By Jodorowsky & Moebius, translated by Natacha Ruck & Ken Grobe (Sloth Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-908830-01-2
Here’s a modern masterpiece of comics creativity at last available to English-speaking audiences, one of the most intriguing and engaging works by two creative legends of sequential narrative. To some people, this superb piece of thought provoking fiction might be shocking or blasphemous however, so if you hold strong views on sex or religion – especially Christianity – stop right now, spare yourself some outrage and come back tomorrow.
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comics writer, world traveller, philosopher and spiritual guru, born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929. He is most widely known for his films Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief and others, as well as his vast comics output, such as Anibal 5, (created whilst living in Mexico) Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia and more, co-created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists. His nigh decade-long collaboration with Moebius on the Tarot-inspired adventure The Incal (1981-1989) completely redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve.
Best known for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspird imagery blending mysticism and “religious provocation†and his spiritually informed fantasy and science fiction comics, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by the inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas today.
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1938 and raised by his grandparents. In 1955 he attended the Institut des Arts Appliqués where he became friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou. Giraud apparently spent most of his time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year.
In 1956 he travelled to Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months, before returning to France and a full-time career in comics, mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants in a style based on French comics legend Joseph “Jijé†Gillain.
Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria in 1959-1960, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises and, on returning to civilian life, became Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) Western epic Jerry Spring. A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial ‘Fort Navajo’ in Pilote #210, and soon its disreputable, anti-hero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry became one of the most popular European strips of modern times. In 1963-1964, Giraud produced strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and, keen to distinguish and separate this material from his serious day job, first coined his pen-name “Moebiusâ€.
He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all rabid science fiction fans – to become the founders of a revolution in narrative graphic arts as “Les Humanoides Associesâ€. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again wanted to utilise a discrete creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was producing: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal (with Alejandro Jodorosky) and the mystical, dream-world flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…
To further separate his creative bipolarity, Giraud worked inks with a brush whilst the futurist Moebius rendered with pens. Both of him passed away on March 10th 2012.
Jodorowsky and Moebius’ second groundbreaking co-creation was originally released in three albums from Les Humanoïdes Associés as La Folle du Sacré CÅ“ur (1992), Le Piège de l’irrationnel (1993) and Le Fou de la Sorbonne (1998) before the saga was collected into one massive, ecstatic and revolutionary volume in 2004.
The company’s American arm Humanoids, Inc. translated it into English in 2006, which forms the basis for this comprehensive new edition from fledgling British publisher Sloth Comics.
Professor Alan Mangel is a world-renowned aesthete, deep thinker and chief lecturer at the celebrated Sorbonne. As such he is the focus of much student attention – particularly female – but none as fervent as that of the insular, fanatically bible-bashing Christian and deeply disturbed Elisabeth.
When the teacher’s shrewish wife Myra denounces, shames and impoverishes him at the moment of his greatest triumph, the arrogantly cerebral, proudly austere, violently chaste and determinedly sexually abstinent Mangel loses the awed respect of his once doting students and disciples who shun his once overcrowded classes and even mock and assault him.
Only Elisabeth remains devoted to him but she has designs both carnal and divine on the aging, flabby, secular, lapsed and born-again Jew. To make matters worse, when she throws herself at him and is repulsed, this awakens the philosopher’s own lustful youthful libido which takes form as a gadfly ghost constantly urging him to indulge in acts of vile debauchery and rampant lust.
Eventually the pressure is too great and Mangel agrees to meet Elisabeth at the Church of the Sacred Heart. The journey there is awful: even the universe seems set against him as rude taxi-drivers, a mad old lady tramp and even dogs further humiliate the broken old man.
In the holiest part of the church Elisabeth again attempts to seduce the long sterile and wilfully impotent Alan, explaining that her researches have revealed him to be the biblical Zacharias reborn, destined to impregnate her with a son: the Prophet John who would in turn herald the rebirth of Jesus…
Again the rational scientist baulks at her words but Elisabeth promises a miracle and when Mangel’s horny, ghostly other self “possesses†him the dotard loses control and finally gives the mad girl what she’s been begging for…
Plagued with shame and remorse, still tormented by his inner letch and broke, Mangel resumes lecturing and slowly rebuilds his reputation until one day Elisabeth returns, her nude body declaring her to be forever the property of Alan Zacharias Mangel. She is three months pregnant with the sterile man’s baby and has already recruited the St. Joseph who will help them fulfil their sacred mission…
The divinely-dispatched protector, a drug addict and petty criminal previously called Muhammad, already has a line on The Mary: she’s his girlfriend Rosaura, currently imprisoned in a secure mental hospital. She’s also in a coma…
Dragged against the will he no longer seems capable of exerting, Mangel experiences his latest ongoing tribulation when St. Joseph breaks The Mary out with the aid of a gun and his distressed guts give way to what will be, for all of the chosen ones, an uncomfortable and prolonged period of stress-related explosive diarrhoea…
Against all his rational protests and worries, things just seem to keep falling into place for the pilgrims. Rosura is no longer comatose, and they get away without a single problem – if you don’t count the olfactory punishment the Professor’s rebellious innards are repeatedly inflicting upon them all…
“Mary†is the most ravishing creature he has ever seen, but as crazy as her friends. When she cavorts naked in a field during a midnight thunderstorm, frantically imploring God to impregnate her with the second Jesus, Mangel’s lustful ghost again overtakes him and he surreptitiously copulates with the wildly bucking lascivious loon…
The next day reality hits hard when he reads of two nurses executed when the comatose daughter of an infamous Columbian drug baron was abducted from a certain institution…
The second chapter opens with the four fugitives hiding out in a lavish seaside house and Mangel – as always – arguing with both his priapic phantom and rationalist conscience. His so impossibly, imperturbably, persuasive companions are untroubled: they are simply passing the days until the birth of John the Baptist and the Second Coming of Christ…
The next crisis is pecuniary as the lavish spending of the trio soon exhausts the Professor’s funds and they are reduced to their last 100 franc note…
Elisabeth is unconcerned and simply places a bet with it. Operating under divine guidance the horse race wins the quartet three and half million Francs, but before the reeling rationalist can grasp that, there’s another insane development as Mary/Rosaura declares herself to be the Androgynous Christ – both male and female – reborn and made manifest to save us all.
She still looks devastatingly all-woman however, and when she kisses the old fool and sends him back to the Church of the Sacred Heart to “obtain†a vial of holy Baptismal oil, he goes despite himself, arguing all the way with his imaginary sex-obsessed younger self.
It’s another humiliating and deranged debacle. The famous house of worship is hosting an ecumenical convention of argumentative theologians of all religions and that self-same crazy woman is still there, claiming to be God and challenging them all.
After driving them away she even tries to have sex with the bewildered fallen philosopher who barely escapes with the stolen oil. The worst of it all is that, based on recent evidence, Mangel can’t even say with any certainty that the ill-smelling harridan isn’t telling the truth…
Driving back through the fleshpots of the city with his ghost tempting him every inch of the way, the weary savant is dragged back to appalling reality by a newspaper headline declaring that the police have a witness in the murder/abduction of Rosaura Molinares, daughter of the most wanted drug trafficker on Earth.
However, when the nigh-unhinged thinker reaches his sanctuary from reason, the true believers already know. They taped the TV news and show him the witness describing a completely different killer: El Perro, chief hitman of Pedro Molinares‘ Medellin Cartel…
With the last foundations of precious logic crumbling, Mangel reaches an emotional tipping point and when The Androgynous Christ demands he make love to her, the old fool submits to stress – and his ever-horny spectral alter ego – by surrendering to his lusts. Before long he is in the throes of a bizarre, eye-opening, life-altering four-way love session with all the mad people he has wronged in his head and heart…
The epiphanic moment is rather spoiled when the wall explodes and a cadre of mercenaries working for a rival cartel burst in, looking for Rosaura’s father. They’re followed by the Columbian Secret Service, also hunting the drug lord and quite prepared to kill everybody to find him.
…And they in turn are ambushed by American DEA agents who slaughter everybody in their sights in their desperation to capture Molinares’ daughter and her weirdo friends. The illegally operating Yanks drag their captives to a submarine waiting offshore just as French police hit the beach and El Perro attacks the sub, spectacularly rescuing the quartet and transporting them to safety by helicopter and cargo plane…
The concluding chapter opens with all of France astonished by the kidnapping of its most beloved thinker, even as in a Columbian Garden of Eden a newly-enlightened and happy Mangel and his heavily pregnant Elisabeth prepare for the birth of The Child.
The Androgynous Christ too has changed and grown, easily converting the hard-bitten drug gangsters into a holy army of believers in the redeemer Jesusa…
Top dog Pedro Molinares is dying from cancer and his devoted army are fully, fanatically in tune with Jesusa’s plans, especially after an impossible blood miracle seemingly proves their new leader’s earthbound divinity. Equally astounded, Mangel too reaches a spiritual crisis as he accompanies Elisabeth deep into the jungle to give birth.
Mangel’s journey and ultimate transformation at the hands of rainforest shaman Doña Paz then lead to even more astonishing revelations, changes and shocks that I’m just not prepared to spoil for you…
Controversial, shocking, challenging, fanciful, enchanting and incredibly funny, this a book you must read and will always remember.
™ Les Humanoïdes Associés, SAS, Paris. English version © 2011 Humanoids, Inc., Los Angeles. All rights reserved.