence and general social stigmas that may be avoided in more conventional comics. They include black-and-white dualism or the conflict between good and evil, mystical symbolism, archetypes, metaphysics, tarot and other influences. In the story there's often a conflict between life or nature and dead technology, as "glasses enable you to see, that's technology. But happiness is not that, it's not your glasses. It's what you are able to see. If you have wonderful glasses but don't know how to see what's in front of you, then that technological tool is useless". The series also showcases religion, economy, politics and warfare, all mixed together.
The Final Incal is kind of a call for revolt to organize life in a different way, because as individuals people are mortal, but as humanity itself they are immortal. To learn that others exist, to live together and give, that there is continuity only as part of humanity as a whole. It demonstrates that "love is the ultimate purifier; a force that can cleanse, renew and revitalize".
Style
The series capture worlds with cityscapes, huge spacecraft and lands populated by technopriests, rubbish-dwelling mutants, doppelgängers, giant jellyfish, chiming forests of gems and jostling, old gurus floating on crystals, an underground rat army, flying leeches, "necro-panzers", a selfish humanity among others. Some touches are borrowed directly from Dune: the Emperoress, a "perfect androgyne", or Aquend, a planet composed entirely of water which is Arrakis's seeming opposite, and a "mentrek" who betrayed his former master.Jean Giraud's artwork and Yves Chaland's colouring from The Incal were well praised. Jodorowsky initially didn't have a script, but recounted and mimed the ideas to Moebius who sketched the scenario, recorded their conversation on tape, and they jointly altered the plot. Jon Evans considered resemblance to the De Stijl school of art inspired by artists like Piet Mondrian and Vilmos Huszár.
Moebius refused to do Before the Incal, thus Jodorowsky found Zoran Janjetov. Although Janjetov had his own style, he was influenced by Moebius and imitated him. Finally, Moebius decided to do After the Incal, but beside his illness at the time he had a different style, and Jodorowsky was not satisfied by the overall work. He depicted the nightmare of the tech-world with a more abundant sense of optimism, something peppered with light and hope throughout.
José Ladrönn's rendition of the worlds that Moebius originally designed in the rewritten sequel Final Incal is much darker and grittier; the streets are emptier, less colorful, more muted. He excelled at drawing, but as if he has studied not only Moebius but also the movies that Moebius influenced, directly or indirectly.